DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA - Music by Isaac Nathan 1790-1864 arranged by Sir Charles Mackerras 1925-2010 Lyrics by Jacob L. Montefiore 1819-1885 Book by Gordon Kalton Williams b.1956 after Montefiore s libretto and the play Don Juan d Autriche by Casimir Delavigne 1793-1843 Dramatis personae Don John of Austria, natural son of Charles V Donna Agnes, also known as Miriam Philip II, King of Spain Don Quexada, former Prime Minister Dorothy, servant of Donna Agnes Speaking roles Domingo, servant of Don Quexada Jerome, servant of Don Quexada Don Ruy Gomes, Philip s Prime Minister Brother Carlos, formerly Charles V Antonio, servant of Brother Carlos Don Ferdinand de Valdes, Chief of the Inquisition Steve Davislim tenor Cheryl Barker soprano Grant Doyle baritone Paul Whelan bass-baritone Sally-Anne Russell mezzo-soprano Nathan Lovejoy Garth Holcombe Mark Pegler Jonathan Hardy Garth Holcombe Frank Garfield Lords in Waiting, Officers, Alguazils, Monks and Attendents Sydney Philharmonia Chamber Singers Brett Weymark music director Sydney Symphony Alexander Briger conductor 2
CD1 [77 59] ACT I 1 Overture 9 03 Scene 1 2 Chorus: Come, merrily sing 5 38 3 Dialogue: Enough of this noise, all of you! 3 51 Domingo, Jerome, Don Quexada 4 Song: When a man has toiled through the livelong day 2 40 Don Quexada Scene 2 5 Dialogue: Don John! Your father has just gone in. 0 55 Domingo, Don John, Jerome 6 Song: The visions of youth fade fast away 4 03 Don John Scene 3 7 Dialogue: Don John! Don John! Father, good morning! 2 02 Don Quexada, Don John 8 Duet: But stay, Don John, for this can never be 5 14 Don Quexada, Don John 3
Scene 4 9 Dialogue: Tell your master that the Count de Santa Fiore is here to see him. 0 41 King Philip, Domingo, Don Ruy de Gomes 0 Song: I dare not say how much I love 5 10 King Philip! Dialogue: That dream of her still haunts you? 3 56 Don Ruy de Gomes, King Philip, Don Quexada, Don John @ Duet: Yes, Sir, yes, in these three all excitement is found 4 06 Don John, King Philip Dialogue: So Quexada has made a fool of me. 1 57 King Philip, Don John Scene 5 $ Dialogue: My beautiful bride. 0 22 Dorothy, Donna Agnes % Song: The days are gone when Judah s voice 5 43 Donna Agnes ^ Dialogue: Oh, the torture of deceiving the one you love! 3 35 Donna Agnes, Dorothy, Don John, King Philip & Quintet: Tis she herself, tis she herself, her black and jetty eye 3 58 King Philip, Don John, Don Quexada, Dorothy, Donna Agnes * Dialogue: Jealousy is gnawing at my heart. 2 18 King Philip, Don John, Donna Agnes 4
( Duet: Lady, entreaty is in vain 6 05 King Philip, Donna Agnes ) Dialogue: I cannot tell this lie to my heart. 0 19 Donna Agnes, Don John, King Philip Trio: Don John, stay your steps for a while 4 16 Don Quexada, Don John, King Philip Dialogue: Farewell, noble Count, grant me your pity. 2 03 Dohn John, King Philip, Don Quexada CD2 ACT II [51 39] Scene 1 1 Chorus: Hark, the solemn bell is calling 3 47 2 Dialogue: In days gone by 6 18 Brother Carlos, Don John, Antonio Scene 2 3 Dialogue: Poor Don John. 0 36 Donna Agnes 4 Song: Canst thou bid the hand its cunning forget 4 48 Donna Agnes 5 Dialogue: I am here at the appointed hour, Senora. 3 14 Don Ruy de Gomes, Donna Agnes, Dorothy, King Philip 6 Duet: One resource is left me 3 55 Donna Agnes, King Philip 5
7 Dialogue: Hear then, cruel man, Christian without pity. 2 46 Donna Agnes, King Philip, Don John 8 Song: By passion wild my heart is toss d 3 13 King Philip 9 Dialogue: The sword that Don John raised against you! 3 53 Don Ruy de Gomes, King Philip, Don Ferdinand de Valdes, Don Quexada Scene 3 0 Dialogue: It has come to this at last. 0 43 Donna Agnes! Song: They tell us that a home of light 1 53 Donna Agnes @ Dialogue: How wearily the time glides by! 0 23 Donna Agnes, Don Ruy de Gomes Scene 4 Dialogue: It s impossible for a king to have a second self in his court. 1 38 King Philip, Don John, Donna Agnes $ Trio: On thy lips her doom is pending 2 21 King Philip, Donna Agnes, Don John % Dialogue: A slave, beneath a monk s cowl! 3 22 Don John, Donna Agnes, King Philip, Brother Carlos, Don Quexada ^ Finale: Hail to the star that in glory appears 8 49 Chorus, Donna Agnes, King Philip, Don John, Dorothy, Don Quexada 6
Synopsis ACT I It is the time of the Spanish Inquisition. Don John, bastard son of Emperor Charles V, has been brought up since infancy by the emperor s former prime minister, Don Quexada. Now, days after the emperor s abdication, John is about to be admitted to a monastery, on Quexada s orders a strategy to protect Don John from any jealousy on the part of the new king, Philip II. Philip, disguised as the Count de Santa Fiore, arrives at Quexada s house to see to Don John s removal, but John tells both Quexada and the Count that he is not cut out for a religious life. He yearns for action and was merely feigning piety. Moreover, he is in love. Philip, who also knows something of young love, is sympathetic to John s enthusiasm, and is relieved that at least his more valorous half-brother