Tony Watts
Donna Leon is a very successful crime novelist. Her series of 27 crime novels are set in Venice, featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti. They have been translated into 35 languages and also, in Germany, into a well-known television series. She has been named by The Times as one of the 50 Greatest Crime Writers. But Handel operas have also played an important part in her life.
She was born in Montclair, New Jersey, USA in 1942. She taught English literature in various countries, including China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Her PhD on Jane Austen (still her favourite novelist) was aborted when she had to leave Iran hurriedly in the revolution of 1978/79, losing all her papers. In retrospect she feels it was a merciful release: ‘I was free from Graduate School – praise the Lord!’
In 1968 she visited Italy for the first time, fell in love with the country, and decided to live in Venice. She started writing her crime novels there when she was 50, and fairly soon became sufficiently successful to give up her teaching. She now only teaches once a year, at a music festival at Ernen in Switzerland. She moved to Switzerland in 2015, with two residences, in Zurich and in the mountains, though she still returns to Venice for around a week per month. She claims that her fame is accidental: ‘I’m irresponsible: I’ve never had any ambition to be successful or well-known.’ Her writing started ‘as a joke – pure dumb luck!’ She has resisted her novels being translated into Italian, to avoid celebrity there.
Her transformative induction into Handel was a performance of Alcina at Carnegie Hall in New York in the 1970s: ‘it was different from any opera I had experienced in my life, and I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the music’. Thereafter, she listened to lots of recordings of Handel operas, and went to performances when she could. Now, she experiences them almost exclusively in live rehearsals and performances. She particularly pursues Handel operas and recitals featuring her favourite singers, notably Anna Bonitatibus, Joyce DiDonato, Ann Hallenberg and Inga Kalna. Her favourite Handel works are Alcina and Giulio Cesare, with Il Trionfo, Semele and Rodelinda in contention.
For her, Handel is the pre-eminent composer. She likes other baroque composers, including Telemann, Vinci, Porpora, Cavalli and Purcell. Mozart and Bach are also ‘part of the pantheon’, and she goes to operas by Donizetti, Rossini with great delight. But for her, Handel is distinctive: ‘the plots are not important, but what matters is people’s feelings, how they express them in the arias, and how they learn. And how they forgive: I love him because he’s compassionate, and the music is compassionate.’ There are not many people in Handel operas who are wholly bad. The same is true in Donna Leon’s books: ‘I don’t think there are many people who are wholly bad. Usually they become heads of state’ (we agreed not to mention any names).
Also, Handel ‘understands the plight of women: women are toys to most operatic composers, but not to Handel: he takes them very seriously’. In this sense, ‘he’s Trollope and all the others are Dickens: Dickens will teach anyone how to write a novel, but he doesn’t know anything about women’.
A further transformational moment was a serendipitous meeting with Alan Curtis at a dinner party in Venice: ‘One of us said “Handel’s the greatest composer”, and the other said “By God he is!” And that was it: we married one another (figuratively) at that instant!’ A little later, Alan Curtis happened to be at dinner at her place when the phone rang. It was Dino Arici from the Solothurm Festival in Switzerland, wondering whether to include a baroque opera in his next festival and ‘whether there was a baroque opera that hasn’t been done much. So I asked Alan and he said “Arminio”. And I said “Alan can probably bring it”. So we took Arminio to Solothurm, and we had so much fun, that it took off.’
She supported Alan Curtis in sustaining Il Complesso Barocco, leading to its series of Handel CDs. The group ended with Alan Curtis’s death in 2015. But she continues to provide similar support to Il Pomo d’Oro, of which she is one of three founders. In addition to financial support, she likes to make suggestions, particularly on possible singers, though she leaves it to the musicians to make the decisions on such matters. ‘I’ve known some of the musicians for 20 years: they’re like my kids’. She is a doer, ‘but I avoid any responsibility about anything: I don’t like the idea that I might influence people’s lives in a bad way – that frightens me’. There are plans to record Agrippina, and she would also like to do Semele and Il Trionfo. Given the finances of the music world today, ‘to record an opera by Handel is an act of folly, but it is also an act of love – to the orchestra, to the singers, and to the people who like the music enough to try a new version; and I think it should be done’.
A major project with Alan Curtis was her book Handel’s Bestiary, published in 2010/11 in English, French, German and Spanish. He selected 12 simile arias from Handel’s operas that made reference to animals, and she wrote short essays about each of the animals, drawn from history and mythology. They were illustrated by Michael Sowa, with an accompanying CD of the arias performed by Il Complesso Barocco. She is currently doing a series of Bestiary concerts, with readings linked to the music.
Her novels include some operatic elements. Two are located at La Fenice in Venice: Death at La Fenice and Falling in Love. All include an inscription drawn from operas. The first 15 were from Mozart, because the Da Ponte librettos are ‘wonderful texts’. But the subsequent ones have all been from Handel. The latest novel also draws from a Handel text in its title: Unto Us a Son is Given.
Living so long in Italy, she has realised that ‘Italians and Handel don’t go together. They don’t like baroque music, and don’t play it much. The giant paradox is that many of the great baroque orchestras and conductors are Italian, but where do they work: in England, France and Germany. But if you live in a country that has given the world Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, why would you go and listen to this German?’
She does not have strong views on staging: ‘I don’t care – it’s not important to me. I can always close my eyes, and listen to beautiful singing. I go to the opera to listen. I’m much more aural than visual. And visual judgement is far more subjective than aural judgement. We’re in 2019, so people have to take chances.’
Donna Leon loves Handel, but does she identify with Handel in some ways? After all, both are voluntary exiles. And both have lived their lives as single people, yet have such a deep understanding of family relationships: many of Handel’s most moving duets are filial (usually mother-son or father-daughter), and an important feature of the Brunetti books is his relationship with his wife and children. She rejects the suggestion: ‘He’s fat, I’m thin; he’s a boy, I’m a girl.’
Whereas nearly all Handel’s operas have a happy ending, this is not true of any of Donna Leon’s novels. ‘My vision of life is very bleak. I’m a very happy person, and my life in many ways couldn’t be improved. I can do what I want, and I have a lot of people who I love, and who love me. But I’m no fool: people can be very unpleasant and nasty. And they’re crime books, after all.’ Nonetheless, she does not reject Handel’s lieto fine: ‘that was the convention, and what’s good enough for Handel is good enough for me’.