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William Henry Fry's Leonora: The Italian Connection
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 April 2011
Extract
On 7 June 1845, the New York Herald published a letter by an ‘occasional correspondent’ from Philadelphia concerning William Henry Fry's first grand opera, Leonora, which premiered three days before at the Chestnut Street Theatre. The letter contained the following remark:
All were delighted with the music, it was so much like an old acquaintance in a new coat; indeed some of ‘the cognoscenti’ said that it was a warm ‘hash’ of Bellini, with a cold shoulder of ‘Rossini,’ and a handful of ‘Auber’ salt – whilst others congratulated Mr. Fry upon his opera being so much like Norma ….
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References
1 Cited in Lawrence, Vera Brodsky, Strong on Music: The New York Music Scene in the Days of George Templeton Strong, 1836–1875, vol. 1, Resonances 1836–1850 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988): 630Google Scholar.
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5 See Howard, John Tasker, Our American Music (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1939): 247.Google Scholar
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10 See Curtis, John, ‘A Hundred Years of Grand Opera in Philadelphia’ (unpublished typescript), 7 vols (US-PHhs, 1920), vol. 1: 163–73.Google Scholar The Montresor Company made its debut in New York in 1832, and was ostensibly the first to produce an entire season of Italian opera in the United States. See Preston, Katherine K., Opera on the Road: Traveling Opera Troupes in the United States, 1825–60 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993): 107–8 and passimGoogle Scholar.
11 Curtis, , ‘A Hundred Years of Grand Opera in Philadelphia’, vol. 1: 191–7.Google Scholar On the company led by Vincenzo Rivafinoli and its activities in Philadelphia and elsewhere, see Preston, , Opera on the Road, 109–11Google Scholar.
12 To date the most detailed discussion of operatic life in nineteenth-century Philadelphia remains John Curtis's monumental typescript of 1920, ‘A Hundred Years of Grand Opera in Philadelphia’. See also Armstrong, W.G., A Record of the Opera in Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884)Google Scholar and Upton, William Henry Fry, 14–16, which attests to the young composer's enthusiasm for opera and cites many of his reviews.
13 The Italian Opera Company of Havana visited Philadelphia in July 1843, presenting a short season that included the Philadelphia premieres of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor and Belisario and Bellini's I puritani, as well as the first performance of Norma in Italian. See Curtis, , ‘A Hundred Years of Grand Opera’, vol. 1, 305–07Google Scholar.
14 Discussions of adaptations of Italian operas for the London stage include Carnevale, Nadia, ‘“…That's the Barber!”: Henry Rowley Bishop e l'adattamento del Barbiere rossiniano’, in Ottocento e oltre: Scritti in Onore di Raoul Meloncelli, ed. Izzo, Francesco and Streicher, Johannes (Rome: Editoriale Pantheon, 1993): 99–113,Google Scholar and Rogers, Stuart W., ‘Cenerentola a Londra’, Bollettino del Centro Rossiniano di Studi 37 (1997): 51–67.Google Scholar A pianovocal score of the adaptation of La Cenerentola is found in Graziano, John, ed., Cinderella (1831): Adapted by M. Rophino Lacy from Gioachino Rossini's'La Cenerentola, Nineteenth-Century American Musical Theater 3 (New York: Garland, 1994)Google Scholar.
15 Cited in Upton, William Henry Fry, 37.
16 Scottish tenor John Sinclair toured extensively in the United States between 1831 and 1842. See Preston, , Opera on the Road, 25Google Scholar.
17 Upton, William Henry Fry, 37.
18 Aurelia the Vestal and its relation to Cristiani e Pagani is discussed in Upton, ibid., 23–5. See also Graziano, ‘Fry, William Henry’.
