CLAUDIO

VELLUTINI
Adina par
excellence

Adina par excellence: Eugenia Tadolini

and the Performing Tradition of
Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore in Vienna
CLAUDIO VELLUTINI

“I cannot understand why Tadolini omitted
the Cavatina, which is every bit as effective as
the one in Lombardi.”1 With these resentful
words, Giuseppe Verdi expressed his frustra-
tion with Italian soprano Eugenia Tadolini’s
contribution to the Viennese premiere of his
I wish to express my gratitude to Fabrizio Della Seta, Philip
Gossett, Berthold Hoeckner, Emanuele Senici, Francesco
Izzo, Heather Hadlock, Cathy Ann Elias, Angela Romagnoli,
Janos Simon, Amy Stebbins, and the two anonymous read-
ers of this journal for their insightful comments and help
on earlier drafts of this article. Unless otherwise stated all
translations are mine. I have maintained the original or-
thography in quotations.
1
“Non so capire perché la Tadolini abbia omesso la
Cavatina, la quale è d’altrettanto effetto di quella dei
Lombardi.” Giuseppe Verdi to Leo Herz, 7 June 1844. The
passage is quoted in Ursula Dauth, Verdis Opern im Spiegel
der Wiener Presse von 1843 bis 1859: Ein Beitrag zur
Rezeptionsgeschichte (Munich: Katzbichler, 1981), 91, and
in English in Claudio Gallico, “Introduction,” in Giuseppe
Verdi, Ernani, The Works of Giuseppe Verdi I/5 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press and Ricordi, 1985), xxi.
latest opera, Ernani, which took place at the
Kärntnertortheater on 30 May 1844.2 The prima
donna had replaced Elvira’s original cabaletta,
“Tutto sprezzo che d’Ernani,” with another one
from I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Giselda’s
“Non fu sogno,” adapting Francesco Maria Pia-
ve’s words from the libretto of Ernani to
Giselda’s music.3 Verdi could not predict that,
by so doing, Tadolini would establish a long-
2
Here and in the rest of this article, I adopt the modern
spelling of the denomination of the opera house. I will
retain the obsolete form “Kärthnerthortheater” only in
quotations.
3
A manuscript version of the cabaletta, consisting of only
the vocal and bass lines, is found in the copy of the Ernani
vocal score used as a prompt part at the Kärntnertortheater:
Vienna, Austrian National Library (henceforth: A-Wn),
Musiksammlung, OA.2309. The adaptation of the original
words of Elvira’s aria to the new musical context was
rather straightforward, for the two cabalettas share the
same poetic structure (two stanzas of ottonari with sec-
ondary accents falling regularly on the first, third, and
fifth syllables of each line).

19th-Century Music, vol. 38, no. 1, pp. 3–29 ISSN: 0148-2076, electronic ISSN 1533-8606. © 2014 by the Regents of 3
the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article
content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions Web site, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/
reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/ncm.2014.38.1.003.

