Tip escribió:
Aunque es una ópera criticada por su libreto, al menos la versión francesa yo la encontré muy bien hilvanada.
Muchas de las cosas raras vienen de la versión tradicional italiana, pero no están en la original francesa. Cito del libro
Divas and Scholars de Gossett:
Citar:
The Italian translation still widely used today, La favorita, was prepared by Francesco Jannetti for the Milanese publisher Lucca, who printed the first Italian edition of the opera. Jannetti completely obscured the nature of the drama. Baldassare is no longer the spiritual father of Fernando but becomes the actual father both of Fernando and of Alfonso’s legitimate wife, who is therefore Fernando’s sister! How is it possible, then, that Fernando does not show any sign of knowing the King? How can he refer to himself as a “soldato misero”? How can Leonora (the mistress of the King) imagine that she will raise Fernando to a high rank when he is already the brother of the Queen? One absurdity is piled upon another. And instead of a monk leaving his vocation and his spiritual father for earthly love, we have simply a young man leaving his real father to follow after his beloved, a very different level of conflict from that envisioned in La Favorite. The last act, in particular, becomes utterly ridiculous. Jannetti builds it around the assumption that, devastated by the cruelty of her husband, the King’s wife (Baldassare’s daughter and Fernando’s sister) has died. Baldassare and Fernando have simply come to the monastery for her funeral (while the King apparently has stayed at home!). Since Fernando is not about to take any kind of vows (let alone final ones), why should we find his admission that he still loves Leonora to be scandalous? The story has been totally bent out of shape, and those who have complained that it makes no sense are quite correct.
But metric considerations in the poetry have equally falsified the opera. While some famous compositions work effectively in Jannetti’s translation or require only small changes (Léonor’s aria “O mon Fernand,” for example, is well served by “Oh mio Fernando”), others lose much of their character. The text of the cabaletta of the final duet for the lovers, “Viens, je cède éperdu au transport qui m’enivre,” is basically in French alexandrines (in Italian the equivalent meter would be settenari doppi). Within it, however, Donizetti introduces many repetitions of individual words in order to create a particular kind of melody: each measure begins with a note held for two beats and an eighth note, which serves as the first note of the two triplets that close the measure. Each of the remaining five notes has a syllable, so that the overall effect of each measure is of restraint followed by an outpouring of hammered energy (example 11.11). In Italian there is not even a hint of the original meter. Instead, the words are rendered as strophes of ottonari, with typically regular accents on the third and seventh syllables of each verse, and without internal repetitions of words or phrases. The result is a more poorly wrought relationship between words and music and the distinct loss of the musical and dramatic character so striking in the French original (example 11.12). There is nothing subtle about the difference between the two versions of the cabaletta. It is immediately audible to a listener who knows nothing about the technical matters that produce the change. Only a patent disregard for the musical and dramatic values inherent in Donizetti’s original could have led a “translator” to this betrayal of the composer’s opera. If La Favorite is worth our attention at all, either it must be sung in French or the translation must be modified to remain closer to the meaning of the original text and to the coordination of text and music found in the French.
En 1999 se publicó una nueva traducción de Broussard que resuelve muchos de estos problemas.
Dicho esto sin ánimo de criticar a la obra, yo soy tan donizettiano como el que más. A ver si Camarena/Garanca/Barton la siguen cantando y se ve asienta en las programaciones, en francés o en italiano.