Program Notes: Beethoven's Ah! Perfido

The Boston Cecilia performed this work at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston on April 13, 1997.

The scene and aria, Ah! Perfido, is one of the milestone works in the repertoire for dramatic soprano and orchestra. It is fairly early (1796), and its form is classical, but there is a power to the declamation that looks more forward in the direction of Verdi than back towards Mozart. It was composed for Josepha Duschek, the singer for whom Mozart wrote the concert aria Bella mia fiamma (K. 528); and, in formal terms, Mozart's aria served as a model for Beethoven's.

George Marek in his book, Beethoven: Biography of a Genius, gives an account of the first Viennese performance in December 1808. The concert, which was a long one (it included both the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, a piano concerto, the Choral Fantasy and several other works, as well as Ah! Perfido) seems to have been ill-fated from the outset. The committee charged with organizing it didn't do its job. Rehearsals went badly. Beethoven was irascible and intemperate in his dealings with his musicians, and had in fact had a run-in with the same orchestra at a concert only a few weeks earlier. The players even lobbied for Beethoven's replacement as conductor, but relented at the last minute.

As to the soloist for Ah! Perfido, (according to Marek): "Milder, who had sung Leonore, consented at once. Beethoven was eager to get her and wrote to Röckel that he was willing to come himself 'to kiss the hem of her garment.' He then quarreled with Milder; she refused to appear. Röckel looked around for someone else, and finally engaged....a Fräulein Josephine Killitschgy, who was young and inexperienced. [She later gained fame as a singer and created the role of Leonore at the first performance in Berlin]. When Beethoven led her on the stage she had such an attack of nerves that she trembled all over and butchered the aria." The concert was fraught with other equally catastrophic mishaps and, instead of giving Beethoven the triumph he had needed and expected, it turned out to be pretty much a disaster.

Ah! Perfido is the cry of a woman who has been betrayed in love. Vacillating between a desire for vengeance and desolation at her abandonment, she invokes on her betrayer the wrath of the gods; but then, softening, she begs fate to spare him. The forceful opening recitative with its constantly changing tempi and agitato accompaniment is prelude to the aria proper, the core of the work, Adagio at first, in which the woman pleads not to be forsaken, then Allegro as the fury returns. A gentler section marked Più lento is a plea for mercy, following which come alternating reprises of both slow and fast sections. The concluding sections portray a piling on of conflicting emotions and accumulating tensions in terms that only Beethoven could devise. Throughout, the orchestra underscores, amplifies, challenges the singer, but always in full support of the dramatic situation. Ah! Perfido is a singular masterwork in the long history of dramatic vocal art. Mastery of its prodigious demands is one of the benchmarks in the careers of each generation's major artists, and for good reason.

© 2004 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.