The tragic story of Doria Manfredi and her relationship with Giacomo Puccini was suppressed for almost 80 years by either Puccini’s publisher, Ricordi, or his family (or both). Tony Palmer’s Puccini juxtaposes a dramatization of this tragic story with footage from his controversial 1984 production of Turandot for the Scottish National Opera. (The production was lambasted by the critics, but the entire run was sold-out, with tickets going on the black market for £100).Written by Charles Wood (Wagner), the film features a superb cast, including actress Virginia McKenna as Elvira Puccini, and the late Sir Robert Stephens in the title role. The Scottish National Opera cast includes the extraordinary Scottish soprano Linda Evans Gray in the role of Turandot, American baritone Williard White as Timur, and British baritone Alan Opie as Ping. Sadly, this was Ms. Gray’s last performance, as her career was cut short in 1984 by physical and emotional problems. She withdrew from the production and suspended her promising opera career. Ms. Gray was a student of the famed British soprano Dame Eva Turner, and her short career included a legendary performance as Isolde with the English National Opera, as well as appearances at Glyndebourne, with the Welsh National Opera and at Covent Garden.
Doria Manfredi was a maid who worked for the Puccini family when they lived in the small northern Italian village of Torre del Lago. She was wrongfully accused by composer’s insanely jealous wife Elvira of carrying on an illicit relationship with the womanizing Puccini. Manfredi, who, after death, was proved completely innocent, was so distraught by the charges that she committed suicide by poisoning herself. She died a horrible and painful death. Puccini’s wife was later found guilty of “public defamation” and sentenced to five months and five days in prison.
The story of Doria Manfredi was brought to the attention of filmmaker Tony Palmer by Edward Greenfield, distinguished music critic of The Guardian, after a new section about Manfredi was added in the mid-1970s to Moscoe Carner’s 1958 Puccini: A Critical Biography. Palmer sought out Carner, who was intrigued by his fascination with the Manfredi story. Palmer and Carner both saw the parallels to Puccini’s last opera Turandot in “the loveless woman who kills for love, Turandot (Elvira); the slave girl who kills herself, Liu (Manfredi); the village gossips, Ping, Pang and Pong; [and] the village elder who accepts his guilt in the tragedy, Timur.” Carner believed that the psychological trauma resulting from Manfredi’s death may have made it impossible for the composer to complete the opera, despite the long-held belief that he simply died before he had a chance to finish it. According to Palmer, Carner indicated that Puccini may have ceased his attempts to finish Turandot in 1922, a full two years before his death. This, if true, gives the famous Toscanini story an especially eerie quality. (Toscanini stopped the performance at Liu’s death during its 1926 premiere at La Scala and said, “At this point, Puccini laid down his pen.”) Was the composer simply too distraught to finish an opera whose libretto had originally called for a “happy ending”?
Featuring famed British actor Trevor Howard (Brief Encounter, The Third Man, Ryan’s Daughter, Gandhi) and written by award-winning playwright John Osborne (Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Luther), Tony Palmer’s God Rot Tunbridge Wells was originally broadcast on British television in 1985 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Georg Frederic Handel.
The film derives its title from a letter Osborne claims Handel wrote after a visit to the Tunbridge Wells Ladies’ Music Circle, who had invited him to hear a performance of “their Messiah.” Handel allegedly retorted “I always thought it was my Messiah.” He accepted the invitation, only to make a quick escape after the first hour. When he returned home, he allegedly shot off an angry letter describing the horrid experience, signing off with the line “so God rot Tunbridge Wells.”
Early reviews of the film were dismal, with critics asking what John Osborne could possibly know about music-and even savaging poor Trevor Howard (this was his last major film), who was very hurt by the film’s early notices. At first, only the music escaped criticism: the film features performances by Sir Charles Mackerras, the English Chamber Orchestra, Emma Kirkby, James Bowman, Elizabeth Harwood, John Shirley-Quirk, Simon Preston, Anthony Rolfe-Johnson, Valerie Masterson, and Andrei Gavrilov.
However, the tide eventually turned, and critics began to understand that Osborne had “attempted to strip away what felt like centuries of bad Handel performances …and reveal a composer who had burst upon London like a tornado and not only shaken the smugness of Georgian England to its roots, but laid the foundations of an entirely different tradition of British music making-bold, brassy and brilliant. ”
NOTE:
The essay below was written by the award-winning filmmaker Tony Palmer, whose superb catalog is a legend (as is he). Naxos of America began distribution of his films in January; however, some of the films which he references in his essay are not–as yet–distributed by us (the Margot Fonteyn, Britten, Stravinsky, Richard Burton and Testimony–his film about Dmitri Shostakovich).
For those two people who may not know much about Tony Palmer, Palmer has made many iconic films including All You Need is Love (a 17-part series about the history of popular music), All My Loving, 200 Motels, the acclaimed Wagner film (with Burton/Redgrave, etc), Callas (portrait and tribute to the great singer), O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams (his most recent film), several films about composer Benjamin Britten (including his production of Death in Venice), Puccini, The Salzburg Festival - A Brief History, Testimony (about composer Dmitri Shostakovich, starring Ben Kingsley), and Parsifal, which featured Placido Domingo. I’m including the link to his website here, as I’ve only listed a precious few of his cinematic accomplishments. His career spans over 40 years, during which time he has won 40 international prizes for his work, including 12 Gold Medals at the New York Film & Television Festival, as well as numerous BAFTA (British Academy of Film & Television) and EMMY nominations and awards. He is the only person to have won the Prix Italia twice.
