[city noise] [distant instrumental classical music] ♪ ♪ It's been said that music gives a soul to the universe.
And life to everything.
♪ Almost about 200 years ago, this grand space was the site of a long forgotten event, the first of its kind.
An oratorio staged as a benefit concert.
♪ And I think it's appropriate that it happened here, in this neighborhood, at the intersection of the old world and the new.
And this concert happened at a crucial moment in the cultural history of New York City and firmly set the city on course to become the diverse and very vibrant center for the arts it is today.
[instrumental classical music] ♪ [harbor sounds, classical music] ♪ You have to imagine New York City in the early 1800's.
Now, at that point, it was the largest city in the country and it was growing day by day with immigrants from Europe.
But culturally it was still kind of a backwater.
It was lagging far behind Philadelphia and especially Boston, where the arts were thriving.
[male opera singer vocalizing] So you can understand how meaningful that night in 1826 was to the life of this city when 2300 people crowded into this great space to hear what was billed as an event to far surpass anything of the kind ever produced in the union.
Now, for many members of the audience, it was their very first exposure to music sung in an operatic style.
♪ [singing in foreign language] ♪ Graceful consort!
♪ ♪ Ev'ry moment brings ♪ ♪ new rapture, new rapture ♪ ♪ ev'ry care is put to rest... ♪ ♪ The oratorio is one ingredient in this explosion of musical culture here in the city, and it began here at the old cathedral.
It's remarkable, the history of the Old St. Patrick's Cathedral and it's really been an untapped gem.
Most New Yorkers aren't even aware that it even exists.
The walls are original, as I mentioned.
This used to be the exterior wall of the church... People are always rediscovering the fascinating history and--and connections to this church.
...in the very spot I'm standing on, this is where the baptism scene of "The Godfather" was filmed.
Michael, do you renounce Satan?
I do.
[organ music] Now we have one more stop in front of this statue here before I take us up into the choir loft.
Over here we have... During one of my tours, I bumped into these two gentlemen from Italy.
And it wasn't until afterwards that they revealed to me who they were.
And as a result of that meeting and introduction, they had the Italian government finance them to return here to recreate that very oratorio that took place here over 150 years ago.
[classical music, woman singing in Italian] ♪ ♪ [Renzetti speaking Italian] [Renzetti and woman sing notes] [man singing opera in Italian] [speaking Italian] [translation] [classical music] [singing in Italian] The opera company, the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari, is working to recreate that evening from 1826.
So it's a gift from Italy to America, from the old world to the new.
[both speaking Italian] [translation] [city noise] We are in the crossroads of New York City.
You know, just geographically, if you look at us on a map, you can see where we are.
We're in the very center of this vitality and creativity.
But just a few years before the cornerstone was laid in 1809, the city of New York was not here.
This was rural up here, and people complained about coming to the consecration of the church.
This was still outside of the city: muddy roads and... orchards and farmland.
[harbor sounds] But then, with immigration, the city of New York went from little to very big very quickly, and this was the cathedral church during that tremendous age of growth with an immigrant population that settled in this area basically Irish in the fore part of the 19th century.
[classical music] And then some years later, there was also this Italian movement from Europe.
♪ One of the first and certainly one of the most influential of these early Italian immigrants was Lorenzo da Ponte.
I had only known of him as Mozart's librettist, not knowing of his connection to this very church.
But it turns out that he was the man behind the staging of the 1826 oratorio.
[translation] It's quite fascinating to--to ponder that Mozart's librettist ended up here in this neighborhood.
In his old age, he was a bookseller and a humble grocer, and he was a parishioner at this church as well and lived a fascinating life.
[classical music] ♪ His life is somewhat controversial, but you really have to get inside the mind of this man.
He was Jewish up until 14 years old, and right after his bar mitzvah, he was converted to Catholicism.
♪ His father could not afford to house and board his own children, so Lorenzo da Ponte was persuaded to enter the priesthood.
Now, his stint as a priest was short lived, he had a little bit of a controversy in his life.
He had numerous scandals as a priest.
He was chased out of places for being a libertine.
He consorted with all sorts of women.
Venice was a free-for-all in those days.
Da Ponte himself was a real Casanova, so it's no coincidence that he happened to be friends with Casanova.
Ha ha!
He lived a very promiscuous life.
♪ There are all kinds of stories about his time there, including fathering two children to his mistress and living in a brothel.
So, not surprisingly, he was accused of living a lifestyle unfit for a priest.
He fled the region and in his absence was sentenced to prison.
[translation] [speaking in Italian] [translation] [classical music, singing in Italian] ♪ [translation] ♪ ♪ ♪ [classical music, singing in Italian] [classical music, singing in Italian] The oratorio is different from an opera in that there's no drama per se, it's more like a concert.
