ErN 8, entry July 2008,
revised June 2019
My Fading German, Agatha
Christie,
Melfi,
Malfi, Amalfi,
Mozart & Naples
I was in Paestum the
other week, challenging my fading physical skills in a
hotel pool and, at the same time (well, not really —that
would’ve got the pages wet) challenging my fading German
skills with a copy of something I picked up from the
take-a-book-leave-a-book table in the lobby: Ruhe Unsanft (original English title, Sleeping Murder) by Agatha Christie
(photo insert, right). It is from 1976 and was
Christie’s last Miss Marple detective story (although it
was written four decades before it was published).
It was pretty good in spite of the terrible title of the original. The German title, however, is a gem: Ruhe unsanft is a pun on Ruhe sanft, the name of a lovely and tender aria from Mozart’s early, unfinished opera, Zaide (K. 344),* composed in 1780, with libretto by Johann Andreas Schachtner. Although the text, too, is incomplete, we assume he wrote at least the text of the lovely soprano aria, "Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben." It is the one aria in Zaide that is familiar to us today and is often performed. The title phrase is freely translated as, Gently rest, my dearest love. The un- prefix in German does the same thing as in English, so the German title of the book is like wishing Bitter dreams instead of Sweet dreams. Clever translation. The Italian title, however, is a real dog: Addio Miss Marple (Farewell, Miss Marple). (Italians like spoiler titles. Just to make sure you get it, the subtitle of the Italian version is Miss Marple’s last case. Spoiler alert: a very Italian title would have been, Miss Marple’s last case, the one where the brother is the murderer).
*Though not a formal musicological genre, the term "rescue opera" cropped up for works, that, as in Zaide, dealt with the rescue of enslaved Westerners from Muslim courts. The Sultan's favorite, Zaide, falls in love with Gomatz, a Christian slave. She finds him asleep beneath a tree and sings to him:
Ruhe sanft, mein holdes Leben, schlafe, bis dein Glück erwacht;/
[Gently rest, my dearest love. Sleep until your fortune wakes.] She places a portrait of herself next to him, saying "See how kindly she smiles at you." She sings, "Your sweetest dreams shall cradle you, your grandest wishes shall be real."
Not much is known of Johann Andreas Schachtner. He was a court trumpeter with literary ambitions. He frequented the Mozart household in Salzburg, and is the source of some anecdotes of the young Mozart. The opera, itself, was first discovered after Mozart's death and not performed in public until 1866.
A leitmotif in Ruhe Unsanft is a passage from John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi: "Cover her face. Mine eyes dazzle. She died young." Webster (1580-1634) was a late contemporary of Shakespeare’s. Webster wrote mostly comedies but is best remembered for two tragedies: The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi. They are dark, violent, and macabre and have been called the predecessors of the “Gothic novel” genre of the 1700s. T. S. Eliot said of Webster that he always saw “the skull beneath the skin,” and the character of John Webster puts in a cameo appearance as a boy in the 1998 film, Shakespeare in Love, where screen writer, Tom Stoppard, has young Webster say to Shakespeare, “I like it when they cut heads off and the daughter is mutilated with knives” in reference to Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus.
Webster’s
The Duchess of Malfi (The
Duchesse of Malfy) [he meant Amalfi]
was first performed in 1614 at the Globe Theater and is
a loose dramatization of the intrigues involving Joan
(Giovanna) of Aragon (1477-1510), daughter of Ferdinand
I, King of Naples. The events take place in the first
years of the 1500s; the play is grisly and winds up with
everyone being murdered, including the duchess. (She was
murdered in real life, too. That was pretty much par for
the course in the waning days of the Aragonese dynasty in Naples,
a time that appeals to anyone who likes it “…when they
cut heads off and the daughter is mutilated with
knives.”) I
have never read or seen the The Duchess of
Malfi and probably never will, although it does
remain relatively popular and is played not
infrequently. The basic story is based on a tale in Palace
of Pleasure by William Painter
(1540-1594), a collection of his translations of
“Pleasant Histories and excellent Novelles…out of divers
good and commendable authors...” that provide the
Italian settings and plots for much Elizabethan drama,
including a number of works by Shakespeare. The
collection was cobbled together by Painter from many
Italian sources including Boccaccio, Gian Francesco
Straparola, and, in the case of The
Duchesse of Malfy, Matteo Bandello (1485-1561). The tale of
his that was the source for Painter and then Webster was
his Novella XXVI, Il signor Antonio
Bologna sposa la duchessa di Malfi e tutti dui
[sic] sono ammazzati (Antonio
Bologna marries the duchess of Malfi and both are
murdered. I told you they like spoiler
titles.)
To me the big mystery is why they all call the place Malfi instead of Amalfi, unless they thought the “a” was an indefinite article in Italian as well as English. My, how veddy English that would be. (—“Oh, John, ask that swarthy little native guide what the name of that town on the coast is.”
—“I have asked, love. Apparently he
doesn’t know. He just keeps repeating that it’s a
Malfi. Look, there’s another one. The coast is covered
with Malfis. We could put our Bed & Breakfast in
that one over there.”)
On the other hand, there is another town in southern Italy named Melfi (famous as the town where the First Crusade was proclaimed in 1089). Amalfi may actually have been founded by settlers from Melfi; the origin of both words is probably an Italic root that means water. But Amalfi has never been Malfi or Malfy. (Italian translations of Webster correctly have the title as la Duchessa di Amalfi.) Maybe Webster didn’t know the difference, or maybe Painter didn’t. Bandello? Even he called it Malfi. He should have known better (even if he was from way up north —Castelnuovo Scrivia, population 6 to 7, near Torino). That’s still a mystery.
And
what of Horace Walpole, you
ask? How did he manage to get it right in The
Castle of Otranto when surely the conversation
must have gone, “You, there —swarthy little
native. What’s the name of that place with the spooky
castle?”—“Oh, Tranto.”
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