The story of Luigi Arditi’s Ottoman cantata sung before
Sultan Abdülaziz at London’s Crystal Palace in 1867
Emre Aracı
Many years ago, in the late 1980’s, I came across a manuscript score at the Istanbul University Rare Books Library, near Beyazıt Square, among a collection of books and manuscripts held originally at the old Yıldız Palace Library. Beautifully bound in a dark red velvet binding, with gilt lettering and borders, the score was presented to the Turkish court in the 19th century and its pages looked as if they hadn’t been opened for the past century and a half. On its title page, it had a dedication in French, which read: “Hymne dédié a S. M. I. le Sultan Abdul-Medjid par Louis Arditi”. Scored for two sopranos, a tenor and a bass, accompanied by a chorus and large orchestra, the cantata was written by the Italian composer and conductor Luigi Arditi and was dedicated to the Ottoman Sultan Abdülmecid. This royal dedication was also given in the score in the Ottoman language, describing its composer, Arditi, in keeping with the etiquette of the times, as a slave of the Sultan and that he was praying day and night, singing with the angels, like a nightingale, in praise of the Ottoman Padişah. No indication was given, however, as to the authorship of the text, which he had set to music.
I continued to turn the pages of this rather rare original manuscript score in the university library. To that day I had seen many scores, but this was the first time I was seeing a choral ode in the Italian operatic style with words in the Ottoman language written out phonetically using the Latin alphabet, instead of the original Arabic script, to enable the non-Ottoman singers to pronounce the words correctly. Arditi’s name was clearly visible in the vocal text, as the person making this musical offering to the Sultan.
This was indeed an exceptionally hybrid work, bringing Italian opera and Ottoman words together. Afterwards I went out and walked towards Beyazıt Square and in the hustle and bustle of the city, in my mind’s ear was still hearing the powerful opening chords of this Ottoman hymn, which I had just discovered among a stack of old scores and books.
Almost totally forgotten today, Luigi Arditi was once a well-known conductor and composer. Born in 1822 in the town of Crescentino in Italy, he studied at the Milan Conservatoire, where he played the violin, before embarking on a career of operatic conducting in far away places like Havana, New York and Philadelphia. Soon rising into prominence, he conducted the London premiere, in 1863, of Gounod’s Faust attended by the composer himself. He also knew Rossini and Verdi, whose operas he championed. Arditi also conducted the London premiere of The Flying Dutchman and subsequently met Wagner in Vienna, after a concert the German maestro had conducted, when he was waiting for him “with outstretched hands” and embraced him affectionately to express his thanks. After 1885 Arditi became the principal conductor of the Covent Garden Opera House in London. One of his enduring songs was a lively waltz entitled Il Bacio (The Kiss), which was a particular favourite of the soprano Adelina Patti, which she often incorporated into the music lesson scene in Act II of Rossini’s Barber of Seville. A rare 1906 recording of this song survives in her voice.
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Arditi had penned his memoirs seven years prior to his death in 1903. Entitled My Reminiscences it was prepared for publication by the Baroness von Zedlitz who wrote in her introduction the following: “His life, like that of many talented composers, has not been devoid of struggles, disappointments, and cares. It was by adventurous experience that he acquired such practical virtues as courage and perseverance, and, above all, the capacity (of which he is justly proud) of confronting and surmounting difficulties. He is indisputably one of the most popular orchestral conductors of Italian Opera in the world at the present time; and of the many foreign musical artists who have established their domicile in our country, there is no one more deserving of the esteem of the profession and the public”, (Luigi Arditi, My Reminiscences, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1896, pp. xv-xvi).
So how did Arditi come to write an Ottoman cantata dedicated to the Sultan? Why was a work of this nature created in the first place? And how was it possible that it survived in the archive of a university library in Beyazıt to this day and age? The 34-year-old Arditi, in the prime of his career, was offered positions as artistic director at various opera houses in Europe during the 1856-57 season, including the Teatro del Oriente in Madrid and the Teatro Reggio in Turin. But there was one more, a rather unexpected establishment, which had made a lucrative offer to the Italian maestro in the same season. This was Constantinople’s Italian Opera House, the Naum Theatre in Pera, owned by the brothers Naum, who were originally from Aleppo and were also the acting empresari. Arditi chose the last of the three offers, as it was not only the most lucrative proposal that had been put before him, but it also afforded him the opportunity of seeing something of Eastern life and its manners and customs. His American wife Virginia also accompanied him on this Oriental adventure. The Arditis arrived in Constantinople via Venice in the autumn of 1856, months after the end of the Crimean War. Virginia was later to remember their arrival in a letter to her mother, published in her husband’s memoirs:
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“On the morning of our arrival in the magnificent Golden Horn, the sun shone brilliantly on the gleaming minarets and spires of the gorgeous mosques. This gave us a foresight of Oriental luxury as we had pictured it to ourselves; but, alas for the fond hopes that were engendered by distance, which lent a great deal of enchantment to our view, and by the glorious sunshine which made all dazzle and glitter under its magic rays. No sooner had we set foot in Stamboul, the ancient part of Constantinople, than the miserable squalor of our surroundings made itself apparent. Our destination was Pera, the European quarter; and when we discovered, to our dismay, that vehicles were unknown luxuries in those parts, we were compelled to tramp up an interminably steep hill, preceded by extremely odoriferous hamals, who carried our luggage on their shoulders, while swarms of wretchedly hungry outcast dogs followed us closely. At last we reached the opera house, and were ushered into the presence of the brothers Naum, the Impresari, who, to do them justice, were apologetic with regard to the conspicuous absence of carriages, while explaining that those used by the ladies of the harem were constructed without springs, and consequently quite impossible for us to use”, (My Reminiscences, p. 36).