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 19 TH lasting local performing tradition of the opera.
CENTURY
MUSIC Generations of sopranos followed in her foot-
steps: in Die moderne Oper, Eduard Hanslick
indicates that the substitution was still in vogue
in the mid-1870s and suggests that it was be-
cause Giselda’s cabaletta was introduced into
Ernani that it gained wide popularity.4 The origi-
nal piece, on the contrary, was not performed
in Vienna for most of the nineteenth century.5
Verdi was also unaware that what happened
to Ernani was but the most recent of at least
three instances in which Tadolini’s modifica-
tions to operas she sang in Vienna became an
enduring feature of local performances. Previ-
ously, she had replaced the duet “Son geloso
del zeffiro errante” from Bellini’s La sonn-
ambula with a piece by Luigi Ricci, which
survives in multiple versions, as both a stan-
dard duet and an aria for the soprano with the
tenor downgraded to a pertichino.6 It was the
Viennese performing tradition of Gaetano
Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore, however, that re-
mained most closely associated with Tadolini
long after her retirement from the stage. Al-
though the prima donna was credited for the
modifications to Donizetti’s opera, both the
working environment at the Kärntnertortheater
and the Viennese cultural context enabled,
guided, and helped perpetuate such choices.
4
Eduard Hanslick, Die moderne Oper: Kritiken und Studien
(Berlin: A. Hoffmann, 1875), 219: “‘Es war kein Traum!’
ruft sie [= Giselda] nach dem Verschwinden dieser
Erscheinungen und singt sie das lustig-freche F-dur-Alle-
gro, das später für Elvira in Ernani eingelegt und von daher
allgemein bekannt ist” (“It was not a dream!” she [Giselda]
cries at the disappearance of this vision, and sings the
cheeky F-major Allegro, which was later introduced for
Elvira in Ernani, through which it became widely known).
The passage is also quoted in Dauth, Verdis Opern, 91–92,
where she suggests that Hanslick was subtly blaming Verdi
for having used the piece as a self-borrowing. In fact, since
Hanslick is using the verb einlegen in the passive form, it
is not clear to whom he is attributing the responsibility
for the insertion.
5
See Dauth, Verdis Opern, 91; Gallico “Introduction,” xxi;
and Claudio Gallico, “Il restauro del testo di ‘Ernani,’ ” in
Ernani ieri ed oggi: Atti del convegno internationale di
studi: Modena, Teatro San Carlo. 9–10 dicembre 1984
(Parma: Istituto di Studi Verdiani, 1987), 92–103, 99–100.
6
See Alessandro Roccatagliati and Luca Zoppelli,
“Introduzione,” in Vincenzo Bellini, La sonnambula,
Edizione Critica delle Opere di Vincenzo Bellini 7 (Milan:
Ricordi, 2009), xliv, n. 142.
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In this article I discuss how the interaction
among the soprano, the response of the Viennese
audience to her perfomances, the critical reac-
tions to L’elisir d’amore, and the business strat-
egies of impresarios and music publishers con-
tributed to create and consolidate a local ver-
sion of the opera. This version, in other words,
did not result either from a historical process
that involved exclusively an individual singer
trying to adapt the score to her own abilities, or
from an attempt to render an Italian opera ac-
ceptable to a foreign audience. Rather, the in-
terlocking connections between Tadolini’s per-
formances, their textual evidence, and the criti-
cal response to them form a “web” that ac-
quires its cultural raison d’être within the lo-
cal musical life over a span of time that ex-
tends well beyond Tadolini’s career.
Substitutions, revisions, cuts, and replace-
ments in Italian opera have long been part of
the genre. Over the last few decades, scholars
have developed a growing interest in the con-
tingencies of specific local performing condi-
tions, determined by a network of economic
interests, competing artistic agencies, chang-
ing audience expectations, and variables of cen-
sorship. Ultimately, such renewed interest ques-
tioned not only the nature of an opera’s musi-
cal text but also the centrality of the composer
as the sole agent providing an opera with au-
thorial intention.7 The shifting focus from com-
posers to performers, and in particular to prima
donnas, was crucial for this change of perspec-
tive. Performers’ mediating position between
the composer and the audience made them a
creative force whose authority intersects, over-
laps, and even overcomes that of the composer,
as well as a powerful pole of discursive activ-
ity.8
7
These two points are discussed respectively in Philip
Gossett, “Edizioni critiche di musica dell’Ottocento,” in
Enciclopedia della musica, ed. Jean-Jacques Nattiez, in
collaboration with Margaret Bent, Rossana Dalmonte, and
Mario Baroni, 2: Il sapere musicale (Turin: Einaudi, 2002),
967–79; and in Roger Parker, Remaking the Song: Oper-
atic Visions and Revisions from Handel to Berio (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2006), 8 and 20–21.
8
Among the broad existing literature on the subject, see
John Rosselli, Singers of Italian Opera: The History of a
Profession (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992);
Mary Ann Smart, “Verdi Sings Erminia Frezzolini,” Verdi
Newsletter 24 (1997): 13–22; Susan Rutherford, The Prima
 In my case study I investigate the perform-
ing tradition generated by a celebrated prima
donna as a starting point for revisiting some
historiographical assumptions about the place
of Italian opera within early-nineteenth-cen-
tury Viennese cultural life, a time when the
trope designated the genre as a cultural other in
the local original tradition. At the time, critics
started to reassess the position of Italian opera
in relation to other facets of Viennese musical
life, and especially in relation to the aspira-
tions of German national movements. This
trope was fortified later in more nationalisti-
cally driven scholarship and still surfaces in
recent music histories of the city.9 In fact, Ital-
ian opera had been part of the Viennese musi-
cal landscape since the late seventeenth cen-
tury. The Viennese vicissitudes of L’elisir
d’amore testify to the vitality of the cultural
work Italian opera set in motion at the time,
even when the genre began to meet consider-
able resistance. By looking at the mutual influ-
ence between performances of the work, its
critical reception, and its subsequent dissemi-
nation, I examine Tadolini’s performances as
the intersecting site of a variety of historical
agents. The modifications that affected the op-
era, I propose, were more the result of adjust-
ments and negotiations between such agents
than of predeterminate choices by a powerful
prima donna. In the following pages, I will first
contextualize Tadolini’s performances within
the opera seasons at the Kärntnertortheater.
Then, after a brief vocal portrait of the singer, I
will discuss how the earliest performances of
L’elisir d’amore built Tadolini’s fame in Vienna,
constructed her identification with the role of
Adina, and eventually intersected with the later
Viennese performance tradition and reception
Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2006); Philip Gossett, Divas and Scholars:
Performing Italian Opera (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2006); Hilary Poriss, Changing the Score: Arias,
Prima Donnas, and the Authority of Performance (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
9
See, for instance, Theophil Antonicek, “Biedermeier und
Vormärz,” in Musikgeschichte Österreichs, ed. Rudolf
Flotzinger and Gernot Gruber, 2nd edn. (Vienna: Böhlau,
1995), 2:279–351, where Italian opera is mentioned only in
relation to the critical debates it ignited with the support-
ers of German opera (298–99).
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of both this work and other Donizetti comic CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
operas. Adina par
excellence
The Grisette’s Petticoat:
Tadolini in Vienna
The main opera house that staged Italian works
in Restoration Vienna, the Kärntnertortheater,
was owned by the Habsburg Court. Depending
on financial and political circumstances, the
theater was managed by either high state offi-
cials or private impresarios.10 During the first
half of the nineteenth century, Italian opera
performances were under the continuous sway
of changing attitudes in the management poli-
cies of the opera house. In 1806, at the height
of the conflict between the Habsburg Empire
and Napoleon, with much of Italy dominated
by the French troops and the imperial coffers
drained by military expenses, Emperor Francis
I dismissed the Italian opera company that had
been the backbone of the Viennese opera sea-
sons since the reign of his uncle, Joseph II. But
ten years later, when the Austrian sovereignty
of a considerable part of the Italian States was
restored, an Italian opera was chosen to cel-
ebrate the wedding of Francis and Caroline Au-
gusta of Bavaria: Gioachino Rossini’s Ciro in
Babilonia. In the wake of that event, the Ital-
ian impresario Antonio Cera and his company
were invited to Vienna. Their production of
Rossini’s Tancredi, premiered on 16 December
1816, scored an overwhelming success, and ini-
tiated what commentators have since then re-
ferred to as the “Rossini fever” (Rossini-
Taumel). The Viennese crave for Italian operas
reached its peak when Domenico Barbaja took
10
Before 1810, opera seasons subsidized by the court could
take place both at the Burgtheater and at the
Kärntnertortheater. In 1810 the function of the two court
theaters were clearly distinguished, with the Burgtheater
intended for spoken dramas in German, and the
Kärntnertortheater for opera and ballet. The
Kärntnertortheater maintained the privilege of Italian op-
era performances in the original language. The changing
management policies of the Kärntnertortheater after 1810
are briefly discussed in Michael Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper
von 1810 bis 1836: Das Kärnthnerthortheater als Hofoper
(Vienna: Verlag Der Apfel, 2007), 15–27, and in Michael
Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper von 1836 bis 1848: Die Ära
Balochino/Merelli (Vienna: Verlag Der Apfel, 2006), 11–
15.
 19 TH over the management of the Kärntnertortheater
CENTURY
MUSIC between 1822 and 1828, inviting Rossini him-
self to Vienna during his first year of tenure.11
The Rossini-Taumel encountered considerable
resistance, especially among artists, critics, and
intellectuals who demanded greater support
from the court to German opera.12 Barbaja
shrewdly capitalized on these conflicting atti-
tudes by subdividing the calendar of the
Kärntnertortheater into two distinct opera sea-
sons—one in which Italian operas were per-
formed in the original language, and the other
offering German operas, along with French and
Italian works in German translation. Italian
opera seasons under Barbaja had a variable du-
ration between three and six months.13 A stable
opera company performed during the German
season; for the Italian seasons, Barbaja invited
singers from the Italian theaters that he had
under control while also running the Kärnt-
nertortheater. During his first Italian season in
1822, for instance, he hired the stellar com-
11
The circumstances of Rossini’s journey to Vienna are
discussed in Michele Leigh Clark, The Performances and
Reception of Rossini’s Operas in Vienna, 1822–1825 (PhD
diss., University of North Carolina, 2005), 135–38. She
also describes in detail the reworkings Rossini made to his
operas at pp. 154–207. A more succint account of Rossini’s
stay in Vienna is Leopold Kantner and Michael Jahn, “Il
viaggio a Vienna,” in Rossini 1792–1992: Mostra storico-
documentaria, ed. Mauro Bucarelli (Perugia: Electa, 1992),
197–204.
12
During the Napoleonic Wars, the patriotic cultural policy
promoted by the Habsburg Court provided the ideological
background for the German opera supporters: see Andreas
Mayer, “‘Gluck’sches Gestöhn’ und ‘welsches Larifari’:
Anna Milder, Schubert und der deutsch-italienische
Opernkrieg,” Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 52/3 (1995):
171–204; and John Warrack, German Opera: From the Be-
ginnings to Wagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2001), 276–77.
13
Barbaja’s contract with the court stipulated that he regu-
larly put on German operas and ballets, and left him free to
produce Italian operas at his will; according to a clause,
however, the imperial endowment to the impresario would
be reduced if Italian operas were given for less than three
months a year. See Paologiovanni Maione and Francesca
Seller, “Da Napoli a Vienna: Barbaja e l’esportazione di un
nuovo modello impresariale,” Römische historische
Mitteilungen 44 (2002): 493–508: 496. Between the expira-
tion of Barbaja’s first contract on 31 March 1825 and its
renewal a year later, the Kärntnertortheater was first leased
for a few weeks to Karl Friedrich Hensler, owner of one of
the Viennese suburban playhouses, the Theater in der
Josephstadt, then stayed closed for most of the time. During
this period, Hensler staged no operas, but only spoken dra-
mas. See Clark, The Performances and Reception, 125–29.
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pany from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples,
which included Isabella Colbran, Andrea Noz-
zari, Giovanni David, and Antonio Ambrogi.
Barbaja could maintain this system mostly
because of his unparalleled Italian business net-
work.14 After his departure from Vienna in 1828,
the ballet composer and aristocrat Count Rob-
ert Wenzel von Gallenberg took the lease of the
Kärntnertortheater, but Gallenberg proved in-
capable of sustaining a similar financial burden
and went bankrupt by May 1830.15 His succes-
sor, the French dancer Louis Duport, refrained
from risking his capital on a similar venture.
He regularly presented Italian works in Ger-
man translation, but, until the end of his lease
in March 1836, Duport organized only a single
Italian opera season in spring 1835 and entrusted
the task to the hands of another powerful Ital-
ian impresario, Bartolomeo Merelli. Merelli’s
season took place from April to June and intro-
duced the local audience to Italian operas that
became staples of the repertory of the Kärnt-
nertortheater, including Bellini’s La sonnam-
bula and Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. In 1836
Merelli and his business partner Carlo
Balocchino took over the management of the
theater until the outbreak of the revolution in
March 1848. They adopted Barbaja’s model and
standardized the subdivision of the calendar
into a three-month Italian opera season and a
nine-month German one.16 Under their tenure,
Italian singers once again became a regular part
of Viennese operatic life.
Eugenia Tadolini first arrived in Vienna in
1835 as a member of Merelli’s company, mak-
ing her debut on 9 April as Adina on the occa-
sion of the Viennese premiere of L’elisir
d’amore. During her first season at the
Kärntnertortheater, she also sang the leading
female roles of four other operas: Bellini’s La
14
The reference work on this topic remains John Rosselli,
The Opera Industry in Italy from Cimarosa to Verdi: The
Role of the Impresario (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1984). See also Maione and Seller, “Da Napoli a
Vienna,” 494 and 498–500.
15
Gallenberg managed the Kärntnertortheater from 6 Feb-
ruary 1829 to 2 May 1830. During this period, he brought
to Vienna international stars such as Giuditta Pasta and
Giovanni Battista Rubini. See Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper
von 1810 bis 1836, 25.
16
See Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper von 1836 bis 1848, 17–20.
sonnambula and La straniera, Luigi Ricci’s
Un’avventura di Scaramuccia, and Donizetti’s
Il furioso all’isola di San Domingo. The di-
verse characteristics of these roles point to one
of the features of Tadolini’s career: her versatil-
ity. Indeed, since her professional debut she
had appeared regularly in serious, comic, and
mezzo carattere roles.17 The operas she sang in
Vienna confirmed her eclecticism: in the fol-
lowing twelve years, she took part in eight
other Italian opera seasons, singing such dis-
similar roles as Imogene in Bellini’s Il pirata,
Elvira in I puritani and in Verdi’s Ernani,
Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello, Norina in
Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, and the title roles of
his Anna Bolena, Linda di Chamounix, and
Maria di Rohan, and of Matteo Salvi’s La
Primadonna.18
Numerous accounts of the period unani-
mously praise the beauty of Tadolini’s vocal
timbre, its homogeneity, her remarkable range,
and impeccable technique. A biographical ar-
ticle from Il Figaro, issued in 1847, reports a
detailed vocal profile of the prima donna:
Eugenia Tadolini possesses the most beautiful voice
that has been devoted to Italian singing in many
long years. We have heard others that perhaps were
brighter and more effective, either in the high or in
the low register; but none, including Malibran’s own,
has that perfect balance of strength and volume that
we can find in all of Tadolini’s notes, which encom-
17
Tadolini was born in Forlì in 1808 as Eugenia Savorani.
In 1828 she married Giovanni Tadolini, her voice teacher,
as well as a composer and pianist. After her professional
debut in Parma in 1829, she followed her husband in Paris,
where Rossini had hired him as musical director of the
Théâtre-Italien. There she sang Rossini’s Ricciardo e
Zoraide, Amenaide in Tancredi, Giovanna Seymour in
Donizetti’s Anna Bolena (1831), Zerlina in Don Giovanni,
and her first Amina in Bellini’s La sonnambula (1832).
After separating from her husband in 1833, she returned to
Italy. Between 1835 and 1838, she moved back and forth
between the Kärntnertortheater and several Italian opera
houses (La Scala, La Fenice, La Pergola in Florence). She
returned to Vienna regularly between 1841 and 1847. In
1842 she became closely associated with the Teatro San
Carlo in Naples, where she took her final bow in 1851.
After Garibaldi entered in Naples in 1860, Tadolini moved
to Paris, where she died in 1872.
18
A full list of Tadolini’s opera performances in Vienna is
provided in Michael Jahn, Di tanti palpiti . . . Italiener in
Wien (Vienna: Der Apfel, 2006), 222. After the 1835 Italian
opera season, Tadolini performed at the Kärntnertortheater
in 1836, 1838, 1841, 1842, 1843, 1844, 1846, and 1847.
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pass no less than two and a half octaves. To provide CLAUDIO
an example of the material beauty of this voice, we VELLUTINI
Adina par
would say that it can be imagined as a perfectly excellence
constructed cone, which presents no uneveness, no
slight imperfection from the base to the vertex. This
voice features also an extraordinary precision and
purity in the execution of scales, both ascending and
descending, as well as an astonishing confidence in
facing leaps between the most remote notes, so that,
with extreme ease, without hint of an error, and
with the most powerful effect, it passes between any
sound whatsoever between low A and high E.19
The image of the cone describes effectively the
extent to which Tadolini’s vocal training was
rooted in the tradition of Italian bel canto. Ac-
cording to Manuel García’s singing treatise, a
teacher is supposed to train a student starting
from the lower (“chest”) register and to extend
it gradually to the higher pitches, paying atten-
tion that the vocal registers were smoothly
joined together.20 Such a training helped sing-
ers with high voices produce considerably so-
norous low notes. This is probably what al-
lowed Tadolini to sing a repertory that included
roles that today would be sung either by colora-
tura sopranos (Norina in Don Pasquale) or by
mezzos (Giovanna Seymour in Anna Bolena,
or the title role in Donizetti’s La favorita).
Despite such remarkable flexibility and an
undisputed reputation throughout her career,