As of this posting, Naxos of America distributes five of his classical titles: O Thou Transcendent: The Life of Ralph Vaughan Williams, Callas, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs: Symphony No. 3 (Gorecki), Puccini, and God Rot Tunbridge Wells(a film about Handel featuring renowned actor Trevor Howard).
I am fascinated by artists whose lives display phenomenal courage - physical, psychological and moral – the kind of courage that most of us are incapable of. To stand naked upon a stage, whether as an actor or a singer or a dancer, and have nothing but your skill and self-belief to protect you, is an experience that no-one who has not done so can begin to understand. Nor the incredible sacrifices that every performer is forced to make in order to achieve that moment of perfection and magic that we all demand and worship.
Maria Callas, a broken woman, sings of her insecurities with a searing honesty that transcends mere singing. Shostakovich, who endured unimaginable horrors to tell us all, and for all time, what life was like under the monster Stalin. Richard Burton, the 12th of 13 children, determined to make it out of the coal mines to which his family seemed condemned, buying the biggest diamond in the world, an epileptic drinking himself and his talent to oblivion because the strain was so great. Puccini, whose life was torn apart by a scandal involving the suicide of his maid. Handel, blind, despairing, railing against all those who had stolen his copyrights. Margot Fonteyn, used and abused and betrayed from the age of 14 until almost the day she died, the greatest ballerina in the world, dying penniless in a tin shack and buried in a pauper’s grave. Scott Joplin, the son of slaves, struggling in a segregated and bigoted society, to write an opera! Bob Dylan, the greatest lyric poet of the second half of the 20th century, taking on almost single-handedly the mendacity of a militarised nation. Benjamin Britten, openly homosexual when it was illegal and punishable by imprisonment, driven by a terrible and haunting belief in his own worthlessness … the list is endless.
And these are the subjects of my films. And such subjects cannot be “encapsulated” in a television “slot.” I don’t care tuppence for the demands of cretinous and pompous “commissioning editors” of television companies whose attention spans are less than that of a flea. I refuse moreover to have any kind of commentary in my films. Unlike commissioning editors, the audience is not stupid. It resents being told what to think, especially by a whining (often female) voice uttering banalities. And as for the critics, many of them illiterate and ignorant, why should I care about such people?
The problem is, as Shostakovich memorably put it, “to reach the people. That is the question. But how is it done?” And without wishing to elevate the craft of making films beyond its ultimately menial level, it is perhaps worth pointing out that it is an essentially solitary occupation. As Orson Welles eloquently described it: it is “a collective endeavour, driven by a singular, blinding vision.” So to work occasionally in the theatre, especially the opera, is to be reminded of this collective endeavour and to hear, at first hand, an audience response. It can be exhilarating like no other sexual experience – I remember the first night of the Russian première of Parsifal, conducted by Gergiev. But it can also be humiliating – I remember a group of indolent, over-paid, English tubs of lard, thinking (it seemed to me) they were on holiday instead of performing, wrecking a production of Peter Grimes. Such experiences are necessary, however, because they are the closest one gets to the experiences that I have spent my life examining in my films.
Finally, I have never understood the difference between so-called “classical music” and “popular music.” Stravinsky once told me there were only three kinds of music, good music, bad music and non-music, and it doesn’t matter a damn if it’s a symphony, or jazz, or rock’n’roll. Later he refined this categorisation. “Only two musics,” he declared. And then he clenched his fist and said “That’s the first.” And then he opened the palm of his hand and stretched it towards me. “That’s the second,” he said.
I hope my films are the second.
–Tony Palmer
“I don’t think a composer can really be great without a unique sense of harmony. Maybe it is the presence of Tallis in that piece that drives the harmonic movement—it’s that, it’s the very wide-spread tessitura (very high with the very low) so you get the feeling you are in a cathedral, which is a magical quality if it’s well-played … Imagine, I’d never heard an orchestra before and this incredible and wide-spread resonant chord filled the hall …”
—John Adams on Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis
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The tragic story of Doria Manfredi and her relationship with Giacomo Puccini was suppressed for almost 80 years by either Puccini’s publisher, Ricordi, or his family (or both). Tony Palmer’s Puccini juxtaposes a dramatization of this tragic story with footage from his controversial 1984 production of Turandot for the Scottish National Opera. (The production was lambasted by the critics, but the entire run was sold-out, with tickets going on the black market for £100).Written by Charles Wood (Wagner), the film features a superb cast, including actress Virginia McKenna as Elvira Puccini, and the late Sir Robert Stephens in the title role. The Scottish National Opera cast includes the extraordinary Scottish soprano Linda Evans Gray in the role of Turandot, American baritone Williard White as Timur, and British baritone Alan Opie as Ping. Sadly, this was Ms. Gray’s last performance, as her career was cut short in 1984 by physical and emotional problems. She withdrew from the production and suspended her promising opera career. Ms. Gray was a student of the famed British soprano Dame Eva Turner, and her short career included a legendary performance as Isolde with the English National Opera, as well as appearances at Glyndebourne, with the Welsh National Opera and at Covent Garden.
Featuring famed British actor Trevor Howard (Brief Encounter, The Third Man, Ryan’s Daughter, Gandhi) and written by award-winning playwright John Osborne (Look Back in Anger, The Entertainer, Luther), Tony Palmer’s God Rot Tunbridge Wells was originally broadcast on British television in 1985 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Georg Frederic Handel.
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