In that season in Istanbul, Arditi conducted Verdi’s Luisa Miller, Il Trovatore, La Traviata and Ernani, as well as Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Lucrezia Borgia and Bellini’s Sonnambula and Norma. But as Virginia recounted in her letter, Luigi had found himself among a rowdy set of Italians, who were capable of any outrage if her husband did not accede to their demands. And the Sultan, who had a private box at the theatre, refrained from attending performances, following a murder committed within the precincts of Naum’s establishment. Instead he invited artists to his newly inaugurated palace at Dolmabahçe for private performances, as the sumptuous Dolmabahçe Palace Theatre, which was to open in 1859, had not yet been inaugurated at this time. This jewel-box of a theatre, decorated by Charles Séchan of the Paris Opera, was sadly to be gutted by fire and reduced to ashes only a few years after its opening. Alas, no trace of this building could be found today as a 6-lane thoroughfare was cut across over its foundations in the following century. Soon after his arrival in Constantinople, Arditi was also invited to the palace on several occasions to conduct selections of operatic music featuring the artists of the Naum Theatre.
On one of those occasions Virginia also accompanied her husband to the palace, only to be told to her surprise, that under no condition she would be admitted to the performance. But in the end, determined to enter the glittering salon, “by hook or by crook”, as she put it, she triumphantly managed to smuggle herself with the aid of the double bass player, behind whose instrument she practically hid and gave us this account:
“Through the whole performance I sat within a very short distance of the Sultan, and of the grating behind which the members of his harem were ranged, whose flashing jewels were, alas all that I could see, owing to the closeness of the bars. Luigi looked splendid in his fez, and was requested to play several violin solos, which were encored by the imperial party, and gave so much pleasure to the Sultan that he sent his dragoman, or Oriental interpreter, to Luigi, requesting him to salute his Imperial Majesty according to Turkish fashion, a very elaborate undertaking. At the end of the performance exquisite coffee and sweets were served to us in cups and plates of pink enamel, which were positively studded with diamonds and other precious jewels”, (My Reminiscences, p. 38). |
In her letter, Virginia also mentions that Luigi had just completed a cantata which he had written expressly for and dedicated to the Sultan. The words were in the Turkish language and the vocalists who had been engaged to sing it before the Sultan seemed to be having some difficulty in mastering them. Arditi’s new Turkish cantata was also mentioned in the local French press of the time, and according to the Journal de Constantinople its premiere took place at the closing concert of the Naum Theatre on Monday, 6 April 1857, with a further performance before the Sultan and his court at Dolmabahçe Palace on the evening of Wednesday 15 April. On that evening the entertainment also included a ballet performance and Act I of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia.
Arditi himself personally conducted the performance and Sultan Abdülmecid was so delighted by the work that he made a gift of 50,000 piastres to the entire company; 30,000 of which went to the artists, 10,000 to the theatre management and 10,000 to the composer. Arditi’s Turkish cantata was not the only work of its kind, nor was it the first to be composed in this genre. In fact there were more than several other similar works which preceded it. Giuseppe Donizetti, the eldest brother of the famous opera composer, who served as master of music to the Sultans and resided in Constantinople from 1828 until his death in February 1856, and known as Donizetti Pasha, for instance, composed similar ceremonial hymns in praise of the Sultan in the Ottoman language. His successor, another Italian, Callisto Guatelli Pasha, as well as Angelo Mariani, the Italian conductor at the Naum Theatre, who was to introduce Richard Wagner to the south of the Alps, also penned Turkish cantatas honouring Sultan Abdülmecid.