today Tadolini is mostly remembered for Verdi’s
claim that her voice was “far too good” to sing
19
“Eugenia Tadolini possiede la voce più bella che da lunghi
e lunghi anni siasi piegata alle modulazioni del canto
italiano. Altre ne abbiamo intese forse più sfolgoranti ed
efficaci, quale negli acuti e quale nei bassi; ma nessuna,
non esclusa quella della stessa Malibran, che avesse quella
perfetta eguaglianza di forza e volume che si riscontrano
in tutte le note della Tadolini per una estensione non
minore di due ottave e mezzo. Se si potesse dare un esempio
materiale della bellezza di questa voce diremmo ch’ella
presenta un cono di perfettissima costruzione, e che dalla
base al vertice non offre la più lieve asperità, la più piccola
mancanza. Straordinaria inoltre in questa voce è la purezza
e precisione delle sue scale tanto ascendenti che dis-
cendenti, non meno della sua sicurezza nei passaggi dai
suoni fra loro più disparati, sì che vi unisce con tutta
facilità, senz’ombra di fallo e col più potente effetto quelle
note che meglio vi aggrada di scegliere dal La profondo al
Mi sopracuto.” Il Figaro, 10 March 1847.
20
See Manuel García, Traité complet de l’art du chant en
deux parties: Trattato completo dell’arte del canto in due
parti, ed. Stefano Ginevra (Turin: Giancarlo Zedde, 2001),
19–20 (original edn.: Paris, 1847).
 19 TH Lady Macbeth.21 This opinion reflects a shift in
CENTURY
MUSIC vocal aesthetics in mid-nineteenth-century
Italy, a shift that valued energy and passion
over virtuosity and the sheer beauty of vocal
sounds. This shift gradually overshadowed the
florid singing style in which Tadolini excelled,
as suggested by a retrospective discussion of
the first Milanese production of Verdi’s Attila
at La Scala, in which the prima donna sang the
role of Odabella. Here the critic Alberto
Mazzucato states:
I am of the opinion that for the music of Verdi a
singer with instinct is worth more than a schooled
one; an instinct, I want to point out, however, that
tends to match the special gifts that are the life of
Verdi’s music: an instinct that is similarly impetu-
ous, fiery, and incisive. For the music of Verdi . . . a
singer with great breath control, great agility, great
in the messa di voce, in short, great in everything
that constitutes difficulty of execution, is not suffi-
cient: one wants instead a passionate, vigorous, and
brilliant spirit; in a word, one wants someone known
as a cantante di slancio.22
As a consequence of this transformation in taste,
after her retirement the prima donna was at
21
In a letter to librettist Salvatore Cammarano dated 23
November 1848, the composer complained: “Tadolini’s
qualities are far too good for that role! This may perhaps
seem absurd to you!! . . . Tadolini has a beautiful and
attractive appearance; and I would like Lady Macbeth to
be ugly and evil. Tadolini sings to perfection; and I would
like the Lady not to sing. Tadolini has a stupendous voice,
clear, limpid, powerful; and I would like the Lady to have
a harsh, stifled, and hollow voice. Tadolini’s voice has an
angelical quality; I would like the Lady to have a diaboli-
cal quality,” see Verdi’s Macbeth: A Sourcebook, ed. David
Rosen and Andrew Porter (New York: Norton, 1984), 66–
67, where the letter is quoted in both Italian and transla-
tion.
22
“Porto opinione che per la musica di Verdi, più che il
cantante di scuola, valga quello di istinto; d’un istinto,
voglio però avvertire, che tenda sposarsi alla specialità
delle doti che son vita del canto di Verdi: istinto irrompente,
caldo, incisivo anch’esso:—per la musica di Verdi . . . un
cantante, grande nella sicurezza del fiato, grande nelle
agilità, grande nelle messe, grande insomma in tutto quello
che costituisce le difficoltà d’esecuzione, non vale a
sufficienza: vuolsi invece un’anima ardita, brillante,
vigorosa; vuolsi in una parola quello che appellasi cantante
di slancio.” Alberto Mazzucato, “Considerazioni
retrospettive,” Gazzetta Musicale di Milano 6/16 (18 April
1847), quoted and translated in Helen Greenwald, “Intro-
duction,” in her critical edition of Giuseppe Verdi, Attila,
The Works of Giuseppe Verdi I/9 (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press and Ricordi, 2012), xxvii.
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first respectfully remembered for her participa-
tion in premieres of operas that had enjoyed a
number of revivals (Donizetti’s Linda di
Chamounix and Maria di Rohan, Mercadante’s
Il bravo and Le due illustri rivali). But over
time, as most of these works became old-fash-
ioned and lost their place in the repertory,
Tadolini’s fame also faded. Tadolini was given
less and less space in dictionaries and in writ-
ings on nineteenth-century singers. While in
1860 Francesco Regli, who had heard her re-
peatedly in Italian opera houses, dedicated about
a page in his Dizionario biografico to the prima
donna, seventy years later Carlo Schmidl’s
Dizionario universale dei musicisti barely men-
tions her. Similarly, Gino Monaldi limits his
efforts to portray the singer by defining her as
an “exceptionally skilled performer” (esecutrice
di rara abilità ).23 Most of the information about
her career and vocal features, therefore, must
be drawn from contemporaneous reviews and
from a scant number of biographical publica-
tions.24 It is of particular significance that two
of the longest and most informative writings
were published in Vienna:25 they testify to the
23
See Francesco Regli, “Tadolini, Eugenia,” in his
Dizionario biografico dei più celebri poeti ed artisti
melodrammatici, tragici e comici, maestri, concertisti,
coreografi, mimi, ballerini, scenografi, giornalisti, impresari
ecc. ecc. (Turin: Durazzo, 1860), 517–18; Carlo Schmidl,
“Tadolini-Savorani, Eugenia,” in his Dizionario universale
dei musicisti (Milan: Sonzogno, 1929), 2:569; and Gino
Monaldi, Cantanti celebri (1829–1929) (Rome: Tiber, 1929),
24.
24
See the biographical sketch published in the collection
of encomiastic poems Plejade Artistica (Milan: I.R. Teatro
alla Scala, 1846–47), 13–15, and the article on Il Figaro, 10
March 1847. During the twentieth century two memorial
(and scarcely accurate) writings on Tadolini were published
in Forlì, her birthplace: Attilio Monti, Eugenia Savorani-
Tadolini. Cantante forlivese (Forlì: Stabilimento
Tipografico Romagnolo, 1922), and Fernando Battaglia,
“Eugenia Savorani Tadolini nel centenario della morte.
Appunti biografici,” Il Melozzo 5 (1972): 5–31. Battaglia
dedicates a chapter to Tadolini in his book L’arte del canto
in Romagna. I cantanti lirici romagnoli dell’Ottocento e
del Novecento (Bologna: Bongiovanni, 1979), 151–68, where
he quotes passages of several unpublished letters of the
singer. None of these writings, however, provide a com-
plete reconstruction of Tadolini’s career.
25
Both these writings are similar in kind to those men-
tioned previously. One is a biographical article published
in the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung on 7 September
1841. The other is the entry “Tadolini, Eugenia,” in
Constantin von Wurzbach, Biographisches Lexicon des
Kaiserthums Oesterreichs (Vienna: k. k. Hof- und Staats-
special consideration that the local audience
tributed to the soprano and provide us with a
first glimpse into the reception of her perfor-
mances.
In Vienna, Tadolini’s vocal skills were eulo-
gized in the same vein as in the article from Il
Figaro. In 1841 the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-
Zeitung praised “the exceptional range of this
voice, the beautiful vocalization, and exquisite
lightness and agility,”26 while, according to
Constantin von Wurzbach, her homogeneous
(gleichförmig) range extended as low as the G
below the middle C.27 However, both texts sug-
gest that the Viennese preferred Tadolini in
comic and pathetic roles rather than in tragic
ones. In Wurzbach’s words, “although she ex-
celled in all genres, she was especially in her
element in comic and semiserious operas.”28
The more detailed remarks in the Musik-
Zeitung highlight the extent to which Tadolini’s
figure and acting contributed to her success as
a singer:
Opera buffa or semiseria is the battlefield that
Eugenia set foot in and left victoriously; for her
incredibly agile singing makes the difficulties of these
parts sound like child’s play. But also her acting, her
gait, and her gestures appear as if made precisely for
these roles, and, if we may compare the large and the
small, we would like to say that, just as her voice is
more suitable for gentle, lively, ardent, in short bril-
liant parts than for serious, profoundly reflexive,
dramatic portrayals, so does her lovely figure look
much more delightful in a grisette’s petticoat than
in a lady’s full-trained gown.29
druckerei, 1881), 43:12–14. An additional article was pub-
lished on Der Wanderer on 5 April 1841, but it consti-
tuted the translation of a text issued in the Milanese jour-
nal Strenna musicale europea.
26
“Den außerordentlichen Umfang dieser Stimme, die
schöne Vocalisation und ungemeine Leichtigkeit und
Geläufigkeit.” Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung, 7 Sep-
tember 1841.
27
Wurzbach, “Tadolini,” 13.
28
“Obgleich in jedem Genre vorzüglich, war sie doch
besonders in der Opera buffa und semiseria an ihrem Platz.”
Wurzbach, “Tadolini,” 13.
29
“Die Opera buffa oder semiseria ist der Kampfplatz,
welchen Eugenia sieghaft beschritt und verließ; da ihre
ungemeine Behendigkeit im Gesange die sogenannten
Schwierigkeiten in derlei Parthien zu Spielereien macht.
Aber auch ihr Spiel, ihr Gang, ihre Gesticulation scheint
für solche Rollen wie geschaffen, und darf man Großes
mit Kleinem vergleichen, so möchten wir sagen, daß, wie
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Other Viennese critics shared the opinion CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
that Tadolini could meet the vocal challenges Adina par
of tragic roles without creating wholly con- excellence
vincing characters.30 In 1836, the year after her
debut at the Kärntnertortheater, she took part
in the local premiere of Donizetti’s Belisario in
the “dark” role of Antonina. The critic of the
Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung reacted to her per-
formance as follows: “it should be noticed that
in the most tragic affect, which here wavers
between desperation and madness, Tadolini
does not appear as captivating as in comic or in
semi-serious ones, where she almost finds her-
self without a rival.”31 A few years later, at the
ihre Stimme für weiche, lebhafte, feurige, kurz glänzende
Parthien befähigter ist als zu dem ernsten, tief durchdachten
dramatischen Vortrag, auch ihre liebliche Gestalt sich
reizender im Unterröckchen der Grisette als im
Schleppkleide der Dame ausnehme.” Allgemeine Wiener
Musik-Zeitung, 7 September 1841.
30
In Italy, librettist and critic Felice Romani anticipated
both the aforementioned reviewer’s and Verdi’s remarks
about the prima donna. Commenting on her performance
as Alaide in Bellini’s La straniera, he also focused on how
Tadolini’s physical and vocal features combined in her not
entirely convincing rendition of tragic roles: “ella ha troppe
grazie per Alaïde, troppa luce ne’ suoi begli occhi, troppi
vezzi nel suo sorriso per la misteriosa Straniera. La sua
voce volubile, soave, fiorita, è fatta per la gioia, per l’amore
che si può consolare, per afflizioni rasserenate dalla
speranza, non per gli strazi di un cuore in tempesta, non
pei delirii di un’anima angosciata, non per le grida della
disperazione” (she has too much grace for Alaide, too much
light in her beautiful eyes, too much charm in her smile
for the mysterious Stranger. Her flowing, sweet and bloomy
voice is made for joy, for comforting love, for afflictions
brightened with hope, not for the torments of a stormy
heart, not for the ravings of an anguished soul, not for
cries of desperation). Felice Romani, Miscellanee del
Cavaliere Felice Romani tratte dalla Gazzetta Piemontese
(Turin: Tipografia Favale, 1837), 407. Alberto Mazzucato
expressed similar remarks in his previously mentioned dis-
cussion of Verdi’s Attila. Even more critical was Fétis in
Paris. Writing about Tadolini’s early performances at the
Théâtre-Italien, he argued: “une vocalisation facile et
beaucoup de fini dans l’éxecution des fioritures étaient les
qualités de son talent, quand elle se fit entendre dans cette
ville; main on lui reprochait de la froideur et peu de
connaissance de la scène” (an easy vocalization and much
finesse in the execution of passagework were the qualities
of her talent when she was heard in this city; but she was
reproached for some coldness and little knowledge of act-
ing). See François-Joseph Fétis, “Tadolini (Eugénie),” in
his Biographie universelle des musiciens et bibliographie
générale de la musique (Brussels: Meline, Cans et
Compagnie, 1844), 8:318.
31
“[Es] ist zu erwägen, daß die Tadolini im höchsten
tragischen Affecte, der hier zwischen Verzweiflung und
Wahnsinn schwankt, nicht so hinreissend wirkt, als im
komischen und halbernsten, wo sie kaum eine Rivalin
finden dürfte.” Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung, 20 June 1836.
 19 TH very beginning of the 1842 Italian season, she
CENTURY
MUSIC sang at the Kärntnertortheater the title role of
Anna Bolena. Again, the reaction of the critics
was unanimous: Tadolini met the approval of
the audience because of her remarkable vocal
skills, but her characterization of the role was
not completely convincing.32 Donizetti him-
self, who had arrived in Vienna a few days
before the beginning of the season to work on
the production of his first Viennese opera, Linda
di Chamounix, summed up this situation in a
letter to Gaetano Cobianchi on 8 May 1842.
Announcing that Anna Bolena ended its run in
favor of a revival of Elisir, he wrote: “Here the
audience only wants Tadolini as a buffa. . . .
32
According to August Schmidt, “Sigra. Tadolini in der
Titelrolle bewährte ihren alten Ruf als kunstgewandte
Sängerinn’ welche, wenn sie auch den Character der
Königinn nicht psychologisch richtig auffaßte, auch in den
leidenschaftlichen Stellen mitunter die Gluth der
Empfindung vermissen ließ, doch dramatisches Talent
genug besitzt, um ihrer Darstellung Interesse zu verleihen”
(In the title role, Signora Tadolini proved her well-known
reputation as an artful singer; even if she did not quite
capture the character of the queen psychologically, or some-
times deprived passionate moments of the ardor of feeling,
she nonetheless possesses enough dramatic talent to lend
interest to her performance). Allgemeine Wiener Musik-
Zeitung, 14 April 1842. Heinrich Adami wrote in the
Allgemeine Theaterzeitung: “Mad. Tadolini sang die Anna
Bolena. Das Publikum empfing die liebenswürdige
Sängerin, an deren schönem Talente es sich so oft erfreut,
mit lautem, anhaltendem Beifalle. . . . Es find nicht jene
großen tragischen Affecte, jene scharfe Accente der
Leidenschaft, durch welche vornämlich eine Unger, durch
die Richtung ihres Talents und ihre Mittel hiezu
angewiesen, diese Rolle so interessant zu machen mußte,
während Mad. Tadolini, obgleich des Feuers nicht
ermangelnd, doch mehr die Gefühlsseite herausstellt, und
dem Charakter mehr eine passive Haltung gibt” (Madame
Tadolini sang Anna Bolena. The audience, always rejoic-
ing at her great talent, welcomed the beloved singer with
loud, persistent applause. . . . One could not find those
grandiose, tragic feelings, those sharp accents of pain
through which Unger, for instance, led by her talent and
her own means, knew how to make this role so interest-
ing; Madame Tadolini, on the other hand, albeit not de-
prived of fire, brings out more the sentimental side [of the
role], and gives the character a passive demeanor) (8 April
1842). Carolina Unger had sung the role of the Boleyn
queen during the previous revival of the opera at the
Kärntnertortheater in 1839. In the words of the reviewer
of Der Humorist (who signed his article only with an ‘H.’),
“[Tadolini] wird überall Punkte finden, wo sie die talentirte
Künstlerin geltend machen kann. Allein Partien, wie diese
Anna, entspricht die Richtung ihrer Gesangsthätigkeit nicht
vollkommen” (Tadolini will always find spots where she
will show off as a talented artist. Yet, roles such as Anna
do not fully conform to the direction of her singing) (8
April 1842).
10
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Therefore Elisir ah! Here Tadolini is finally
well placed.”33 Donizetti likely suspected that
this claim was a bit ungenerous: indeed,
Tadolini was to triumph in both operas he wrote
for the Kärntnertortheater, the semiseria Linda
di Chamounix and the tragic Maria di Rohan
(not to mention the Viennese premiere of
Ernani, pace Verdi’s irritation).34 His words,
however, capture a constant tendency in the
critical reception of Tadolini’s performances
emphasizing her superiority in brilliant and
naïve parts. For better or worse, the role of
Adina had become a benchmark for any other
of her achievements: a critic of Der Sammler,
for instance, once lamented her participation
in the production of Rossini’s Mosé in 1836,
remarking that “for the audience, everything
that Tadolini sings is an Elisir d’amore.”35 But
while Donizetti’s comic work contributed in
pigeonholing the soprano, it was also with the
role of Adina—the young, rich, and frivolous
female protagonist of the opera—that Tadolini
perfectly fulfilled the expectations of Viennese
spectators and critics. To such an extent they
found it fitting Tadolini’s skills like a glove
that some of her interpretative choices marked
the local performing tradition of the opera.
KEINE RIVALINN ZU FÜRCHTEN:
Tadolini as Adina
L’elisir d’amore was one of the operas that
decisively contributed to the establishment of
Donizetti’s fame in Vienna prior to the
composer’s arrival in the city in 1842. Its local
premiere at the Kärntnertortheater on 9 April
1835 met such an extraordinary success that
Merelli and Balocchino revived it every year
33
“La Tadolini non si vuol dal pubblico che come buffa. . .
. Allora Elisir ah! Voilà enfin la Tadolini bien placé [sic].”
Guido Zavadini, Donizetti: Vita—Musiche—Epistolario
(Bergamo: Istituto d’Arti Grafiche, 1948), 594 (letter 410).
34
As a matter of fact, a couple of weeks after the letter
mentioned above, as Donizetti informed Ricordi of the
overwhelming success of Linda di Chamounix, he wrote
about Tadolini: “È cantante, è attrice, è tutto, e figurati
che la si applaude al solo comparire al 3° atto” (She is a
singer, she is an actress, she is everything; imagine how
she is applauded as soon as she comes on stage in the third
act). Zavadini, Donizetti, 605, letter 418.
35
“Alles was die Tadolini singt, ist ein Elisir d’amore für
das Publicum.” Der Sammler, 14 April 1836.
until 1848 within either the Italian or the Ger-
man season.36 In the Habsburg capital, and just
about everywhere else, Elisir became one of the
works by Donizetti that enjoyed an uninter-
rupted theatrical life. After the first Viennese
performance, however, the opera did not con-
quer every critic. A review published in Der
Wanderer, for instance, judged the second act
as lacking the sparkling humor of the first one.37
To most operagoers today, this claim might
sound unfair. (The second-act duet between
Adina and Dulcamara, for example, is no less
brilliant than the first act.) Nonetheless, this
review shows that, at least initially, some
Viennese critics were perplexed about what has
come to be considered one of Donizetti’s
achievements with this opera: his attempt to
compensate for and soften the exuberant tone
of opera buffa with a touch of pathos epito-
mized by the role of Nemorino.38 And indeed, if
36
See Franz Hadamowsky, Die Wiener Hoftheater
(Staatstheater): Ein Verzeichnis der aufgeführten und
eingerichten Stücke mit Bestand verzeichnis und
Aufführungsdaten (Vienna: Österreichische National
Bilbiothek—Hollinek, 1975), 2:258–59; and Michael Jahn,
“Donizettis Opern in Wien: Von 1827 bis zum Ende des
zweiten Weltkriegs,” in Donizetti und seine Zeit in Wien,