doesn t covet his kingdom. But the course of Don John s love cannot run smooth. At this time of religious intolerance, his sweetheart, Donna Agnes, has a secret: she is a Jew. Don John is prepared to defy the Inquisition s strictures against Jews in order to marry her, but the young couple s dreams of future happiness are abruptly shattered when the Count realises that Agnes is the same young woman who caught his eye on the Prado in Madrid! Determined that the marriage not take place, he decides to intimidate Donna Agnes with a demonstration of the capricious terror of his Inquisition, and orders Quexada to take Don John immediately to a monastery. ACT II Quexada, however, takes pity on Don John s plight, and takes the young man to the monastery at Yuste, the retirement abode of Charles V now Brother Carlos. The former emperor, deeply moved at meeting the son he has never known, promises to get him out of religious confinement. Agnes, after her brush with the Inquisition, is still defiant. Though the Count has now thrown off his disguise and is using the full force of his kingly authority to press his suit, she refuses him. At last, to put him off once and for all, she reveals that she is a Jew knowing that those words could spell her death. Don John returns, thinking he is still rescuing Agnes from the Count, but he is overpowered and both are taken into custody. 7
Philip s anger turns to rage when he realises that the sword Don John raised against him once belonged to Charles V. Don Quexada assures Philip that Don John is still entirely ignorant of his royal identity, and knows the former emperor, his father, only as kindly old Brother Carlos. Philip is still disposed to kill his rival but, begged by Quexada, finally agrees to spare his brother: on condition that Don John spend the rest of his days in a cloister. One final time, Don John and Agnes are brought before Philip, who makes it clear that Agnes will burn if Don John refuses to become a monk. Brother Carlos, however, will have none of this, and resumes his imperial authority just long enough to extract from Don John an oath of loyalty to Philip, and from Philip a promise to hold no grudges against Don John. In this new atmosphere of détente, Charles at last reveals to Don John the secret of his parentage then immediately pours cold water over the young man s surprised delight by removing Agnes from the royal equation: she and Don John must never meet again. Agnes sadly embraces her duty and bids him farewell for ever. Don John in Australia Gordon Kalton Williams and Natalie Shea Don John of Austria the first opera to be fully composed and professionally presented in Australia. Isaac Nathan long regarded as the Father of Australian music. Neither made it into the canon of greats, but nonetheless both represent an important part of Australia s musical heritage and are evidence of what energy and talent could achieve in a fledgling nation hungry for musical and theatrical entertainment. Don John of Austria was premiered in 1847 in Sydney s imposing and elegant Royal Victoria Theatre. (The rather less imposing and elegant Mid City Centre sits on the same site today.) It ran for six performances it was a solid achievement, as Graham Pont observes, when set alongside the Melbourne run of Mozart s Don Giovanni 14 years later (eight performances), but it hardly matched the hundreds of performances given of imported ballad-operas such as Maritana. Although the opera was well-received, Nathan lost money on it and it was his last work of this type. The opera itself sank into obscurity but, unlike many of Nathan s works, a manuscript survived. This was incomplete a vocal score rather than the complete music with orchestral parts but it was enough on which to base a modern revival. 8
The late Charles Mackerras, as a great-great-great-grandson of Nathan, was interested in the opera s fate and in 1963 he conducted the Sydney Symphony in a performance of the overture, using his own reconstruction. As he described it in an interview, he adopted quite a big 19th-century operatic orchestra, with four horns, trombones those sort of things. Later, after he had studied the complete opera, he reworked the overture and completed the rest of the work for a Mozartian orchestra pairs of woodwinds, horns and trumpets, timpani and percussion, and strings. The Sydney Symphony s 2007 performances were not the first modern revival in October 1997 the Chelsea Opera Group presented Don John in London s Spitalfields Festival. The two performances were conducted by Alexander Briger, Mackerras nephew and himself a great-great-great-greatgrandson of the composer. In this recording, however, are captured the first professional performances of the opera in Australia since 1847. Sydney Symphony The book of Don John of Austria When Don John of Austria was submitted to the Colonial Secretary for approval for performance in 1847, it was described as an opera by Jacob Levi Montefiore with music by Isaac Nathan. Principal credit to