Vocalist.org archive


From:  Linda Fox <linda@f...>
Linda Fox <linda@f...>
Date:  Fri Jan 26, 2001  5:05 pm
Subject:  Re: [vocalist] Has Anyone played Betto?


Cynthia Donnell wrote:
>
> Trevor, isn't the character's name "Beppo"?

No, it's definitely Betto. Betto di Signa.

The family members in Gianni Schicchi work as an ensemble, a kind of
mini-chorus, but also have their individual characteristics - Zita the
matriarch, who won't allow the young Rinuccio to marry Schicchi's
daughter; Simone, the oldest, a former magistrate, who thinks he should
have a prior claim on Buoso's estate; Betto, the black sheep of the
family, related only by marriage, a drunkard and a kleptomaniac* and the
two married couples, Ciesca/Marco and Nella/Gherardo; Ciesca and Marco
are older and there is no reference to there being any children; there
is also some suggestion that Marco is very henpecked; Nella and Gherardo
have a child - though if yours is a workshop production this might be
omitted.

There are numerous references throughout to Nella and Gherardo as a
married couple. If you're short of men, I suppose it would just work to
make one of them a woman, but I don't think it will work awfully well.
Is she singing it an octave higher, as a soprano, or as a female tenor?
If it's the former, the sonorities of the ensembles are going to come
out all wrong. Also, if it's a trouser role, surely that means she will
still be "Gherard-O" rather than have the character change sex - in this
particular instance you just can't do that because of the couple.
Frankly I think this is a mistake and your workshop would have been
better employed casting outside and maybe buying somebody in.

*I can't lay my hands on my score at the moment, but when I did it two
and a half years ago, I both directed it and made the singing
translation, and I don't think I invented the kleptomaniac part. I
believe it's in the original stage directions (something about him
having deep pockets in his coat, and admiring Buoso's silverware and
then putting it in his pockets) We continued this thread a lot of the
way through: no prop was safe from our Betto! When the lawyer came in
and laid out his pen and ink on the table, Betto stole the pen. When he
came to write the will, of course he couldn't find his pen, so Betto
"lent" him one he just happened to have about his person - and the
lawyer gratefully handed it back to him at the end.

Linda

emusic.com