ed. Michael Jahn (Vienna: Verlag Der Apfel, 2010), 113–
238: 231–33. By 1848 L’elisir d’amore was the most repre-
sented Donizetti opera at the Kärntnertortheater, with a
total of 104 performances (Jahn counts twenty-one perfor-
mances in 1835 and eighty-three between 1836 and 1848;
see his statistics in “Donizettis Opern,” 231, and in Die
Wiener Hofoper von 1836 bis 1848, 443). Five Donizetti
operas were performed in Vienna before Elisir: L’ajo
nell’imbarazzo (Kärntnertortheater, 1827), Otto mesi in
due ore (Kärntnertortheater, 1832, in German as Acht
Monate in Zwei Stunden, oder Die Macht der kindlichen
Liebe), L’esule di Roma (Theater in der Josephstadt, 1832,
in German as Der Verwiesene aus Rom), Anna Bolena
(Viennese premiere in German as Anna Boleyn at the The-
ater in der Josephstadt in 1833), and Il furioso all’isola di
San Domingo (Kärntnertortheater, 1835, in German as Der
Wahnsinnige auf der Insel San Domingo). Only the last
two operas enjoyed several revivals both in Italian and in
German translation: see Jahn, “Donizettis Opern,” 224.
37
“Im ersten Acte ist noch einige Frische und Humor; aber
Donizetti scheint seinen Witz in diesem erschöpft zu
haben; wenigstens wurden wir im zweiten nichts mehr
davon gewahr” (The first act shows signs of freshness and
humor; yet Donizetti seems to have run out of wit in that
act. At least, we did not notice any in the second act). Der
Wanderer, review published anonymously on 11 April 1835.
It is possible that the author was the editor of the journal,
the aristocrat Josef Ritter von Seyfried.
38
For the critical reception of Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore
after its first performance in 1832, see Annalisa Bini and
Jeremy Commons, Le prime rappresentazioni delle opere
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there is a piece that opera buffs all over the CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
world recognize as emblematic of the work, it Adina par
is Nemorino’s second-act romanza “Una furtiva excellence
lagrima,” one of the best-known tenor arias of
the whole operatic repertory. In Vienna, how-
ever, the early critical reception of the opera
took another course, focusing instead on the
role of Adina and on Tadolini’s rendition of it.
The first Viennese performance of Elisir was
a double debut for Tadolini. It was both her
first performance at the Kärntnertortheater and
the first time that she sang the opera. Neither
she nor impresario Merelli could have hoped
for a better outcome as her Adina was acknowl-
edged as the main attraction of the production.
In the aforementioned review from Der Wan-
derer—a newspaper particularly focused on sing-
ers’ performances—the critic applauded her as
“the star of the evening,” and a few weeks later
the same journal printed another article prais-
ing her: “Signora Tadolini enchants eyes and
ears; her enjoyable, pleasant acting, as well as
her perfect singing stirred the audience to wild
applause; every time, the second-act Barcarola,
‘Io son ricco, tu sei bella!’ has to be repeated as
a result of the graceful performance; she also
sings the duet with Herr Frezzolini in an equally
excellent way.”39 According to this critic, it
was as a singing actress that Tadolini delivered
a unique rendition of Adina’s role. At the re-
vival of the opera the following year, another
review in Der Wanderer was mostly dedicated
to Tadolini. One passage is emblematic of the
sensational reputation she had already gained
in Vienna: “In the annals of opera in Vienna
one can hardly find recorded such an extraordi-
nary number of curtain calls; with the excep-
di Donizetti nella stampa coeva (Rome: Accademia di
Santa Cecilia—Skira, 1997), 300–14. Francesco Izzo
contextualizes the innovative dramatic function of the pa-
thetic role of Nemorino in his Laughter between Two
Revolutions: Opera buffa in Italy, 1831–1848 (Rochester:
University of Rochester Press, 2013), 30–39.
39
“Signora Tadolini entzückt Aug’ und Ohr; ihr
angenehmes, gefälliges Spiel, sowie ihr vollendeter Gesang
inflammiren das Publikum zum stürmischen Applaus, die
Barcarole im zweiten Act: Io son ricco, Tu sei bella! wird
jedesmal, wegen der Lieblichkeit des Vortrages, zu
wiederholen verlangt; ebenso ausgezeichnet singt sie das
Duett mit Hrn. Frezzolini.” Der Wanderer, 2 May 1835.
Bass Giuseppe Frezzolini was the interpreter of the role of
Dulcamara. On this newspaper, see Dauth, Verdis Opern,
23.
11
 19 TH tion of Madame Tadolini, our audience wel-
CENTURY
MUSIC comed only Madame Schröder-Devrient so over-
whelmingly.”40 Only one year after her debut
at the Kärntnertortheater, then, one of the most
severe journals included the Italian prima donna
among the most beloved singers in Vienna, and
equated her to a veritable giant of the German-
speaking operatic scene, Wilhelmine Schröder-
Devrient—another singing actress whose artis-
tic features were nonetheless very different from
Tadolini’s.41
Merelli and Balocchino capitalized on her
immediate popularity. During their eleven Ital-
ian seasons at the Kärntnertortheater, they did
not cast any other singer as Adina in Elisir.42
Over the course of eight of those seasons,
Tadolini sang the opera for a total of fifty-three
complete performances, making her name
closely associated with its leading female char-
acter. This became evident once the opera also
entered the repertory of the German company
of the Kärntnertortheater. On 2 December 1837,
the opera was performed for the first time in
German translation with soprano Jenny Lutzer
in the leading female role.43 Viennese critics
40
“In der Annalen der Wiener Oper werden sie solche
Quantitäten des Hervorrufens wohl selten aufgezeichnet
finden, nur Mad. Schröder-Devrient hat sie noch ausser
Mad. Tadolini von unsern [sic] Publikum in solch
reichlichem Maße empfangen.” Der Wanderer, 19 April
1836.
41
Schröder-Devrient was described as a singer of great tem-
perament, but technically uneven. For a thorough account
of her stage personality, see Stephen Meyer, “‘Das wilde
Herz’: Interpreting Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient,” Op-
era Quarterly 14/2 (1997): 23–40.
42
In a letter dated 29 May 1844, Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani
listed the opera to Balocchino among other titles that she
could potentially perform in Vienna during the 1845 Ital-
ian season. Tacchinardi-Persiani’s letter is now preserved
in Vienna, Stadtbibliothek, Handschriftensammlung, H.I.N.
10283. Tadolini did not sing at the Kärntnertortheater in
1845 and, sure enough, Elisir was not given in Italian.
43
There is little information about Prague-born soprano
Jenny Lutzer (1816–77). A succint profile of the singer is
provided in Jahn, Die Wiener Hofoper von 1836 bis 1848,
57–58. A more extensive account can be read in Richard
Wallaschek, Das k. k. Hofoperntheater, Die Theater Wiens
4 (Vienna: Gesellschaft für Vervielfältigende Kunst, 1909),
136. Lutzer studied with Giuseppe Ciccimarra and made
her professional debut in Prague in 1832, at age sixteen.
She sang for the first time at the Kärntnertortheater in
1833, and she came back during the 1836–37 and 1837–38
German opera seasons. As in Tadolini’s case, Lutzer’s rep-
ertory included as diverse roles as Norma and Rossini’s
Desdemona, although her most successful roles were Adina,
Elvira in I puritani, and Marie in La fille du régiment (all
12
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drew intriguing comparisons between her and
Tadolini. Heinrich Adami claimed that they
were equally talented representatives of dis-
tinct “national” singing schools, but passingly
hinted at Tadolini’s preeminence by virtue of
her “superior liveliness and agility that the
warmer blood of the South brings along.”44 In
1841 August Schmidt compared the two sing-
ers in the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung.
While pointing out that Lutzer’s rendition was
perhaps more polished in purely vocal terms,45
he remarked in two different passages of the
same review that Tadolini surpassed her Ger-
man-speaking colleague in the overall rendi-
tion of the character: “Tadolini’s interpreta-
tion is so consistently nuanced, so gracefully
delivered that in this role she does not need to
fear any rival whatsoever. . . . In her overall
performance there is such a pleasant ease, some-
thing utterly satisfactory, that one can explain
the predilection of the audience for her signa-
ture role.”46 According to Schmidt, Tadolini’s
superiority transcended the details of her vocal
execution and concerned her performance as a
whole; it was a “something” that no word could
capture or define. But it was this very ineffabil-
ity, the impossibility of giving a specific name
to what exactly made her Adina unique, that
generated satisfaction in the listener and ex-
cited the enthusiasm of the audience. Thus, in
Vienna no other singer could have had a more
profound impact than Tadolini on the ways in
which Donizetti’s opera was performed, heard
sung in German). She also appeared in several French grand-
opéras and opéras-comiques.
44
“Größere Lebhaftigkeit und Beweglichkeit . . . , welche
das wärmere Blut des Südens mit sich bringt.” Allgemeine
Theaterzeitung, 4 December 1837.
45
“Es ist gar nicht zu läugnen, daß die Lutzer diese Rolle
an gewißen Stellen weit beßer gesungen hat, daß Mad.
Tadolini durch ihr allzu leises sotto voce hie und da dem
Effecte bedeutenden Eintrag thut” (One cannot deny that,
at certain moments, Lutzer sang this role far better, and
that occasionally Madame Tadolini damaged the effect with
her far too quiet sotto voce). Allgemeine Wiener Musik-
Zeitung, 6 May 1841.
46
“Die Leistung der Tadolini ist durchgängig so trefflich
nuancirt, so liebenswürdig durchgeführt, daß sie in dieser
Parthie durchaus keine Rivalinn zu fürchten hat . . . es
liegt jedoch in der Gesammtleistung [der Tadolini] eine so
wohlthuende Behaglichkeit, ein so durchweg befriedigendes
Etwas, daß man sich daraus die Vorliebe des Publicums
für diese ihre Glanzrolle erklären kann.” Ibid., 6 May 1841.
and discussed. The “ease” resulting from her
familiarity with the role paved the way to the
spectators’ familiarity with her interpretation.
Because Tadolini lived before the era of re-
cordings, the ways in which she enchanted the
eyes of her contemporaries and the acoustic
materiality of her voice are lost to us. Nonethe-
less, written traces of her performances survive
in not only the words of the critics but also the
musical notation. Although these notational
traces cannot substitute for Tadolini’s perfor-
mances, they are nonetheless key to under-
standing the historical process through which
a Viennese performing tradition associated with
her came into being.
An Aria Embellished
After the successful outcome of the 1835 pro-
duction of Elisir at the Kärntnertortheater, the
opera and the prima donna’s performance stirred
the interest of a local music publisher, Pietro
Mechetti. A few weeks after the end of the
Italian season, Mechetti issued Adina’s second-
act aria, “Prendi per me sei libero,” as part of
the series L’aurora di Italia e di Germania—a
publishing venture targeted specifically at
Viennese purchasers of sheet music. The series
consisted of the most successful operatic pieces
performed at the Kärntnertortheater. In most
cases, the title of each piece includes the name
of the singer (or the singers) who performed it
at the court opera house with particular suc-
cess. A close look at publication dates of these
pieces and at the local operatic schedules re-
veals a striking correspondence between per-
formances and the release of Mechetti’s fas-
cicles, which regularly followed the positive
outcome of a production.47 The publication of
Adina’s aria provides a particularly telling clue
that a major attraction of the Viennese pre-
miere of Elisir was Tadolini’s performance: not
only did Mechetti publish Donizetti’s original
melodic line, but he also introduced a wealth
47
Alexander Weinmann, Verlagverzeichnis Pietro Mechetti
quondam Carlo (Vienna: Universal, 1966), usefully reports
dates of publication for many Mechetti prints, drawing
them from advertisements published in the Wiener Zeitung:
see Clark, The Performances and Reception, 103–04.
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of vocal embellishments attributed to the Ital- CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
ian soprano as alternative readings.48 Adina par
At the time, the ability to embellish a melody excellence
with ornaments was an essential requirement
for a singer who aspired to embark on a major
career. García, for instance, deemed the prin-
ciple of variation as a cornerstone of the perfor-
mance practice of the period, adding that the
florid elaboration of a melodic line was crucial
for an appropriate characterization of the piece.49
Tadolini was raised in that tradition, and her
ornaments surely contributed to the charm and
gracefulness of her interpretation of Adina;
Mechetti’s print aimed to provide a written
trace of it. The publication was likely targeted
on dilettanti and regulars of the Kärntnertor-
theater who, after hearing Tadolini sing the
piece, might have enjoyed reproducing her ren-
dition in their parlors. The print thus provided
them with a substitute for the aural thrill of
the direct experience of her voice—a substitute
that reinvigorated and perpetuated the memory
of Tadolini’s performance from one night to
the other, and even from one season to the
next.
Mechetti published an abridged version of
the aria. The original follows a standard three-
movement pattern (cantabile–tempo di mezzo
–cabaletta) preceded by a recitative. The pub-
lisher omitted the opening recitative, a major
portion of the tempo di mezzo, and most of the
coda of the cabaletta. The cuts reduced Nemo-
rino’s part as much as possible: the tempo di
mezzo omits the entire confrontation between
Adina and him. In the original version Adina
first informs him that she has paid sergeant
Belcore to free Nemorino from his recruitement
as a soldier, but still denies her love for him. As
she is about to leave, Nemorino hands the can-
celled enlistment papers back to her, adding
that he would rather die as a soldier than suffer
Adina’s indifference for his love. At this point—
and this is the only the portion of the tempo di
mezzo that survives in the Viennese print—
48
ARIA / ( Prendi , per me sei libero ) * ( Nimm hier ,
nichts bindet dich an mich ) / nell’ Opera : L’ ELISIR D’
AMORE , / del Maestro GAETANO DONIZETTI, / con
Abbellimenti della Sigra Tadolini. Plate number: 2616.
49
See García, Traité, 109–11.
13
 19 TH Adina finally admits her true feelings for
CENTURY
MUSIC Nemorino.
Although Tadolini may have ornamented the
fermatas of this surviving passage, Mechetti’s
print provides the embellishments for only the
two lyrical sections of the aria, the slow
cantabile “Prendi, per me sei libero,” and the
virtuosic cabaletta “Il mio rigor dimentica.”50
In the cantabile, the ornaments are relatively
discreet, mostly modifying extant flourishes of
the original vocal line (ex. 1).51 Occasionally, as
in m. 19, the alternative line even seems to
simplify Donizetti’s own writing. Greater free-
dom is used on fermatas on mm. 10, 29, and
the penultimate measure of the example, but
only because here Donizetti did not fully write
out a cadenza. When the composer did so, the
original reading is maintained. The alterations
in the cabaletta in Mechetti’s print are much
more extensive, as they modify both statements
of the original melody rather than only the
repetition (ex. 2).52 From the beginning, the trip-
lets of Donizetti’s pattern are substituted with
groups of four sixteenth notes; only the third
measure of the first statement appears to func-
tion as a reminder of the original rhythmic
figuration. The two ornamented versions, how-
ever, share part of the musical material (ex. 2
50
Singers could modify any section of a musical number in
different ways and by diverse amounts. Fermatas that closed
recitatives or tempi di mezzo were usual spots for impro-
visation: see Will Crutchfield, “Voices,” in Performance
Practice: Music after 1600, ed. Howard Mayer Brown and
Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 1989), 424–58, 429ff.
51
This and the following musical examples reproduce only
the vocal lines of Mechetti’s print. All measure numbers
refer to the musical examples, not to the original print. In
transcribing the cantabile, I emended the musical reading
in m. 20 (where Mechetti prints erroneously a dotted eighth
note followed by a sixteenth note as the second and third
pitches of the measure), and in m. 29, where I omitted the
augmentation dot after the second pitch of the ornamented
line. Other smaller adjustments involved the spelling of
words, the text underlay, and punctuation.
52
In this example, I omit the transcription of the coda,
which presents no ornaments. Since, as it was customary,
the two statements of the cabaletta are identical, here I
did not include the original repetition. It is possible that
the alternative version published by Mechetti consisted in
two different sets of ornaments for the repetition only.
The publisher might have chosen this mise-en-page, with
the first statement of the cabaletta also presenting an al-
ternative vocal line, to avoid an excessive accumulation of
staves in the second section.
14
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shows the divergencies between them). The
sixteen measures of each statement can be sub-
divided into four four-measure phrases, the sec-
ond of which is a modified version of the first
one. (The result is an a a' b c pattern—a variant
of the so-called lyric prototype that Donizetti
often employs in place of the more typical a a'
b a'' version.) In the two embellished versions
the first and fourth phrases are only partially
altered, the second one is completely modified,
and the third is left untouched.
A comparison between the virtuosic elabo-
ration of both sections of the aria with descrip-
tions of Tadolini’s vocal skills drawn from ac-
counts of the period (for instance, the above-
quoted passage from Il Figaro) suggests that the
flourishes and ornaments added in Mechetti’s
print reflect the prima donna’s strong points:
remarkably wide range, security in the perfor-
mance of wide leaps, perfect trills, and precise
execution of scalar passages. Mechetti’s publi-
cation, therefore, provided a tangible and repro-
ducible vehicle through which Tadolini’s per-
formance could have taken root in the memory
of Viennese audience not only aurally but also
in notated form. These ornaments spread from
this print into other local sources, marking one
of the ways in which the performances of the
prima donna conditioned the fortune of
Donizetti’s opera over the years.
In 1844 Mechetti released the first complete
bilingual vocal score of the opera.53 Again, the
score presents both the original melodic line of
Adina’s solo number and an alternative variant
with Tadolini’s ornaments. Since the complete
score is in upright format whereas the 1835
print of Donizetti’s aria was in oblong format,
Mechetti was unable to use the same plates;
yet, clearly the latter served as copy-text of the
former, even though the publisher now omit-
ted the elaborate heading with its prominent
53
DER LIEBESTRANK. / L’ELISIRE D’AMORE. / Komische
Oper in zwei Acten./ Musik von / C. DONIZETTI, / kais.
königl. Kammerkapellmeister und Hofcom- / positeur. /
[a list of the opera numbers follows] / Vollständiger
Clavierauszug mit italienischem und deutschem Texte. /
Preis complet Fl.9. C.M. / Einzig rechtmässige Ausgabe
für Deutschland. / Eigenthum der Verleger: Eingetragen in
das Vereins-Archiv / WIEN / bei Pietro Mechetti qm Carlo
/ kais. königl. Hof- Kunst- und Musikalienhandlung. /
Mailand, bei J. Ricordi. Plate numbers 3831–3856.
 !
Tadolini
!" . !$ # - ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ♮! ♭! ! !' ( CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
Adina par
re - sta nel suol na - ti - o,
excellence

