Why this is hell, nor am I out of it...
- pswbaritenor
- Jan 2
- 8 min read
If my Blogs have any unifying theme, it is the relationship between words and music. To vary the mix a little, this Blog is about words on music, namely 'Leporello' by John Heath-Stubbs, which is, in my opinion, the finest English language poem with opera as its subject. It is a long poem, but I make no apology for quoting it in full.
Leporello
Do you see that old man over there? - He was once a gentleman's gentleman;
His skull is bald and wrinkled like a leathery snake’s egg;
His forehead is not high, but his eyes, though horny, are cunning,
Like an old jackdaw’s beginning to moult a few grey feathers;
His nose is sharp like a weasel’s, and his lips always a little smiling,
His narrow shoulders crouched forward, hinting a half-finished bow.
Did you notice how beautifully white and smooth and soft his hands were?
His coat is dowdy as the dusty shards of a house-haunting beetle,
His cuffs and collar not quite white, like the foam on a fouled mill-race.
But fear Flickers over his face - now settling like a fly
On his sunken cheeks, now haunting his blurred eyes;
And his pale mouth is always ready to fall open and gasp and shriek…
Night after night he’s here, in all weathers,
Drinking. They say his wife is a shrew and holds her head high
For all that once….Night after night under the yellow lantern-light.
Always the same old chair in the corner, night after night.
But he likes to talk to a stranger - it makes a nice change.
Why don't you buy him a drink and get him talking?
He can remember his master well - those were the days! -
Feast days - Carnival days, fans and flowers and bright silk shawls
Tossing like a poppy-patched cornfield the wind dishevels,
And then milky moonlight flowing over close-kept courtyards;
And while his master climbed the balcony, he would keep watch,
Whistle and rub his hands and gaze at the stars -
His co-panders, or there were mandolines murmuring
Lies under windows that winked and slyly slid open;
Or the hand’s clutch and half-humorous gasp of the escapade.
And after a doubling hare’s turn, hoking laughter at fooled footsteps
Trotting away down wrong turnings; or. when cornered.
The sardonic, simple, decided flash of a sword - his master's sword.
And he can remember the night when he stood on the terrace
Sunning himself in black beams of the vicarious sin,
While the walls whispered within;
And three unaccountable late-comers came,
And gave no name -
(But she in the blue brocade is Anna:
And she has forged her outraged chastity into a blade
Of thin sharp ice-coloured steel; her hair is brown
And her eyebrows arched and black like two leaping salmon
Seen against the sun-flecked foam of a weir down-rushing;
And like a slim white hound unleashed she snuffs for the blood
Of a father's killer. And not far away is Elvira:
She wears silver and black and is heavily veiled
And has laid a huge jewelled crucifix over her hungry heart
In vain; for she is like an old frosty-feathered gyrfalcon
With chrysolite eyes, mewed-up now, whose inactive perch
Frets her hooked feet; who cannot bear to gaze out
At the blue sky-paths slashed by young curving wings;
Her heart is a ruined tower from which snake-ivy
Creeps, fit to drag down an oak and smother him in dark green leaves).
But the windows were all golden-spotted with candles
Shadowed by dancing shapes; till above the silken strings
Flute and violin had trailed across the evening - a cry:
Zerlina, like a wounded hare tangled in that black net.
*
It is very quiet in the graveyard - a strange place to be waiting for him;
The moonlight hints queer prejudices - for all the Dead
Are tucked up snug in mud; we have heaped vast lumps of masonry
Over their head and their feet, fenced them round with crosses
And stones scrawled over with white lies; we have given them flowers.
Against the stench, and stopped their nostrils with mud;
We have lighted candles for hollow sockets; they will not trouble us;
They cannot see to climb the slippery stairs of their vault;
They are blind spectators who have long dropped out of the game -
But what if they didn't play fair? What if cold stone
Should speak and offer unwanted advice? What if quite suddenly
This polished transparently reasonable world was shattered?
When the soft curtain of the night is ripped up by the bray of trombones
And a dumb stone abstraction can speak, and the madman invites it to supper -
That is no laughing matter. If you are young and well born
And have no heart, it seems you can go home and laugh,
Drink wine and do yourself well; but he Leporello.
A poor man, sir, always attentive to business, no great scholar,
Had never thought of these things, didn't know how to deal with the dead gentlemen,
Or hell stretching out a flaming hungry arm
To snatch the ripe fruit of sin from the lighted banqueting hall.
*
So that is why he has always a startled look, that old man;
For he feels he is being watched by dead eyes from behind the curtains,
And is still expecting a knock at the door, and the stone foot’s tramp on the stairs.
Leporello is, of course, Don Giovanni's servant in Mozart's opera. Their relationship is a complex one. Both seem entirely amoral at the start of proceedings. Neither seems bothered that Don Giovanni has killed the Commendatore and Leporello seems to take a vicarious pride in his master's serial seductions (as he makes plain in his 'Catalogue' aria). He also distracts Masetto so his master can abduct Zerlina.There is no question that Giovanni commands Leporello, but the latter is far more 'familiar' with his master than might be expected. They impersonate each other, Giovanni ironically seducing a woman only because she thinks he is Leporello. Leporello has no such luck in his impersonation of Giovanni.
I say that Giovanni seduces a woman who thinks he's Leporello but is that true? Giovanni's description of events is ambiguous:
'Naturally I took advantage of her mistake. I don't know how she recognised me, but suddenly she began to scream. I heard people coming and I ran away.'