The brothers Naum were anxious to re-engage Arditi for another year of opera in the Turkish capital; but as the maestro observed in his memoirs: “my wife, who had borne all our petty worries and discomfitures with excellent temper, patience, and fortitude, felt, as well as I, that we had endured enough hardships during our sojourn amid Oriental life and surroundings, and we accordingly decided to return to Italy”, (My Reminiscences, p. 39). Indeed they duly left the Port of Istanbul on Friday, 5 June 1857, bound for Italy, and left behind was the autograph score of his Turkish cantata in its velvet binding as presented to the court. Yet, Luigi Arditi’s path with the Turkish court and with another Ottoman Sultan was to cross again, rather unexpectedly, exactly 10 years later and this time not in Constantinople, but in London.
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In 1861 Sultan Abdülmecid died of tuberculosis at the age of 38. He had married nineteen times and had forty-four children, but was succeeded according to Ottoman custom by his half-brother Sultan Abdülaziz, who was to reign for a further 16 years. The reign of the new Sultan included many firsts in Ottoman history, such as his extensive 6-week Western European tour in the summer of 1867, to cities like Paris, London and Vienna. The trip was triggered on the invitation of Napoleon III of France, who brought together many heads of state that summer, during the award-giving ceremony of the Exposition Universelle, held in Paris. From the French capital the Sultan and his entourage travelled to Britain, arriving at Dover on the morning of 12 July 1867 on board the French Royal Yacht Reine Hortense.
The Ottoman party travelled by train to Charing Cross and lodged at Buckingham Palace. The Sultan was to stay in London for 11 days and during that time he was hosted and feted at many special events, including dinners, grand balls, receptions and concerts. Queen Victoria hosted him at a luncheon at Windsor Castle and successive balls were given in his honour at the New India Office and at Guildhall at the City of London. On 17 July, the Sultan took part in a Naval Review at Portsmouth, when he was made the Knight of the Order of the Garter by the Queen, on board the Royal Yacht Victoria and Albert during stormy weather. Later mentioning the occasion in a letter to her daughter Princess Victoria, the Queen referred to the Sultan as “My Oriental brother”.
There seemed to be no end to the entertainment prepared for this “Oriental brother” in London. On the evening of 15 July, he was the guest of honour at the Covent Garden Opera House to see Auber’s Masaniello, with The Times commenting: “as maybe easily believed, not a soul in the theatre had come either to hear or to see Masaniello; and if, instead of the first, second, and third acts, the first had been played three times over, no one would have remarked it”, (The Times, 16 July 1867). On the streets of London, military bands played the Sultan’s Imperial March, the Aziziye, composed by his master of music, Guatelli Pasha, while the city’s music publishers decorated their shop windows with editions of military marches expressly written for the Sultan, with his portraits featuring on their front covers.
The Aziziye March wasn’t the only official music of the Ottoman court that was heard in London that week, as an unusual surprise awaited the Sultan during the dinner, given in his honour, at Marlborough House by the Prince of Wales on the evening of 13 July. As was customary, the Grenadier Guards Band under the direction of Dan Godfrey was providing the musical entertainment that evening, which featured works by Meyerbeer, Auber, Gounod and Donizetti. But suddenly the band started playing a barcarolle, which was rather familiar to H. I. M. the Sultan, for it was his own composition. La Gondole Barcarolle was published by the Lucca Edition in Milan, in piano score, but the printers had made a rather grave mistake and the Sultan’s imperial cypher, his tughra, was accidentally printed upside down. Perhaps that’s why I wasn’t able to find a copy of the score anywhere in Turkey, but a rare copy had managed to make its way to the Bibliotheque Royale of Napoléon III.
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Taught by Guatelli Pasha, the Sultan played the piano and composed a handful of similar short salon pieces. The news of his unexpected London debut as a composer, albeit an amateur one, was soon taken up in the British press and became a source for much ironic commentary. Henry Sutherland Edwards, known for his Life of Rossini, for instance, writing under the pseudonym of Shaver Silver observed: “the Sultan is a great musician. […] He has written a barcarolle. In this little fact I see hope for the East. If the Sultan can write a barcarolle all Turkey may awaken to a new life, and may learn to cultivate arts which the Turks have hitherto spurned, or at least ignored. In writing a barcarolle the Sultan has set a noble example. […] [It] ought to be engraved with diamonds on plates of gold, and the believers in the all powerful influence of climate ought to pay for the engraving”, (The Musical World, 20 July 1867).
Large advertisements placed in newspapers, many days in advance, announced that “This exceptionally great and in many respects unique, Fete will comprise a Grand Operatic Festival Concert of rare excellence, supported by the entire company of Her Majesty’s Theatre (which will be closed on that day), the Band of the Crystal Palace Company, Military Bands and a Festival Chorus selected from all the Choral Societies and Choirs, forming a Musical display such as can only be brought together on the Crystal Palace Handel Orchestra”, (The Illustrated London News, 13 July 1867). But the jewel in the crown of the whole fete was a Turkish Ode, an Inno Turco, specially commissioned for the evening, which was to be sung by a gigantic choir of 1,600 singers in the original Ottoman language. The colossal stage of Crystal Palace often hosted large choirs of this size, especially during the Handel Festivals held here annualy, but a British choir singing in Turkish was certainly unprecedented. Paris had celebrated the Exposition Universelle with a special cantata written by the 75-year-old Rossini dedicated to “Napoleon III and his brave people”, comprising a grand orchestra, military bands, choirs, with cannon effects and church bells, which the Sultan heard along with all the royal guests, during the award-giving ceremony on 1 July, but two weeks later, here in London, this time he was being honoured, with a cantata in his native tongue and dedicated to himself.