2 ! ,
( * !$ - !" !" !" . !$ # - ! !# ! !#
Donizetti
)♭4* !' !" + '! # / !$ !" ( ' !' ! !' (
Pren - di, pren - di, per me sei li - be - ro, re - sta nel suol na - ti - o,

,!" ! ! ! ♯! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ,]
!" (
[
!!!
! !'
T.

dì, re - sta.
, 2
!$ # - 2!" !" 2 ♮! ♯! ! !" . !$ # - 2! # ! !$ # - !" !" ,
!" !" (
7

D.
)♭ !# 1
non v’ha de stin si ri - o, che non si can - gi un dì, re - sta.

/♮
!" . !$ # - !" !" !" # !$ !" ( ! ! !$ !$ ! ! ! ( ! ♭! ! ! ♭! ♭! ,! ♮!
$ !$ ! # / ! !"
13

D.
)♭
Qui do - ve tut - ti t’a - ma no, sag - gio, a mo - ro - so, o - ne - sto, sag - gio, o -

,
( 3 ! ♮! ♭!
!'
T.

,
[one-] sto. Ah!
, !
!4 # 5 ! ! !4 !$ ! ! ! !" (
! !
! ! ! ! ♮! ! ! ! ! ♯! ♯! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ( +
18

D.
)♭ ♯! ♯! ! !
!' ! ! ! ! ♯! ! ♯!
!'
ne - - - - - - - - - - - sto. Ah! sem - pre scon - ten - to e me - sto

! ! !
T. ! ♮! ! ♭! !

!
[sa-] rai co - [sì]

! ! ! ♮! ! ♯! ! 5 ! ! ! ! ! ♭! ! 4! ! ! !' ( ♭!" !$ # - ! ! ! !$ !$ ♯!" !" ! ♯! ! !

22

)♭ 3 !!
2
D.

no, non sa - rai co - - - sì, ah! no . . . sem - pre scon ten - to e me - sto no, non sa -

2 ! !!! ! ! !! !! !! !! ! ! ! !
!2 ! ! ♮! ! ! ! ! ! ! !$ ! ! ! ♯!# !#
27

)♭
D. !4 !4 !
rai, sa - rai co - sì, ah! non sa - rai, no, non sa - rai, ah! no co -

,
7!
!! ! ! ! ! ♯! ♭! !
!!!
30

T.
) ♭ 4! 4
[co-] sì ah no, ah

! !!! ! ! ♭! ! ♯! ! ! ! ! !! !! !! !! !! !! !$ !" !"

) ♭ 4!
D. 4! !4 ! ♭!' 3
6
sì, ah no, ah no, no non sa - rai, no, no, co - sì, no, non sa -

Example 1: Gaetano Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore, act II, no. 12, Recitativo ed Aria Adina, “Prendi
per me sei libero,” with Tadolini’s embellishments (Mechetti, plate number 2616).

15

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19 TH
CENTURY
MUSIC
! ,#
, ! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !!!!!! !
33
♭ !# ! ! ! ! ! !!!!!! !
D.
) ! !
ra - - - - - - - - - -
Example 1 (continued)
display of Tadolini’s name. Because the score
was meant to circulate widely not only among
amateurs but also among professionals and in
opera houses of German-speaking countries,
Mechetti might have thought it better to ex-
clude any indication that might have pointed
to a specific performing context.
No matter what his intentions were, how-
ever, he perpetuated and lent authority to a
version of the aria that stemmed from Tadolini’s
performance and from the first local produc-
tion of the opera. A copy of Mechetti’s vocal
score is preserved in the Austrian National Li-
brary as part of the historical archive of the
Vienna Court (later State) Opera.54 Numerous
handwritten annotations suggest that the score
was used in several revivals of the opera, and
some pencil markings indicate that Tadolini’s
ornaments did not pass unnoticed: that, as plate
1 shows, some were crossed out while others
were kept makes it clear that singers of later
generations used these ornaments as a point of
departure for their own performances.
While Mechetti contributed to the develop-
ment of a performing tradition that dates back
to Tadolini, other sources show that this
Viennese tradition lasted for several decades.
The 1844 vocal score was used as the copy-text
for another bilingual vocal score by the Ger-
man publisher Peters, which consists of the
musical numbers only (most of the recitatives
are omitted).55 This vocal score features a dif-
ferent piano accompainment from Mechetti’s,
but uses the same German translation and, once
more, includes Tadolini’s ornaments as alter-
native readings for Adina’s aria.
A-Wn, Musiksammlung, OA.1550.
54
Der / Liebestrank / (L’elisire d’amore) / Oper in 2 Akten /
55
von / G. Donizetti / Klavierauszug / Leipzig & Berlin / C.
F. Peters. Plate number 5483.
16
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,! ! # !
! !! ,
!#
( . !!! !! ! ! ( *
'
T.
'! ! ! ♮! ! !
[sara-] i co - - - - - - sì.
! ♭!,#
( ! ! ( *
!! '! !'
- - i co - - - sì.
Another musical source propelled Tadolini’s
version of the aria beyond the threshold of the
twentieth century. The German publisher
Albert Ahn printed a full score in German only,
featuring a number of cuts, changes in orches-
tration and other alterations that reflect a much
later stage of the performance practice of the
work.56 A copy of the score, also preserved in
the Archive of the Vienna Court Opera and
still used for performances in the middle of the
last century, presents a stratification of differ-
ent layers of the opera’s performance history.57
Striking as it may be to find a trace of Tadolini’s
tradition during a period with a radically differ-
ent aesthetic outlook, in this score Adina’s sec-
ond-act aria retains some of her ornamenta-
tion. In the cantabile they appear as an integral
part of the vocal line, and no longer as an alter-
native version. Conversely, while the printed
version did not feature the embellishments in
56
Der Liebestrank. / (L’elisire d’amore.) / Komische Oper
in zwei Aufzügen / von / Gaëtano Donizetti. / Partitur. /
Text nach dem Italienischen des Felice Romani neu
revidiert / und für die Bühne neu eingerichtet / von / Felix
Mottl. / Berlin - Köln - Leipzig. / Verlag von Albert Ahn. /
Eigentum des Verlegers für alle Länder. The score is in
two volumes and has no plate numbers. Because of the
lack of bibliographical material on the publisher Albert
Ahn, I could not establish when this score was printed.
According to the official website of Ahn & Simrock, Ahn
started his business in Brussels and Cologne. After his
death in 1911, his son Alber Ahn Jr., now an associate of
Simrock, moved the company to Berlin and Bonn. (See
http://ahnundsimrockverlag.de/index.php/geschichte, last
consulted on 5 July 2014. I am grateful to Lorenzo Bianconi
for sharing his knowledge of Ahn with me.) Since the
front page of the score indicates that Ahn was already
based in Berlin at the time of its publication, 1911 is likely
the terminus post quem for its publication.
57
A-Wn, Musiksammlung, OA. 1343. At the beginning of
Dulcamara’s aria, originally in A major, there is a hand-
written indication, “in G für Edelmann,” referring to the
comic bass Otto Edelmann, a celebrated interpreter of the
role in Vienna until the 1950s (when the Court Opera had
already been renamed as Vienna State Opera).
 !"# ! ! ♭! ! ♯! ♮! ! ♭! ! ♭! ! ♯! ♮! ! CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
Tadolini II
Adina par
! ! ! ! e - ter ! - no a -
excellence
2
! ! ! ♮! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !" !' 9 !
giu - ro

! ! !" ! ! ! ! !"
Tadolini I

Tadolini I–II
)♭8
2
!" !' 9 ! ! ! ! ! ! !" ! ! ! ! !"
Il mio ri - gor di - - men - ti - ca, ti giu - ro e - ter - no a -

! ! ! ♮! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
Donizetti
)♭8 !
Il mio ri - gor di - - men - ti - ca, ti giu - ro e=ter - no a
2 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! !!!! !
♯!' '! ( ! ! ! ! ♮! ! ! ! ! !" 2! !" ! !! !! !!!
4

) ♭ !#
T. II
! !

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! !!!! ! !
mo - re, sì, far - ti fe - li - ce io bra - mo, ah ti giu - ro e - ter - no a -

! ! ! ♮! ! ♮! ! !" 29 ! !
! !!!! ! ( ! ♮! ! ! ! ♯! ! ! ! ♯! !"
)♭
T. I ' !

29 ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !" ! ! ! !
mo - re, sì, far - ti fe - li - ce io bra - mo, ah sì, giu - ro e - ter - no a -

!# !" !' ( ! ! ! ♮! ! ! !" ! ! ! ! ! !" !" !' !

D.
)♭ ! "
mo - re, sì, far - ti fe - li - ce io bra - mo, ah sì, giu - ro e - ter - no a-

! ! ! ! ! ! ! !" (
8
♭ !
T. II
)
! ♯! ! ! ! ! !!! !!!!!
! ! ! ! ! ! !" ( !!!!! !
mor,

! ! " !!!!!!
)♭! ! !' !"
T. I–II
T. I

! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! !
mor, il mio ri - gor di - men - ti - ca, ti

D.
)♭! * * ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
mor, il mio ri - gor di - men - ti - ca, ti
7! 7!
! ! ! !" ♯! !
T. II !'

! !!!! !"2 ! ! ! ! ! 2!" !! !!

il mio ri - gor di -

! !" 3 !$ '! ( !
11

)♭ ! ! ! ♯! * !' "
T. I
T. I–II

2! ! ! 2! ! di !
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !'
giu - ro e - ter - no a - mor, il mio ri - gor -

'! ( ! ! ! ! ! ! !
)♭! !
D. ♯! *

7!
giu - ro e - ter - no - a - mor, il mio ri - gor di -

! ! ! ! ! !! !! !
!"
14

T. II
)♭
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! T.! I–II 9 !# ! ! ! !!
men - ti - ca ti

!" ! !! !!!
)♭
con forza

T. I !
6
2
!! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 29
2! ! !
men - ti - ca, ti giu - ro e - ter - no a - mor.

9 ! ! !
♭ !
D.
)
6
men - ti - ca, ti giu - ro e - ter - no a - mor.

Example 2: Gaetano Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore, act II, no. 12,

Recitativo ed Aria Adina, Cabaletta “Il mio rigor dimentica,”
with Tadolini’s embellishments (Mechetti, plate number 2616).

17

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 19 TH
CENTURY
MUSIC

Plate 1: The opening of Adina’s aria in the Mechetti vocal score preserved in the historical
archive of the Vienna State Opera (former Court Opera): A-Wn, Musiksammlung, OA.1550.
(Reproduced by permission.)

