La Coponna dello Zio Tom

"This is a story about good and bad niggers," said the English translation of the program notes supplied for tourists. It was a story about Zio Tom, Signor Legree and Piccola Eva. a story about slavery in harsh old Kentucky. The premiere production of Luigi Ferrari Tre-cate's Zio Tom (Uncle Tom) at the Rome Opera House celebrated the centenary of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, but Rome found it a masterpiece of contemporary social realism. "Poveri negri!" (Poor Negroes), enthusiasts shouted from the balconies, and next morning the Rome press chimed in. "A great opera and a great story," said II Messaggero. "The fight for freedom belongs to eternity, and where could it be better fought than on the stage of the Rome Opera House?"

All through the '40s, Composer Ferrari Trecate had searched for a way to express his hatred of tyranny. But while he strained for inspiration, the Fascists fell in Italy and the Nazis fell in Germany and poor Ferrari Trecate was left back at the Parma Music Conservatory without a regime to hate. Then his problem was solved. "I wanted to bring a little offering to human liberty to the world." he recalls, "and I wanted to bring the problem of enslavement to the public eye. As soon as I read Uncle Tom's Cabin, the Christian thought of Harriet Beecher Stowe seduced my mind."

Working with an Italian libretto supplied by a former pupil, Ferrari Trecate had his three-act opera written within a year. But after one quiet 1953 performance in Parma, it lay forgotten until Rome decided to produce it again. Its minor-key Italianate melodies, skillfully woven into choral passages that hint of Negro spirituals, are warm and rich in legato beauty, completely devoid of any modernisms, reminiscent of Puccini. The first-night audience in Rome greeted it with 20 curtain calls, and Roman critics pronounced it good enough for the regular repertory.

But the program notes had their problems. The English translator, true to his Stowe, wrote "niggers" for "negri" (which means Negroes in Italian). "This is the usual meeting place of all the niggers," read the notes, thereby offending everybody. Most Americans are now aware that Negroes consider Uncle Tomism their most regressive trait, and it was surprising to see the long-suffering old quisling revived once again as liberty's champion.

Still, Ferrari Trecate's heart was clearly in the right place, and his opera had the antic appeal of an American tragedy written by an Italian who has never seen America. "My entire knowledge of American music is from the gramophone records I listen to in Parma," the 78-year-old professor explained. "I have been to America only in my dreams. I will be happy if my opera is performed again, but I must admit that my greatest ambition is to write music for the films of Walt Disney."

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