19 Upton, William Henry Fry, 25ff.
20 See Bellini, Vincenzo, When Bound in Slumber's Golden Chain: The words, Translated from the Italian of Romani, and Adapted to the Original Music, by Jos. Reese Fry (Philadelphia, PA: G. Willig, 1841).Google Scholar
21 Norma: A Lyrical Tragedy in Three Acts: Translated from the Italian of Felice Romani, and Adapted to the Original Music of Bellini, by Jos. Reese Fry (Philadelphia: John H. Gihon & Co., 1841). All quotations are from this libretto.Google Scholar
22 Ibid, 7–8.
23 Ibid, 8.
24 National Gazette, 19 January 1841: [2–3]. Excerpts from the review are reproduced in Upton, William Henry Fry, 45–7.
25 National Gazette, 19 January 1841: [3].
26 Upton, William Henry Fry, 47.
27 Songs, Duetts, Trios, Concerted Music, and Choruses of Anne Boleyn: A Grand Opera Seria, in Three Acts ([Philadelphia]: King & Baird, 1844).Google Scholar
28 Primo ottocento is often used to refer to the Italian early nineteenth century.
29 Fry, William Henry, ‘Prefatory Remarks’, in Leonora: A Lyrical Drama in Three Acts, Vocal Score (New York and Philadelphia: E. Ferrett & Co., 1846): iv.Google Scholar
30 Fry, Joseph R., Leonora: A Lyrical Drama, in Three Acts: Words by J.R. Fry; music by W.H. Fry (Philadelphia: King and Baird, 1845): [2].Google Scholar
31 It is remarkable to see how easily many passages of Joseph Fry's idiosyncratic poetry were transformed into regular Italian metres for an Italian-language production in New York in 1858. A copy of the 1846 piano-vocal score in the Harvard University music library, presumably used for that production, shows numerous portions of the printed text underlaid with passages of Italian poetry.
32 A comprehensive bibliography on this subject would go well beyond the boundaries of this study. My terminology and descriptions reflect Chusid, Martin, ‘The Organization of Scenes with Arias: Verdi's Cavatinas and Romanzas’, Atti del I° Congresso Internazionale di Studi Verdiani: Venezia, Fondazione Giorgio Cini, 31 luglio–2 agosto 1966 (Parma: Istituto di Studi Verdiani, 1969): 60Google Scholar; Moreen, Robert, ‘Integration of Text Forms and Musical Forms’ (PhD diss., Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar; Powers, Harold S., ‘“La solita forma” and “The Uses of Convention”’, Acta Musicologica 59 (1987): 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33 Following an expression found in Basevi's, AbramoStudio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence: Tipografia Tofani, 1859),Google Scholar Powers employs the term tempo d'attacco for the opening movement. However, composers of the primo ottocento consistently used primo tempo.
34 Fry, , ‘Prefatory Remarks’, iv.Google Scholar
35 This type of structure is encountered in several of Rossini's serious operas, and in his autograph scores the composer himself described them with the term ‘gran scena’. None of those operas were performed in Philadelphia, however, and it seems more likely that the protagonist's final scene in Anna Bolena served as the direct model for Julio's aria.
36 An insightful discussion of this type of number is Rosen, David, ‘How Verdi's Operas Begin: An Introduction to the Introduzioni’, Verdi Newsletter 16 (1988): 3–18Google Scholar.
37 See Chusid, , ‘The Organization of Scenes with Arias’, 62.Google Scholar Fry might well have known the famous romanza for Giulietta in Act I of Bellini's, I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830)Google Scholar; he certainly knew Smeton's ‘Deh! non voler costringere' in Act I of Donizetti's Anna Bolena. Both pieces are in strophic form.
38 One instance is Herold's, FérdinandZampa (1831),Google Scholar given in English translation at the Chestnut Street Theatre in 1841. Fry's mind may have resonated with Alphonse's couplets ‘Mes bons amis’ or with Camille's popular ‘D'une haute naissance’.
39 Scholars have adopted the term ‘lyric form’ to refer to this pattern. See, for example, Kerman, Joseph, ‘Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra’, Studi verdiani 1 (1982): 47–62;Google ScholarBalthazar, Scott, ‘Rossini and the Development of the Mid-Century Lyric Form’, Journal of the American Musicological Society 41 (1988): 102–25; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarHuebner, Steven, ‘Lyric Form in Ottocento Opera’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association 117 (1992): 123–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 Whilst it is most likely that Fry had Italian models in mind when he devised his accompaniments, the formulaic nature of these and other accompanimental figures is hardly an exclusive feature of contemporary Italian opera, but is shared by a number of styles and repertoires.
41 The term parlante was used extensively by nineteenth-century Italian composers and critics. A detailed description of this technique is found in Basevi, Abramo, Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence: Tipografia Tofani, 1859): 30–32Google Scholar.
42 Fry, William Henry, ‘Prefatory Remarks’, iii.Google Scholar
43 Ibid., iv.