18

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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
the few measures of the cabaletta that survived
the arranger’s scissors (a mere statement of the
first two phrases followed by fragments of the
original coda), someone decided to reintroduce
them on a handwritten staff tacked at the top
of the page (plate 2). This demonstrates that in
Vienna Tadolini’s model was still firmly rooted
in the local performance tradition and easy to
track down at the time this score was used:
whoever pasted the manuscript staff into the
full score of the cabaletta must have recog-
nized the origin of the ornaments of the
cantabile before turning to a musical source
that contained the embellished version of the
entire number.
This is not to say that, during such a long
span of time, the memory of the singer who
originated this tradition would still be alive.
But even if the illustrious originator had been
forgotten, her tradition lived long enough to
replace Donizetti’s own version. Furthermore,
while Tadolini’s embellishments were handed
down to later generations anonymously, an-
other more radical modification she introduced
into Elisir also had a long afterlife following
her departure from Vienna. This second modi-
fication retained the singer’s name and consti-
tutes her most remarkable contribution to shap-
ing the Viennese performing tradition and re-
ception of the opera.
Tadolini, Luigi Ricci’s Waltz, and
the Finale of L’ELISIR D’AMORE
During its uninterrupted performance history,
L’elisir d’amore has undergone several alter-
ations. In particular, Adina’s second-act aria
became a canonical “substitution site”: sopra-
nos often replaced the original piece with arias
more fitting to their vocal ability, tempera-
ment, or taste.58 Surrendering to the requests of
prima donnas, even Donizetti himself wrote
alternative arias for the opera.59 More often,
See Poriss, Changing the Score, 102.
58
Donizetti modified Adina’s aria on three occasions: in
59
1839 for Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani, who sang the role at
the Paris Théâtre-Italiens, in 1842 for a production at the
Teatro San Carlo in Naples starring Eugenia Tadolini, and
again in 1843. The occasion of this last substitution has
not been identified; see Alberto Zedda, “Commentary on
the Critical Musical Edition,” in his critical edition of
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however, singers would introduce arias by other CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
composers into the score. In 1841 Mechetti Adina par
published one such piece that specifically men- excellence
tioned Tadolini’s name: a waltz from Chi dura
vince, a melodramma giocoso by Luigi Ricci
(ex. 3).60 A piano arrangement of Adina’s aria by
Franz Xaver Chotek, also published in 1841
and which retains Tadolini’s ornaments in the
first lyrical movement, suggests that Ricci’s
Gaetano Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore (Milan: Ricordi, 1979),
8; and his essay “I ripensamenti di Donizetti sul duetto
del secondo atto dell’Elisir d’amore. Alcuni problemi
dell’edizione critica dell’opera,” in Sesto Festival Donizetti
e il suo tempo, program note (Bergamo: Comune di
Bergamo, 1987), 49–50. On the 1843 substitution, see also
Giorgio Pagannone, “L’elisir d’amore, libretto e guida
all’opera,” in Gaetano Donizetti: L’elisir d’amore, La Fenice
prima dell’opera 2002–03, 4 (Venice: Teatro La Fenice,
2003), 45. I will consider Donizetti’s substitute aria for
Tadolini at the end of this article.
60
CAVATINA / del Maestro LUIGI RICCI / cantata dalla
Sigra EUGENIA TADOLINI / nell’ Opera: L’ELISIRE
D’AMORE di G. DONIZETTI. Plate number 3533. This
piece is discussed in its original context in the Izzo, Laugh-
ter between Two Revolutions, 77–82. Mechetti also pub-
lished two other alternative pieces for Adina’s act II aria:
Charles de Bériot’s Rondò for Maria Malibran, issued in
1839 (“ARIA di C. de BERIOT, / eseguita dalla Sigra MARIA
de BÉRIOT-GARCIA / nell’opera: L’ELISIRE D’AMORE di
G. DONIZETTI.” Plate number: 3197) and another one by
Giuseppe Mazza from 1841 (“RONDO / Dammi la man
di sposo . * Reich’mir die Hand zum Bunde . / del Maestro
GIUSEPPE MAZZA / eseguito dalla Sigra ADELAIDE
MAZZA / nell’Opera: L’ELISIRE D’AMORE di G.
DONIZETTI.” Plate number 3435). It does not seem that
Mazza’s Rondò was sung in Viennese performances of the
opera at the time, although a manuscript copy of the piece,
originally from the historical archive of the Theater an der
Wien, survives in the Austrian National Library (A-Wn,
Musiksammlung, Mus.Hs.2282). De Bériot’s Rondò, in-
stead, was frequently featured in recital programs and as a
substitute aria in other operas. Der Wanderer issued a
review of Mechetti’s publication of the piece on 12 De-
cember 1839, which reveals that the Rondò had been per-
formed on 30 November by an amateur singer, one “D.lle
Hoffmann,” during one of De Bériot violin recitals in
Vienna. According to the reviewer, by presenting the aria
to the Viennese audience, De Bériot sought to show off
not only his talent as a violin virtuoso but also his skills
as a composer. In 1843 Pauline Viardot-García, Malibran’s
sister, sang the piece in Donizetti’s Alina di Golconda
and, a few days later, in her recital at the Theater an der
Wien. See the reviews in the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-
Zeitung (13 and 15 June 1843), where the critic refers to
the piece as “das bekannte Rondeau von Beriot” (the known
Rondeau by Bériot), suggesting that it was already popular
in Vienna by the time Viardot sang it. There is no evi-
dence, however, that De Bériot’s Rondò was introduced
into Viennese performances of L’elisir d’amore before 1844,
when soprano Marie von Marra sang Adina at the
Kärntnertortheater during the German season: see the re-
view in the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 26 November 1844.
19
 19 TH
CENTURY
MUSIC

Plate 2: The opening of Adina’s cabaletta in the copy of the German full score
of Donizetti’s Elisir d’amore from the Vienna Court Opera Archive (A-Wn, OA. 1343).
The top staff, marked “ossia,” is pasted on the page.
(Reproduced by permission.)

20

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 ♯♯ 3 !! ! !! ! !" 2! ! !" 2! ! !" 2! ! !"
1 ( ( !' ! !" ! ( ( (
) 8
CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
Adina par
! ! ! !
excellence
! !
Al - fin bril - lar nell’ i - ri - de, io ve - do il mio con - ten - to.

♯♯ 3 ( !! !! !! !! !! !! (
( ( ( ( ! ! ( ! ! ( (
;) 8 !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! 2 2
=
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 2
!! !! ! ! ! !
< ♯ 3 ! ( ! ( ! ( ! ( ( (
! ! ! ! !! !! ! !! !!
: ♯8 ! ! ! ! ! !
! !
♯♯ ( ( !! ! !! ! !" 2! ! !" 2! ! !" 2! ! !" !"
!" ( ( ( ( (
10

) !' ! !

! ! ! ! ! !
gli sten - ti del - le la - gri - me per gio - co mi ram - men - to spe -

♯♯ ( !! !! !! !! ( !! !! (
( ( ( ! ! ( !! !! ( 1
;) !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! 2 2 2
!!! !!! !! !! ! ! ! !
< ♯ ( ( ( ( ( ! !! !! ! !! !!
: ♯! ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! !
! !
♯ ♯ ! ! ♯!" !" ( !! ! ! ! ! !" ! ! ♯! ! ! ! ! ♮! !" ! ! ♯!"
19

!" ! ! ♯!' !
)
ran - ze a - mi - che te - ne - re, mi fa - vel - la - te in co - re, che sol di

♯♯ ( ( ( ( ( ! ! ( ! ! ( ( (
;) !! !! !!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!
! ! ! !! ! ! ! ! !! !! !! !! ! ! ! ! ! !
< ♯ ( ( ( ( ! ( ♯! ( ! ( ( (
! !
: ♯ !! ! ! ! ! ♯! ! ! !
!
! !
♯ ♯ ! ♭! ♮! ff ,!
! ! ! ! ! ! !" ( ! ! ! !"
28

) " ! ! ♯!' ! ! !' !

! ! ! ,
!
gio - ja i pal - pi - ti quest’ al - ma al - fin go - drà ah! e un’ e - sta - si d’a -

♯♯ ( ( ( ( !! !! ( ! ! ( ( (
;) !!! !!! !! !! !! !! ! ! !! !! !!' ! ! ! ! !! !! !! !!
! ! ! ! ! ! !
ff = ! ! ! !
< ♯♯ ! ♯! ! ,
( ! ( ! ( ( ( ( ! ( ! (
: ! ! ! ! ♯! !" ! ! ! ! ! !
! ! ! ! !
? 2! ? 2!
♯♯ !! ! !" ! ! !" ( ! ! !" ( ! ! ♮!♯! !♯! !" ! ! !" ! ! !" (
! !♯!
37

) ! !

A
mo - re la vi - ta mia sa - rà la vi - ta

! ! ( ! ! !
♯♯ (
!! !! ( ! ! !! !! ! ! (
!! !! ! ! ♮!♯! !♯! ! !" ! ! !♯! ! ! !
!
!"
! ! (
!! !!
;) ! ! !! !!
? ! ! ? ! ! @ !! !!
! !
< ♯ ! ( ( !! !! ! ! ! !! !! ! !! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
: ♯! ! ! ! ! ! !! !! !
!
Example 3: Version of Luigi Ricci’s piece from Chi dura vince as printed by Pietro Mechetti
(plate number, 3533), mm. 1–55.

21

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 ? 2! ff
♯ ♯ ! ! !" ! ! ♮! ♯! ! ♯! !" ♮! ♯! ♮! ♯! ! ! ! # ! !
! ♮! ♯! ! ♯! !
19 TH
( !
46
CENTURY
MUSIC )
mia sa - rà la

! ! ♮! ♯! ♮! ♯! ! ! !!! !!! !!! !!

♯♯ ! ! ( ! ! ♮! ♯! ! ♯! ! ! ♮! ♯! ! ♯! ! ! ! ! !" ( (
; ) !! !! !"
? 6
!!! !!! !! !! !! !! !! !!
< ♯ ! ! !! !! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !! ! !! ! !! ! !!' ( (
: ♯! ! ! ! ! ! !

♯♯ ! ! !" !
!" ! (
53

) !
vi - ta mia sa - rà.

! ! !
♯ ♯ !!!loco !!! !!! !!!
Più mosso

! ! ! " ( ( ! ! !
;)
ff !! !!
< ♯ ! ! ! ! ! ! !'! ( ( ! ! !
: ♯ !! !! !! !

Example 3 (continued)

Waltz replaced the original version of Adina’s The conclusion of Donizetti’s opera is thus
cabaletta “Il mio rigor dimentica.” 61 Although modified as shown in Table 1. Not only did the
the waltz has indeed the typical structure of a insertion of Ricci’s Waltz keep the balance of
cabaletta (and had served that function in Ricci’s Adina’s aria between the slow lyrical section
opera), the insertion of the piece in Elisir modi- and the fast cabaletta, but it provided the prima
fied not only the final section of Adina’s act II donna with an opportunity to close the opera
aria but the whole conclusion of the opera. with a catchy bravura piece. The happy ending
Performing materials from the Court Opera of the plot is maintained, of course, but the
archive reveal that the last two numbers of relationship between the characters is signifi-
Donizetti’s score, Adina’s aria, and the second- cantly altered. Whereas in the original version
act finale, were often merged into a single piece. of the opera it is Dulcamara who has the last
The full-score manuscript used for performances
at the Kärntnertortheater shows that the origi-
nal tempo di mezzo and cabaletta of the former
nounces the entrance of Belcore and the other soldiers,
number were omitted, the recitative before the which happens in the recitative preceding the finale. At
finale immediately followed Adina’s cantabile, the end of the recitative, other indications (“Einlage” and
and Ricci’s Waltz replaced the finale itself.62 “Walzer”) clarify that this is the place where Ricci’s Waltz
was meant to be inserted. The copy of Mechetti’s vocal
score used as a prompt part at the Kärntnertortheater
(OA.1550) is even more explicit. The cut indication covers
61
FLEURETTE ITALIENNE. / Air de Louis Ricci / chanté the portion of Adina’s number between the end of the
par Mad. EUG. TADOLINI / dans l’Opéra: L’Elisire d’Amore cantabile and the final recitative. After the fermata that
/ de C. Donizetti / arrangé pour le / PIANO / par / FR.XAV. closes Adina’s cantabile, a handwritten stage indication
CHOTEK. / VIENNE, / chez Pietro Mechetti qm Carlo, / reads “Tromelwirbel (L.3) Belcore (L. 3) Soldaten Chor Rec
Marchand de Musique et beaux Arts de la Cour Imp. et L,” thus clearly linking this section to the recitative. Be-
Roy.e / Place S.tMichel N.° 1153 . Plate number 3535. fore the finale, this copy of the vocal score also presents
62
A-Wn, Musiksammlung, OA.1344. After the cantabile, the handwritten words “Einlage (Walzer).” Neither source,
the score presents several overlapping and contradictory however, preserves the music that was supposed to be
indications. However, it is possible to isolate clearly a cut substituted. It is worth noticing that indications prescrib-
instruction (“vi—[de]”), which involves the following two ing the insertion of substitute pieces occur also before
sections of Adina’s number, and a handwritten marking Adina’s cabaletta. None of them, however, unequivocally
“Tromelwirbel” ([sic] (“drum roll”). This marking an- refers to the insertion of a waltz.

