Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901):
Questa o quella
(from Rigoletto) (1851)
Text:  Francesco Maria Piave, after Victor Hugo?s play Le roi s?amuse

Original Key/Recorded Key:  A-flat Major
Teach-Track begins:  m. 1
Accompaniment Track begins:  m. 1
Pianist:  Daniel Michalak

N.B.  Verdi?s metronome marking of dotted-quarter-note = 80 seems impossibly slow to modern ears, and one cannot help wondering if the piece was ever performed at such a tempo.  While duly noting Verdi?s pointed use of allegretto  rather than allegro, even within a tempo closer to dotted-quarter-note = 104-108 (which is fairly standard today) it is still possible to maintain the Duke?s aura of breezy, unflappable nonchalance. 

Taken out of the context of the opera, the orchestra?s introductory measures always sound like they?re missing a beat somewhere--and that?s because they are.  The first phrase actually begins one dotted-quarter-note before the first printed notes--in other words, with an implied dotted-quarter rest on the downbeat of ?measure zero.?  Try adding a preliminary E-flat major chord on this ?invisible? downbeat, and you?ll see what we mean: the pulse now becomes immediately clear, rather than becoming clear only when one arrives at the repeated A-flat major chords.  We emphasize this point because when performing this aria with piano, it?s often a challenge to get one?s rhythmic bearings until it?s almost too late: projecting an ?aura of unflappable nonchalance? (see above) is pretty hard when you?re not completely sure just when to start singing.  Without a conductor, one inevitably perceives the first note as a downbeat; perhaps the best solution is to simply accept this fact and understand the first measure-and-half of music as a single measure of 9/8, after which the meter switches to 6/8.

The ?optional cadenza? printed in the ?new? (1991) Schirmer tenor anthology, while an essentially accurate representation of what has become standard (no longer ?optional?) performing practice, omits two important details: 

1) many singers begin the sustained A-flat on the same beat as printed in the original score (i.e., not the ?optional? two measures later), simply omitting the E-flat 8th-note that proceeds it in order to allow for a good breath; and 
2) a small pause (and breath) is traditionally taken before the final ?una qualche belta?: partly to isolate this anticlimactic phrase and thus toss it knowingly at the audience, like a teasing afterthought; and partly to allow enough breathing time for the two notes of ?una? to be sung as eighth-notes rather than as sixteenths, since this at least retains the printed rhythm, if not the printed pitches, of the original). 


Notes © 1999 by Daniel O. Michalak