The composer of this work was no other than Luigi Arditi, who by this time had moved to England and having settled in London, taken over the musical directorship of Her Majesty’s Theatre. Referring to it as the “Oriental Cantata”, Arditi later gave a short description of his Turkish composition in his Reminscences, in the following words: “I composed a complimentary “Ode to the Sultan”, the spirited words of which came from the pen of Zaffiraki Effendi. I was fortunately able to introduce some characteristic Turkish melodies. The Ode was sung to the illustrious visitor by several of our artists and chorus, and met with a most flattering reception from the Sultan”, (My Reminiscences, p. 145).
Did this mean that Arditi composed yet another Ottoman ode for another Ottoman Sultan? This question was miraculously answered when a printed piano score of the Crystal Palace ode came to light at the British Library, which was published in London, no doubt soon after the concert, with a full dedication to the Sultan, also featuring his tughra and again printed in the wrong way. And the mystery was solved when the two odes, 10 years apart, were placed side by side. Musically speaking they were almost identical, save for a recitative section for soprano and chorus in the latter version, which was inserted after the instrumental introduction and before the general tutti. It is indeed in the Turkish language; with the soprano asking: “Acep nedir sebep?” - “What is the reason?”; implying the reason for so many eager faces with bright smiles in London. And the chorus answers: “Teşrifi teşrifi Abdülaziz Han; şadumanedir sebep” - “Sooltan Abdool Aziz comes hail the cause of our delight”. The Turkish text in the printed piano score appears only in this section; so Zaffiraki Efendi’s original Ottoman text is missing, except for its English translation, which was printed in the newspapers after the concert.
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Thirty thousand attended this historic concert at Crystal Palace, which The Musical Times highly praised: “The fete given by Royal command in honour of the Sultan was highly complimentary to our distinguished guest; not only because good singers were engaged, and good music was given, but because an ‘Ode to the Sultan’ was sung in the Turkish language; or at all events as near as the vocalists could get to it, with the English alphabet to assist them. Whether the words which reached the Sultan’s ears sounded to him a bit like Turkish we have no means of ascertaining: but as music is an universal language, we have little doubt that the notes, at least found their way to his heart, and must have convinced him that his welcome to this country was not a mere matter of conventional form”, (The Musical Times, 1 August 1867, p. 122). Ömer Faiz Efendi, the mayor of Istanbul who was among the Turkish delegation summed up the mood in his memoirs: “Two thousand singers sang the ode dedicated to His Majesty the Sultan. This wonderful sight which lasted for hours was an act of kindness nowhere to be seen in the entire world”, (Cemal Kutay, Sultan Aziz’in Avrupa Seyahati, Boğaziçi Yayınları, p. 52).
The day I discovered Arditi’s cantata in Istanbul all those years ago, I promised myself that I would find a way of bringing this music back to life. An opportunity came in March 2005, with the kind and generous support of Nurol Holding and the Çarmıklı family, Prague Symphony Orchestra and Philharmonic Chorus were engaged at the historic concert hall of the Rudolfinum in Prague. I prepared a new transcription from Arditi’s Istanbul autograph, also incorporating the London recitative with a new orchestration, since this section was only available in piano score. In Ateş Orga’s expert guidance, who was also our producer, Luigi Arditi’s Inno Turco, or Turkish Hymn was recorded, under my baton, for the first time, nearly a century and a half after its conception and was released by Kalan Records in Turkey and Brilliant Classics worldwide. The front cover of the CD issued in Turkey features an image of the bronz medallion struck by the City of London to commemorate the Sultan’s visit to the British capital, with “Welcome” written on it. The day I stood on the rostrum at the Rudolfinum among all those musicians I recalled a stanza from Zaffiraki Efendi’s text published in The Times on 17 July 1867. It is still as valid now as it was then and will be in the future:
“All the West with light is glowing, all the East with light ablaze
Eastern night is Western darkness, Eastern suns bring Western days
East and West should join as sisters, side by side their voices raise
Singing on the day of gladness songs of welcome, songs of praise”.
Eastern night is Western darkness, Eastern suns bring Western days
East and West should join as sisters, side by side their voices raise
Singing on the day of gladness songs of welcome, songs of praise”.
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