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 Table 1
Donizetti’s original conclusion of L’elisir d’amore and the modified version
Donizetti’s no. 12: recitativo and aria: adina
Original
Recitativo Cantabile Tempo di
“Prendi per mezzo
me sei
libero”
Modified [no. 12: recitativo and aria finale – adina]
Version
Recitativo Cantabile [omitted]
“Prendi per
me sei
libero”
say, reiterating for the last time the pretended
virtues of his elixir, here Adina becomes the
unquestioned winner: she is the dominant char-
acter who resists Dulcamara’s fibs, rescues
Nemorino from his military obligations, and
dismisses Belcore without regret. In this new
version, Nemorino no longer rebukes Adina
after her cantabile; nor does he induce her to
declare her love for him. In short, the finale of
the opera is turned into a (self-)celebration of
the prima donna.
Tadolini inserted Ricci’s piece in the same
year as the publication of Mechetti’s print: in
1841 she returned to Vienna after three years of
absence from the Kärntnertortheater, and, not
surprisingly, Elisir was among the operas she
sang over the course of the season. According
to the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung, the
insertion strengthened the success of the per-
formance, and Ricci’s piece had to be repeated.63
Although there is no evidence that the idea to
interpolate it came from Tadolini herself, her
63
“Auch an dem heutigen Abende ward ihr [ = der Tadolini]
wieder reichlicher Beifall zu Theil, welcher sich nach dem
Vortrage einer am Schlusse eingelegten Arie bis zum Jubel
potenzirte, und eine Repetition veranlaßte” (Tonight
Tadolini was showered again with applause that swelled
into jubilation after an aria insterted at the end, prompting
a repeat). Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung, 6 May 1841.
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CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
Adina par
excellence
no. 13 recitativo and finale ii
Cabaletta “Il Recitativo Finale “Ei
mio rigor corregge
dimentica” ogni difetto”
Recitativo Cabaletta
(Adina):
Ricci’s
Waltz
decision to perform the new cabaletta was very
astute indeed, since its waltz rhythm tacitly
alluded to the Viennese musical tradition.64 The
prima donna retained the substitute aria the
following year, in what would be her last com-
plete Elisir in Vienna. Over the course of the
following years, Tadolini sang Ricci’s Waltz
regularly in recitals and benefit concerts in the
Habsburg capital, including during her final per-
formance in Vienna on 30 June 1847.65 That
same day, the Allgemeine Theater-Zeitung pub-
64
A review from the Viennese journal Der Sammler, is-
sued on 8 May 1841, confirms that, at the Kärntnertor-
theater, Ricci’s piece was “newly inserted” (neu eingelegt)
on the occasion of this revival. The reviewer states incor-
rectly that the waltz comes from Ricci’s Il colonnello.
Although neither a reliable biography of Tadolini nor a
study of her entire career is available, it does not seem
that Tadolini sang Elisir or Ricci’s Chi dura vince any-
where during her three-year absence from Vienna. Chi dura
vince was not performed at the Kärntnertortheater until
1845, when it failed completely. Furthermore, according
to a review in the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung (8 May 1845),
the waltz that Tadolini sang in Elisir was omitted from
this production.
65
See Jahn, Di tanti palpiti, 244, who lists two other simi-
lar occasions: 4 May 1844 and 26 June 1847. In addition, a
review of the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung published
on 11 April 1843 reports that Tadolini sang the piece dur-
ing the musical academy at the Kärntnertortheater on 6
April. Similarly, on 27 May 1844, Der Wanderer informs
that Tadolini sang the entire second act of the opera on 23
May 1844.
23
 19 TH lished a review of buffo Cesare Soares’s benefit
CENTURY
MUSIC concert that included several highlights from
the second act of L’elisir d’amore. Again
Tadolini sang Adina and, according to the
reviewer’s words, she literally stole the show
with her performance of Ricci’s piece: “Already
the entrance of Tadolini, that Adina par excel-
lence, created an unrestrained ovation. . . . Af-
ter many loud calls for Madame Tadolini and
Herr Soares, the celebrated soprano presented
an old but still beloved and thus always wel-
come acquaintance—I mean Ricci’s Waltz (or,
as we call it, the ‘Tadolini Waltz’), which she
made so popular, and which appeared to elec-
trify the audience completely.”66 This passage
not only confirms that the Viennese consid-
ered Tadolini as the ideal Adina; it also reveals
that—to the extent that Ricci’s piece was
identified with the prima donna—it had been
renamed after her.
Thanks to the popularity that Tadolini
brought to it, Ricci’s composition became an
integral part of subsequent performances of
L’elisir d’amore in Vienna and also circulated
widely in German translation. Both the
Allgemeine Theaterzeitung and the Wiener Mu-
sik-Zeitung, for instance, mention that soprano
Adele Jazedé sang the waltz when she took
over the role of Adina at the Kärntnertortheater
during the 1844 German season.67 And as late
as 1861, Hanslick reported in Die Presse that,
in a German performance of Elisir, “Frau
Wildauer . . . closed [the opera] with Ricci’s
Tadolini-Waltz.”68 His use of the singer’s name
66
“Schon das Erscheinen der Tadolini, dieser Adina par
excellence, rief einen anhaltenden Beifallsturm hervor. . . .
Nach mehreren rauschenden Hervorrufungen der Mad.
Tadolini und des Hrn. Soares präsentirte uns die gefeierte
Sängerin abersmal einen alten, aber sehr beliebten und
darum immer höchst wilkommenen Bekannten—ich meine
den bereits durch sie populär gewordenen Ricci-Walzer,
oder wie man ihn bei uns nennt ‘Tadolini-Walzer,’ der das
Publikum vollends zu elektrisiren schien.” Leo Hertz,
Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 10 June 1847.
67
See the Allgemeine Theaterzeitung, 15 July 1844, and
the Allgemeine Wiener Musik-Zeitung, 18 July 1844, whose
critic, G. Rain, glossed: “Mir klangen die Töne der Tadolini
noch zu lebhaft vor dem Ohr!!” (Tadolini’s notes were
still ringing intensely in my ear!!).
68
“Frau Wildauer . . . schloss [die Oper] nähmlich mit dem
Ricci’schen Tadolini-Waltz.” Die Presse, 25 April 1861,
now also in Eduard Hanslick, Sämtliche Schriften:
Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, vol. 1: Aufsätze und
Rezensionen (Vienna: Böhlau, 2005), 5: 361.
24
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affirms the endurance of her fame, more than a
decade after her departure from the city.
But perhaps the substitution of the opera’s
conclusion was not prompted exclusively by
the vocal skills of the prima donna. A closer
look at reactions to the original finale and at
the ways in which Tadolini’s showpiece modi-
fied it suggests that the interpolation of Ricci’s
also had dramatic justifications. In Donizetti’s
original version, the closing number of Elisir
reintroduces the melody of “Io son ricco, tu sei
bella,” the “Barcarola a due voci” that Dulca-
mara, the trickster of the story, first sings with
Adina at the beginning of the second act (ex. 4).
When Dulcamara sings this melody for the first
time, cheating takes place on multiple levels.
At the level of the plot, this scene represents a
fake marriage party that Adina has organized
only to make Nemorino jealous, and not be-
cause she really intends to marry Belcore. At
another level, the “Barcarola” is a diegetic song
turned into a moment of metatheater—one in
which characters pretend to be other charac-
ters. Furthermore, as Pierluigi Petrobelli has
effectively argued, even this convivial scene is
an example of Dulcamara’s trafficking in fake
goods: although the “Barcarola” is a comically
hackneyed dialogue between a lecherous old
aristocrat and a witty young gondolier-girl, he
presents it to the ignorant peasants as a nov-
elty.69
Even more importantly, the “Barcarola” is
also musically deceptive, for its melody has
nothing to do with the conventional pattern of
this type of song, often in a lulling 86 or 12
8 meter.
70
69
See Pierluigi Petrobelli, “Dulcamara e Berta: storia di
una canzone,” in Liedstudien: Wolfgang Osthoff zum 60.
Geburtstag, ed. Martin Just and Reinhard Wiesend (Tutzing:
Schneider, 1989), 307–12.
70
Although these are the meters more typically associated
with nineteenth-century barcaroles, Rodney Stenning
Edgecombe has pointed out that simple triple meters (34 or
3
8) could also occur with some frequency. See his “On the
Limits of Genre: Some Nineteenth-Century Barcaroles,”
this journal 24 (2001): 252–67. However, he mentions only
one other instance of a barcarole in duple meter, the
Gondolier’s song in Rossini’s Otello. In that case, the
double-dotted figurations that characterize the rhythmic
shape of the melody evoke what he calls “the alternating
rhythm of oars that move swiftly through air and slowly
through water” (254), a feature that is absent in
Dulcamara’s song. Edgecombe mentions other duple-meter
pieces that, according to him, have some traits in com-
 =# !"# "!# !"# 2!" !" !"# !"# . !"# ♮!"# !"# !"# ♭!"
!"# !"# !"# !"#
CLAUDIO
♭2 !" (
Dulcamara

:♭ 4*
VELLUTINI
Adina par
excellence
!# !# !# 2! !# . !# ♮!# !# !#
Io son ric - co e tu sei bel - la, io du - ca - ti e vez zi hai tu. Per ché a

!# !# !# ! !# ♭!" !# !#
♭2 (
;) ♭ 4 * 3
=
< 2
!!
!
!!
!
!!
!
!!
! !!! !
!!
!!
!
!!
!
!!
!
!!
!
♭ ! !
:♭ 4! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

# !"# !"# "!# 2!" !" !"# !"# . !"# ♮!"# !"# "!# ♭!"
: ♭ ♭ !" ( *

!# !# 2! !# . !# ♮!# !# !#
me sa - rai ru - bel - la, Ni - na mia, che vuoi di più?

# ! ! !# ♭!"
;) ♭♭ ! 3 ( *
!! !! !! !! !! !! !!"
< ♭ ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ( *
:♭ ! ! ! ! !

Example 4: Gaetano Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore, act II, no. 6: Introduzione [atto secondo],
“Barcarola a due voci,” mm. 6–14 (Milan: Ricordi, 2004).

Rodney Stenning Edgecombe has called the falsity of Dulcamara’s claim by reintroduc-
Dulcamara’s melody “a jolly polka,” and ing the deceptive tune of the fake barcarola.
Emanuele Senici suggests an awkward gavotte.71 By the 1830s and 40s, the gavotte had be-
According to Fabrizio Della Seta, Donizetti come an old-fashioned type of dance, and there-
might have recast the rhythm in order to dis- fore for Donizetti its stylistic distance from the
tance himself from the French source of Elisir, taste of the audience was ideal to portray
Daniel Auber’s and Eugène Scribe’s Le philtre, Dulcamara’s misleading words about the nov-
which features a “regular” barcarola.72 This elty of his barcarola. Spectators, however, did
choice would also make the intentionality of not always understand the composer’s strat-
the difference between the announced piece egy. Especially in Vienna, some of them did not
and the actual character of the melody even seem to appreciate it. A passage from a review
stronger. The reprise of the “Io son ricco” published in 1841 in the Allgemeine Wiener
melody in the finale corresponds to another Musik-Zeitung is telling in this respect: “The
attempt on Dulcamara’s part to dupe the naive Barcarola was also encored, though not with-
peasants, this time by claiming that his magico out resistance. This rather hollow piece has
liquore has brought about the happy ending of saturated the specators’ ears, and of course lost
Nemorino’s love story. Donizetti underscores most of its freshness.”73 By the time this re-
view was issued, Tadolini had already performed
the modified finale. But, because of these words,
it is tempting to speculate that the audience’s
mon with the barcarole (e.g., the second movement of
Beethoven’s Les Adieux sonata), but that are not specifically
labeled as such.
71
Edgecombe, “On the Limits of Genre,” 255, and Emanule
Senici, “Le furtive lagrime di Giambattista Genero, primo “Wiederholt wurde auch die Barcarole, obschon nicht
73

Nemorino,” in Gaetano Donizetti: L’elisir d’amore, La ohne Opposition. Dieses im Grunde genommen hohle
Fenice Prima dell’Opera 2002–2003 4 (Venice: Teatro La Gesangsstück ist in die Ohren des Publicums bis zur
Fenice, 2003), 59–71: 67. Übersättigung gedrungen, und hat natürlich seinen
72
See Fabrizio Della Seta, Italia e Francia nell’Ottocento Blüthenstaub schon großentheils verloren.” Allgemeine
(Turin: EDT, 1993), 202. Wiener Musik-Zeitung, 6 May 1841.

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 19 TH dissatisfaction with the barcarola might have
CENTURY
MUSIC prompted the substitution of Ricci’s Waltz in
the finale, where the over-exposed barcarola
tune is reprised and repeated three times. Thus,
the insertion might not have been an arbitrary
choice but a calculated one, either by Tadolini,
or even by the impresarios of the Kärntnertor-
theater, who might have been looking for a
viable alternative to the repetition of the
barcarola. Whatever the case, the Viennese re-
ception of Elisir provided Tadolini with an ex-
cellent opportunity to add her personal musi-
cal signature to the opera. With one move, Dul-
camara was deprived of the last solo bit of the
score, and the audience was spared from repeti-
tions of a number that had grown stale. The
double payoff of this substitution was, on one
hand, to empower Adina’s character to claim
the positive resolution of the plot, and, on the
other, to grant Tadolini as a prima donna the
privilege to close an opera that, more than any
other, set the ground for her local celebrity and
had become closely associated with her. Fur-
thermore, all this was done by recurring a piece
in a waltz rhythm, the dance that was both a
pervasive feature of many Italian comic operas
and, by then, had also begun to signify Viennese
music worldwide.74 As a recognition of this
successful strategy, the Ricci Waltz was taken
up by other sopranos, became a standard in the
local performance tradition of the opera, and
was renamed after Tadolini—the ultimate seal
on her Viennese reputation as “Adina par ex-
cellence.”
Wandering Waltzes
With all this, Donizetti himself had little, if
anything, to do, although he was in Vienna in
1842 when Tadolini performed L’elisir d’amore
with Ricci’s Waltz. Unlike Verdi two years later
in reaction to Ernani, he showed no sign of
indignation to the prima donna’s intervention.
Rather, he took it into account the following
summer when he composed a new cabaletta for
Tadolini (probably on her request) to use in a
revival of Elisir in Naples. He mentions the
new piece in a letter to Ricordi written on 22
See Izzo, Laughter between Two Revolutions, 74–86.
74
26
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October 1842, which also includes the incipit
of the cabaletta (ex. 5): “The cabaletta, that I
wish to keep in my possession everywhere but
in Naples, where I have permitted its publica-
tion, is the one that I composed in Naples last
summer for Sig.ra Tadolini in Elisir d’amore,
and that begins.”75
!# ! !" ! ! ! !" !# ♮! #
♭ ♭ ♭ !" ( !"
♭ ♭
B
Ob - blia le tue pe - ne ri - torn - na
Example 5: Incipit of the cabaletta
mentioned in Donizetti’s letter from
22 October 1842.
Later that year, Donizetti used this very same
tune in Don Pasquale (premiered in Paris on 3
January 1843) for the cabaletta of the duet be-
tween Norina and Don Pasquale, a cabaletta
whose rhythm is based again upon a typical
waltz pattern (ex. 6). When Don Pasquale was
first performed in Vienna another few months
later during the spring of 1843, with Tadolini
as Norina, a reviewer remarked with a touch of
sarcasm: “If anything, there is only an innova-
tion to point out . . . : namely the pervasive
introduction of dance music, and especially, of
the waltz as vocal number of the opera. This is
the case here to such an extent that, had ‘Don
Pasquale’ not been composed last year and
specifically for Paris, one might be tempted to
believe that Donizetti had intended to offer his
beloved Viennese a substitute for the justly
lamented late [Joseph] Lanner!”76 These words
notwithstanding, Don Pasquale became im-
75
“La cabaletta di cui intendo riservarmi la proprietà
dappertutto fuor che in Napoli, ove solamente ne ho
permesso la stampa, è quella che composi a Napoli
nell’estate passato per la Sig. Tadolini nell’Elisir d’amore
che comincia: [musical example follows].” Zavadini,
Donizetti, 633 (letter 448).
76
“Nur Eines ist allenfalls eine Neuerung zu nennen . . . :
nähmlich die vollständige Einführung der Tanzmusik und
namentlich des Walzers als Gesangsnummer der Oper. In
solchem Masse ist dies hier der Fall, dass, wenn ‘Don
Pasquale’ nicht schon im vorigen Jahre und für Paris
komponirt worden, man versucht wäre, zu glauben,
Donizetti habe seinen lieben Wienern für den Tod ihres
mit Recht beklagten Lanner einen Ersatz bieten wollen!”
Sonntagsblätter, 21 May 1843. Joseph Lanner, a celebrated
composer of dance music and particularly waltzes, had
died on 14 April 1843, shortly before the Viennese pre-
miere of Don Pasquale.
 (con civetteria) CLAUDIO
=
3, ! ! ! ! ! !
VELLUTINI
!# !" ( !"
Norina