Montefiore may seem odd, but the work is actually a ballad-opera, containing a great deal of spoken dialogue. When we say libretto in this instance we envisage not just the lyrics but what, in the musical theatre, would be called the book. Montefiore s libretto was based on an 1835 French play by Casimir Delavigne (whose Sicilian Vespers was the basis for Verdi s later opera). Some scenes are literal translations from Delavigne; others are Montefiore s tracing with fresh segues. Montefiore s and Nathan s purpose would have been to reduce Delavigne s very long play to operatic length and situation. There have been a number of stages in developing the text performed here. On a first reading I felt that Montefiore had successfully gone through Delavigne s text in order to select musical numbers for Nathan to set. But I had certain questions. Would an audience in the 21st century cope with historical background which may have been second nature to an audience in 1847? How would a modern audience cope with involved literary sentences that seem to hover around meanings rather than zero in on them? Could the audience find consistency 9
in the characters motivations, once the play had been chopped for operatic purposes? What was the draft stage of this libretto and might it have been sharpened up with subsequent rewriting? It was not such a difficult matter to reduce and refocus some of Montefiore s sentences. But I wondered if Delavigne s play would provide more clues to a consistent portrayal of certain themes. We found a rare copy of Don Juan d Autriche in the National Library in Canberra and Natalie Shea translated it. I then drafted a composite of Delavigne s play and Montefiore s libretto, adding and reinforcing the sorts of signposts that I thought a modern audience might expect, e.g. establishing early on and subtly keeping up the fact that Don John has military ambitions; also using structure to highlight. Notably, the interval in this version occurs just before the change of scene to Charles V s monastery at Yuste. In one very important respect, however, Montefiore and Nathan s Don John differs from Delavigne s. Agnes s scene by herself near the end, containing the song They tell us that a home of light there is, where praying seraphs glow is unique to Montefiore and Nathan s version. It must have been the heart of the show for these two early members of Sydney s Jewish community. Both play and libretto, however, end in a strange sort of stasis: majesty restored, brothers reunited, duty reaffirmed, Agnes saved, but certainly no lovers living happily every after. Catering for a modern audience, who I thought would expect an opera to have more of a point, prompted Agnes s short philosophy of resignation at the end. I approached the reworking of the libretto from what I imagined was the point of view of a modern audience member. Rodney Fisher s direction of the work represents another stage in the development of this text. He is steeped in the style of typical early 19th-century romantic drama, and brought this knowledge to bear on his theatrical presentation. It should be stressed that much of the language of this Don John is still closely related to, and often is, Montefiore s or Delavigne s. Importantly, the lyrics of the various musical numbers have not been altered. Gordon Kalton Williams 10
For ABC Classics Executive Producers Martin Buzacott, Robert Patterson Recording Producer Virginia Read Editing and Mastering Thomas Grubb Editorial and Production Manager Hilary Shrubb Publications Editor Natalie Shea Booklet Content adapted from the program book for the Sydney Symphony performances Booklet Design Imagecorp Pty Ltd Cover Design Christie Brewster, Sydney Symphony Cover Photo Anonymous portrait of Isaac Nathan, c.1820. Oil on canvas, 92 x 71.5cm. National Library of Australia, R9054 For the Sydney Symphony Managing Director Rory Jeffes Director of Artistic Planning Peter Czornyj Artistic Administration Manager Raff Wilson Recording Enterprises Executive Philip Powers Director of Orchestra Management Aernout Kerbert www.sydneysymphony.com Don John of Austria Director Rodney Fisher Producer Raff Wilson Repetiteur Sharolyn Kimmorley Steve Davislim appears by courtesy of Melba Recordings. Recorded live on 18 and 20 October 2007 in City Recital Hall Angel Place. ABC Classics thanks Graham Pushee, Judith Alexander and Sarah Thomas (Arts Management), Jenifer Eddy (Jenifer Eddy Artists Management), Jane Foley (National Library of Australia), Gordon Kalton Williams, Raff Wilson, Claudia Crosariol, Alexandra Alewood, Laura Bell and Katherine Kemp. 2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Distributed in Australia and New Zealand by Universal Music Group, under exclusive licence. Made in Australia. All rights of the owner of copyright reserved. Any copying, renting, lending, diffusion, public performance or broadcast of this record without the authority of the copyright owner is prohibited. 11
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