So, to put it crudely - how far did Giovanni get? Perhaps not all the way. Indeed, some commentators believe that Giovanni fails to seduce anyone during the course of the opera, no matter how successful he might have been before the action begins. Donna Anna says she fought him off and Zerlina is rescued before he is able to rape her. The business of his being mistaken for Leporello is further complicated by Leporello's bitter question,
'What if the girl had been my wife?'
Giovanni responds characteristically: 'So much the better!'
This detail seems to have been picked up by Heath-Stubbs:
They say his wife is a shrew and holds her head high
For all that once….
For all that once what? Perhaps it was Leporello's wife Giovanni half-seduced...
Their roles are also reversed when Leporello invites the dead Commendatore's statue to supper (at Giovanni's command). Why does Giovanni not immediately issue the invitation himself? Perhaps it is all part of his efforts to avoid responsibility for his actions: he deflects any consideration of his reprehensible behaviour with sardonic humour or apparent emotionless indifference. Crucially though, the statue does not respond verbally to Leporello's invitation, he merely nods; he only responds 'Si' when Giovanni, frustrated by 'stony' silence, addresses him directly. Surely this is a matter of class distinction and status; the Commendatore does not deign to speak to a servant but he addresses Giovanni as an equal. Heath-Stubbs makes a good deal of the social disparity between master and servant towards the end of his poem. Leporello lacks the intellectual and emotional resources to deal with the terrifying disruption of the natural order where the dead speak and walk, but Giovanni maintains his sang froid to (almost) the very end. Heath-Stubbs brilliantly and powerfully evokes one of the very greatest scenes in opera, when the Commendatore interrupts Giovanni's supper and makes him an offer he can't refuse...
What if cold stone
Should speak and offer unwanted advice? What if quite suddenly
This polished transparently reasonable world was shattered?
When the soft curtain of the night is ripped up by the bray of trombones
And a dumb stone abstraction can speak, and the madman invites it to supper -
That is no laughing matter. If you are young and well born
And have no heart, it seems you can go home and laugh,
Drink wine and do yourself well; but he Leporello.
A poor man, sir, always attentive to business, no great scholar,
Had never thought of these things, didn't know how to deal with the dead gentlemen,
Or hell stretching out a flaming hungry arm
To snatch the ripe fruit of sin from the lighted banqueting hall.
In the opera, the final three-way exchange between master, servant and supernatural guest preserves the social niceties in a chilling manner; Giovanni remains gracious, even noble in the face of damnation, but Leporello, more down to earth, is understandably terrified on his master's behalf as well as his own. The following translation is rather quaint but is broadly accurate:
Com. Don Giovanni, thou didst invite me to this banquet, and I attend it!
Giov. Never could I have believ'd it, but I'll do the best I can. Leporello, another supper: order them at once to bring it here.
Lep. Ah, my lord, I freeze with horror!
Com. Pause now an instant ! We partake not of earthly banquets. Never can these lips taste of aught that's mortal: we have eaten the food of the angels. Soon thou'lt meet me at Heav'n's dread portal, there to answer for thy crimes below.
Lep. As with ague my limbs they are trembling, From my head to my feet do I shake !
Giov. Pray proceed, now.—What would you ?
Com. Few are the words I shall speak—pray attend.
Giov. Do proceed, I attend.
Com. You invited me to supper, Now, then, in turn, I invite you : Say, wilt thou come and dine with me?
Lep. Alas ! alas ! we have no time : —excuse us.
Giov. The paltry term of coward shall never stain my name.
Com. Resolve, then !
Giov. I have already.
Com. Thou'lt come, then ?
Lep. Oh, do say no!
Giov. Doubt dwells not in my bosom; No fear have I : I'll come !
Com. Give me thy hand, in token.
Giov. Take it ? —Alas ! what sudden chill is this ?
Com. Rash fool ! of thy crimes repent'st thou ? For thy last hour is come.
Giov. No, no ! I'll not repent ! hence, away ! begone ! Hence;
Com. Lost man, once more, repent !
Giov. Thou crazy man, I will not !
Com. Henceforth 'twill be too late !
Giov. [Seized with despair.'] Through ev'ry nerve I tremble, Now icy chills o'erpower me ! What mean these dreadful yawning gulfs ? They open to devour me !
Cho. Horror more dire awaits thee, Dread thy dark doom will be !
Giov. My heart bursts in my bosom, The serpents gnaw my vitals ! What tortures ! oh, what madness ! What horror ! what despair !
Lep. Alas ! what looks of terror ! What agonizing gestures ! What cries ! what lamentations ! They pierce my heart with woe i
Cho. Horror more dire awaits thee, Dread thy dark doom will be!!
Giovanni is finally dragged down to hell and we are left with the deeply curious epilogue that has an almost breezy good riddance to bad rubbish tone. This provides such a jarring anti-climax that some productions simply dispense with it. Heath-Stubbs suggests that Leporello's off-hand reaction to the loss of his master (he'll just go to the tavern and find another one) is whistling in the dark. Leporello is permanently scarred by events in the graveyard and banqueting hall; like Marlowe's Mephistopheles in 'Faustus' he doesn't need to be in the actual fiery pit of hell to know he is damned:
So that is why he has always a startled look, that old man;.
For he feels he is being watched by dead eyes from behind the curtains,
And is still expecting a knock at the door, and the stone foot’s tramp on the stairs.
Giulini's 1959 recording remains unsurpassed in my book: Gottlob Frick's Commendatore is suitably saturnine and granite voiced - and he and Eberhard Waechter's Giovanni treat us to a top A and bottom D (neither written...) within a couple of bars - great stuff! I also give you the opportunity to hear Sir Bryn Terfel singing all three roles!!
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