( ( '! !" ( '! !# ♯! !" Adina par

) 8 excellence

Via, ca - ro spo - si - no, non far - mi il ti - ran -

,
Vivace, ma non troppo

3 1 ( ( ( ( ( ( (
;) 8 !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!
♯ !! !!!
!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
, =
< 3
: 8
1 '! ( ( !' ( ( '! ( ( !' ( ( !' ( (
'!
( ( !' ( (
! ! ! ! ! ! !
2! = 6 2! 2 2! 2!" 2 2!
!# !" ( 2!" ! ! ! !" ( !" ! !" " !" ( (
) !'
no, siì dol - ce, buo - ni - no, ri - flet - ti al - l’e - tà.

( ( ( ( ( ! ! ♯! ! 2! ♮!2 !!2 2! 2! 2!! '!!

;) !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !!' !! !! ! !! !! ! ! !! !!
! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !6 ! !
=
< ( ( !' ( ( !' ( ( !' ( ( '! ( ( !! !! !! !! !!! ( (
"
: '! ! ! !
! !
! !

Example 6: Gaetano Donizetti, Don Pasquale, act III, no. 9, Recitativo e Duetto.
Cabaletta “Via, caro sposino,” mm. 1–16 (Milan: Ricordi, 2005).

mensely popular in Vienna. As critics report, eral decades later, in a review from 1879 (re-
one of the opera’s most successful pieces was printed in 1884), Hanslick could still recall per-
the above-mentioned cabaletta, which Donizetti formances that featured the apocryphal aria:
originally conceived for a revival of Elisir with “[Adelina] Patti took the prize for the best con-
Tadolini.77 clusion [of the opera] with her delightful per-
But the story of the Viennese connections formance of the brief closing Waltz ‘La morale
among Don Pasquale and Elisir continued after in tutto questo’—a number that most of the
both the composer and the prima donna had singers found so little rewarding that they sub-
ceased to be active in Vienna. Indeed, sopranos stituted it with the so-called ‘Tadolini-Waltz’
singing Don Pasquale there often sang the or with another bravura piece.”79
“Tadolini-Waltz” from Elisir in place of It is tempting to conclude from this passage
Norina’s final Rondò, “La morale in tutto that there might have been a sort of red thread
questo” (also in a waltz rhythm). Although it is binding Elisir d’amore and Don Pasquale—a
unlikely that Tadolini herself performed Ricci’s thread that unfolded in Vienna through
piece in any Viennese performances of Don
Pasquale, this substitution happened frequently
in later years. A manuscript copy of the waltz likely that the insertion must have happened after her
departure.
is preserved at the end of this opera’s perform- 79
“Den schönsten Abschluss gewann die Patti mit dem
ing score used at the Kärntnertortheater.78 Sev- entzückenden Vortrag des kurzen Schlusswalzers ‘La mo-
rale in tutto questo,’ einer Nummer, welche den meisten
Sängerinnen so wenig lohnend erscheint, dass sie dafür
den sog[enannten] ‘Tadolini-Walzer’ oder sonst ein
77
See Der Wanderer, 16 May 1843, and Der Humorist, 17 Bravourstück einlegen.” Eduard Hanslick, Aus dem
May 1843. Opernleben der Gegenwart (Der Modernen Oper III. Theil):
78
A-Wn, Musiksammlung, OA.174. Handwritten indica- Neue Kritiken und Studien, 4th edn. (1884; rpt. Berlin:
tions on the front page of the score make clear that this Allgemeiner Verein für Deutsche Literatur, 1901), 187–93:
copy arrived in Vienna in 1852, after Tadolini’s last perfor- 192–93. In Vienna, Adelina Patti sang Don Pasquale for
mance in the city. Since reviews of the time never men- the first time in 1863, and then for four consecutive sea-
tioned Ricci’s Waltz in connection to Don Pasquale dur- sons between 1874 and 1877: see Jahn, “Donizettis Opern,”
ing the last years of Tadolini’s activity in Vienna, it is 229.

27

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 19 TH Tadolini’s performances. As I have tried to dem-
CENTURY
MUSIC onstrate, the prima donna’s success as Adina
was the focal event that created the conditions
for the establishment of a Viennese performing
tradition of Elisir. The shape the opera took,
however, was not the result of a predetermined
attempt to produce a version that would please
the Viennese audience from the beginning.
Neither Merelli nor Tadolini (nor, indeed,
Donizetti) tried to do so in 1835, when the
opera was first performed in Vienna more or
less as the composer had conceived it for Milan.
Rather, the local tradition of the opera was the
outcome of a much more specific process, one
which involved the mutual interaction between
performers, audience, music critics, impresa-
rios, and music publishers. Viennese spectators
in the opera house and local critics on newspa-
pers could voice their opinion, their predilec-
tion, and their bias by praising or refusing spe-
cific elements of Donizetti’s work and of
Tadolini’s performances. They both stimulated
the singer and the impresarios to find new so-
lutions to make Elisir even more successful
and conditioned music publishers to divulge
them. While Merelli and Balocchino counted
on Tadolini’s presence in Vienna to produce
the opera during the Italian season of the
Kärntnertortheater, Mechetti targeted his pub-
lications to the very same consumers that would
have heard the prima donna in the opera house.
Printed music preserved the memory of the
singer’s performances and allowed generations
of sopranos to perpetuate Tadolini’s version of
Elisir. In this way, to paraphrase one of the
critics mentioned earlier, both her ornaments
and “her” waltz became “welcome acquain-
tances” of the Viennese audience and contrib-
uted in reinforcing the perception of L’elisir
d’amore as an opera centered on the prima
donna.
The ways in which the changing shape of
Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore was woven into
ongoing discussions about the work’s aesthetic
merits as well as into the social dimension of
music-making invite us to reassess the role of
Italian opera as an integral part of nineteenth-
century Viennese musical life, beyond the no-
tion of the genre as a mere foreign import in
the city. In the early decade of the century,
Austrian sovereignty over several Italian states
28
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created the conditions for productive interac-
tions among artists and critics, impresarios and
spectators, publishers and consumers of printed
music. These interactions contributed to the
blurring of boundaries between various local
traditions. As the development of a Viennese
version of Elisir extended beyond the Italian
seasons at the Kärtnterthortheater, involving
individuals as well as communities of specta-
tors of diverse national origins, the work func-
tioned as a catalyst for the merging of musical
experiences from different parts of the Aus-
trian Empire. This encounter had far-reaching
consequences that, rather than being limited to
Vienna, moved again southward with
Donizetti’s own substitute waltz-cabaletta for
Tadolini.
The “open” textual nature of Italian operas
favored this process. Even in this respect, how-
ever, the foregoing case study shows remark-
able contingencies suggesting that we need to
recalibrate our understanding of the relation-
ship between authorial intentions and local per-
forming tradition. As philological studies have
dismantled the notion of “musical work” as
embedded in a fixed text, showing the extent to
which cultural networks and contexts trans-
form its shape and meaning, critical editions
have granted access to a wealth of materials
that trace textual modifications over time.80
Consequently, many recent Italian opera edi-
tions now include sections discussing autho-
rial nondefinitive revisions, issues of historical
performance practice, and traditions developed
independently from authorial control.81 In the
case of the Viennese vicissitudes of Elisir, the
lines between these sections are difficult to
draw. The story of Tadolini’s ornaments tells
that, over the years, a particular instantiation
of an essential component of Italian opera per-
Gossett, “Edizioni critiche,” 977.
80
See, for instance, Gioachino Rossini, Il barbiere di
81
Siviglia, ed. Patricia Brauner, The Works of Gioachino
Rossini, vol. 2 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2008), which includes
a detailed discussion of ornamentations by nineteenth-
century singers, reproduced in the critical commentary.
Numerous other examples of this sort can be found in the
volumes of the ongoing editions of Rossini, Bellini,
Donizetti, and Verdi. A richly documented overview and
discussion of these problems are provided in Gossett, Di-
vas and Scholars.
formance practice replaced at some point
Donizetti’s original version, undermining—at
least to the eyes of the compilers of Ahn’s
score—its authorial status. Similarly, the sub-
stitution of Ricci’s Waltz in place of Donizetti’s
original finale also undermines our sense of the
composer’s authority. Yet Ricci’s Waltz, al-
though it originated outside of authorial con-
trol, drifted back into the space of authorial
intentions when Donizetti wrote his own new
waltz-cabaletta finale for Naples (a non-
definitive revision), and then used that music
again in the definitive text of Don Pasquale.
In the history of Italian opera, the years of
Tadolini’s and Donizetti’s activities in Vienna
marked a crucial moment of transition in the
pendulum between composers’ intentions and
perfomers’ interventions. In a recent article on
the relationship between opera and poetic im-
provisation, Melina Esse draws attention to the
fact that, in this period, the aura surrounding the
performative act was still essential to a widely
shared notion of authorship intended as “an
amalgam of creative power and the performance
or execution of that power, and texts themselves
could only incompletely embody this amal-
gam.”82 As Verdi’s irritation at Tadolini’s substi-
tution of the original cabaletta in Ernani shows,
the times were changing. But it was also because
of these changes that the Viennese tradition of
L’elisir d’amore inaugurated by Tadolini could
transcend its local geographical and chronologi-
cal dimension: by gradually losing its original
performative character, it survived as part of a
written tradition. As Esse suggests, of course,
this tradition provides only an incomplete
simulacrum of Tadolini’s creative power, with-
out substituting for the loss of the ease, liveli-
ness, grace, and nuances that, according to her
contemporaries, constituted that almost inef-
fable “something” so characteristic of both her
vocal rendition and acting. Furthermore, noth-
ing at all of how she performed her cavatina
survives; nor do her duets with Nemorino and
Dulcamara. Nonetheless, no matter how frag-
mentary, this tradition allows us not only to
reevaluate her contributions to the performance
82
Melina Esse, “Encountering the improvvisatrice in Ital-
ian Opera,” Journal of the American Musicological Soci-
ety 66 (2013): 709–70, 765.
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history of L’elisir d’amore, but also to assess the CLAUDIO
VELLUTINI
extent to which the stylistic connections be- Adina par
tween this opera and Don Pasquale were medi- excellence
ated by her performances. In the future, perhaps,
the process can take the reverse course: just as
Tadolini’s performance choices were adopted by
singers of later generations, some contemporary
prima donna, finding them worth reviving in
Vienna or elsewhere, might bring them off the
page and into their aural
dimension—that is, back to life.
l
Abstract.
Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore was subjected
to a series of substantial modifications after its pre-
miere in 1832. In this article I focus on the perform-
ing tradition of the opera in Vienna. The history of
these performances and their reception allow us to
examine the dynamics through which the revisions
to the score became a standard local practice and to
assess historiographical assumptions about the role
of Italian opera in nineteenth-century Viennese mu-
sical life.
The shape Elisir took in the city was the result of
interactions between the first interpreter of the lead-
ing female role in Vienna, soprano Eugenia Tadolini,
impresarios, local music publishers, spectators, and
critics. Surviving evidence shows that Tadolini’s
performative choices became normative in Vienna.
Vocal embellishments that she added to Adina’s sec-
ond-act aria, published soon after the opera’s pre-
miere in Vienna, survive in performing materials still
used at the beginning of the twentieth century. She
also substituted the second-act finale of the opera
with a virtuosic waltz by Luigi Ricci. This second
modification was a telling instance of Tadolini’s at-
tention to the reaction of the Viennese to Donizetti’s
work. By claiming the right to close the opera with
an aria of her choice, Tadolini got rid of an unappre-
ciated piece and reinforced the local reception of Elisir
as an opera centered on the prima donna.
As the development of a Viennese performing tra-
dition of the opera extended beyond the Italian sea-
sons at the Kärtnterthortheater, involving individu-
als and communities of spectators of diverse national
origins, the work functioned as a catalyst for the
merging of musical experiences from different parts
of the Austrian Empire. As Donizetti himself de-
cided to conceive his own waltzing cabaletta for
Tadolini in 1842, I ultimately suggest that this case
study recalibrates our understanding of the relation-
ship between authorial intentions and local perform-
ing traditions. Keywords: Donizetti, Tadolini, Vienna,
vocal performance practice, authorial intentions
29