Guglielmo Ratcliff is a tragic opera in four acts by Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Mascagni

Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...

 to an Italian libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Andrea Maffei

Andrea Maffei

Andrea Maffei was an Italian poet, translator and librettist.-Life:Maffei was born in Molina di Ledro, Trentino.A follower of Vincenzo Monti, he formed part of the 19th century Italian classicist literary culture. Gaining laurea in jurisprudence, he moved for some years to Verona, then to Venice...

, translated from the German

Culture of Germany

German culture began long before the rise of Germany as a nation-state and spanned the entire German-speaking world. From its roots, culture in Germany has been shaped by major intellectual and popular currents in Europe, both religious and secular...

 play Wilhelm Ratcliff (1822) by Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine

Christian Johann Heinrich Heine was one of the most significant German poets of the 19th century. He was also a journalist, essayist, and literary critic. He is best known outside Germany for his early lyric poetry, which was set to music in the form of Lieder by composers such as Robert Schumann...

. Mascagni had substantially finished the composition of Ratcliff before the phenomal success of his first performed opera Cavalleria Rustiacana. After the composition and performance of further operas (l'Amico Fritz in 1891, Rantzau in 1893, Silvano in 1895) Ratcliff was eventually performed in 1895. It premiered on February 16, 1895, at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

, and has been revived a number of times since, most recently in a concert performance on November 25, 2003, at Alice Tully Hall

Alice Tully Hall

Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. It is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assisted in the construction of the hall...

, New York

New York

New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

, conducted by Alfredo Silipigni. Mascagni often wrote that Ratcliff was his "best opera." However, it has not entered the standard operatic repertoire, in part because the title role is one of the most taxing tenor parts ever written. It is especially known for its Act III Intermezzo

Intermezzo

In music, an intermezzo , in the most general sense, is a composition which fits between other musical or dramatic entities, such as acts of a play or movements of a larger musical work...

, which features prominently in the Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese

Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...

 film Raging Bull. (Heine's play was also used as the basis for César Cui

César Cui

César Antonovich Cui was a Russian of French and Lithuanian descent. His profession was as an army officer and a teacher of fortifications; his avocational life has particular significance in the history of music, in that he was a composer and music critic; in this sideline he is known as a...

's 1869 opera of the same name

William Ratcliff (Cui)

William Ratcliff is an opera in three acts, composed by César Cui during 1861-1868; it was premiered on 14 February 1869 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg under the conductorship of Eduard Nápravník...

 and for Volkmar Andreae

Volkmar Andreae

Volkmar Andreae was a Swiss conductor and composer.Andreae was born in Bern. He received piano instruction as a child and his first lessons in composition with Karl Munzinger. From 1897 to 1900, he studied at the Cologne Conservatory and was a student of Fritz Brun, Franz Wüllner, and Friedrich...

's 1914 opera Ratcliff.)

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere cast, 16 February 1895 (Conductor: Pietro Mascagni)
Guglielmo Ratcliff	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Giovanni Battista De Negri
Maria	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Adelina Stehle Adelina Stehle Adelina Stehle was an Austrian-born operatic soprano, associated almost entirely with the Italian repertory. She studied singing in Milan and debuted as Amina in 1881 in Broni in Lombardy. Her career eventually brought her to La Scala in 1890 where she flourished. She took part in a series of...
Count Douglas, betrothed to Maria	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Giuseppe Pacini
Margherita, Maria's nurse	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...	Della Rogers
MacGregor, a Scottish lord, Maria's father	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Giuseppe De Grazia
Lesley, Ratcliff's friend	tenor	Gaetano Matteo Mazzanti
Tom, an innkeeper	bass	Giovanni Scarneo
Willie, Tom's young son	contralto Contralto Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...	Arminda Parsi Pettinella
Robin, a thief	bass	Raffaele Terzi
Dick, a thief	tenor	Aristide Masiero
Bell, a thief	baritone	G. Calvi
John, a thief	bass	Giuseppe Rosci
Taddie, a thief	tenor	Giovanni Francesco Fabbri
A servant	tenor	A. Degani

Act 1

Count Douglas, Maria's betrothed, arrives at the Castle of Maria and her father MacGregor. He tells them how he was attacked by bandits near the castle but saved by an unknown knight. Maria faints, and then recovers. MacGregor tells Douglas about Gugliemo Ratcliff, whom Maria had rejected as a suitor. Ratcliff's revenge was to challenge her next two suitors to duels in which he killed them. Count Douglas then receives a message from Ratcliff delivered by his friend Lesley challenging him to a similar duel at Black Rock.

Act 2

In an inn frequented by thieves and swindlers, the innkeeper Tom, is holding his son, Willie on his knees. When he asks the child to recite the Pater Noster

Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer is a central prayer in Christianity. In the New Testament of the Christian Bible, it appears in two forms: in the Gospel of Matthew as part of the discourse on ostentation in the Sermon on the Mount, and in the Gospel of Luke, which records Jesus being approached by "one of his...

, he repeatedly stumbles on the line "And lead us not into temptation". Tom grows increasingly angry with the boy, tells him that he will end up like the clientele of the inn, and eventually sends him from the room. Ratcliff then tells Lesley, how Maria's rejection of him led to his compulsion to kill any man who succeeded in winning her love. Ratcliff is disturbed by the appearance of strange figures who, unbeknownst to him, are the ghosts of Maria's dead suitors.

Act 3

Douglas arrives at Black Rock for his duel with Ratcliff. The two strange figures who have been following Ratlcliff briefly appear and then disappear. When Ratcliff arrives, Douglas realises that he is the knight who had saved him from the bandits, and when he gets the better of Ratcliff in the duel refuses to kill kim. Ratcliff is left lying on the ground where he is again visited by the ghostly figures.

Act 4

In her room, Maria is preparing for her wedding to Douglas. Her nurse, Margherita, tells Maria the story of her mother Elisa's death. Before she married MacGregor, Elisa had been in love with Edward, Guglielmo Ratcliff's father, but both married others. Edward and Elisa later realised their mistake and became lovers. When MacGregor found out, he murdered Edward, and Elisa died from grief. Gugliemo Ratcliff then bursts into Maria's room covered in blood from his unsuccessful duel with Douglas and begs Maria to run away with him. With her mother's story still on her mind and thinking that she might be making the same mistake, Maria at first feels pity for Guglielmo, but then asks him to leave. Her refusal drives Guglielmo mad. He kills both Maria and her father who rushes into the room after hearing her calls for help. Ratcliff then commits suicide. The opera ends with his dying words "O Maria, vengo a te! Son qui, soave Maria!" ("Oh Maria, I'm coming to you. I'm here my sweet Maria!")