This oratorio has sacred texts in Latin and English and sort of a hodgepodge of composers and styles.
[classical music, singing in Italian] [classical music, singing in Italian] I'm not an authority on opera, that's for sure, but I did grow up listening to it, or perhaps I should say listening to sections of operas and arias.
A couple of hours before my mother and father got home from work, in the apartment I would sit there and play these old 78s my uncle gave me, and I wasn't the only kid in the neighborhood with these experiences.
Many of my friends and I in our teenage years - we'd get tickets to the old Met, the old Metropolitan Opera House, way up in the cheap seats or even the places where-- with just standing room, and we'd sort of look down and just marvel at the spectacle of the opera as best we can.
[classical music, singing in Italian] My grandparents, who came from Sicily around 1910, they only spoke Sicilian, and they would sing occasionally as they were working in the house, which was another way I heard opera when I was young.
I truly feel that music and the daily lives of Italian Americans are wedded forever.
[traditional music] ♪ ♪ Now, the other key element of music in this city and down here were the Italian festivals, Italian feasts we call them, and that's where we really became aware of all the old Italian music, the Sicilian folk songs, Neapolitan folk songs.
They would have people in a bandstand from Italy and come and sing two, you know, two or three nights in a row till about 2:00 in the morning.
And 'O Marenariello is a very important piece of music that always ended the festival, 'O Marenariello, and I use it at the end of "Mean Streets."
It ends the film.
[music, singing in Italian] [music, singing in Italian] [random organ notes] ♪ Jared Lamenzo is the organ master here at Old St. Patrick's.
He's the one who has to maintain this beautiful machine, which was built in 1868.
All right.
Here we are.
I have an engineering background.
That's how I learned how to tinker with mechanical things.
That is not good.
Those skills came in handy dealing with the Erben organ, which I need to tinker with to have it work.
When you encounter an instrument like this, you know a lot of great organists must have played it.
So one of the first things I looked into was who those people were.
And I went to find newspaper clippings, whatever other references in various books about the musical activities in churches.
And that's how I ran across the 1826 program for the oratorio.
♪ It was in an article written in 1903 in a book about the history of Catholic New York.
♪ As far as I know, this is the only surviving account of this event.
An event which, until now, remained entirely lost to history.
♪ I couldn't believe I had found this.
It was just this incredible glimpse into the musical life in New York City, and there's very little from that time period available.
♪ It mentioned this was the first Italian opera company ever to arrive on the shores of America.
And clearly that was an important moment in the history of music and really an international story waiting to be told.
♪ So immediately when I found the program, I wanted to recreate it.
I just didn't have all the music to do it, so I'd been looking around over the years at various sources to find the music.
♪ But some of it was just impossible to find.
I had no idea the answers were waiting to be found halfway around the world.
[city noise, street music] ♪ [translation for Italian accent] ♪ Francesco Zimei is a world-famous musicologist.
He's been working to recreate the original musical program.
And he's had the task of finding pieces of the original Italian arias that have since gone missing.
[classical music] ♪ ♪ ♪ [classical music] ♪ So after fleeing Venice, Da Ponte finds his way to Vienna, the musical capital of the world, and he is appointed the court poet.
Just by a simple recommendation of Casanova, he's in the court of Emperor Joseph.
He was once again able to enjoy his libertine lifestyle.
♪ And so it's no surprise that while in Vienna, he happened to cross paths with another libertine living a similar lifestyle by the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
[classical music] ♪ [translation for Italian accent] As Mozart's librettist, Da Ponte was responsible for the dramatic text around which the music is based.
Together, they created dramatic effects that had never been heard before.
[classical music] ♪ The music was married to the drama in a whole new way.
♪ [translation for Italian accent] [man singing in Italian] Da Ponte helped Mozart write "The Marriage of Figaro," "Così fan tutte," and one of my all-time favorites, "Don Giovanni," which, by the way, is supposedly a narrative of Mozart's life, but looking at Da Ponte's life, he was really the Don Juan between the two of them.
[opera music, singing in Italian] After several scandals, love affairs, scheming, and prima donna behavior, Da Ponte had fallen out of favor with the new emperor... ♪ and was banished from Vienna.
♪ Da Ponte is forced out of the very city that would have been his bread and butter, the city of music, and he has to reinvent himself.
♪ [organ music] Well, I think that all churches are generally filled with a motley crew of people, but I think because St. Patrick's is filled with such a unique combination of multigenerational Italians, Dominicans, we're close to Chinatown.
And it's also because it has such a sense of community that it attracts Catholics from throughout the island of Manhattan, that it's a very eclectic group.
And so she--I can never get her to leave when church is over.
She's always like, "Let's stay and talk to the weirdest people here," 'cause you--after church, you will find the most...
There's someone who brings a dog, like "My dog's Catholic."
The dog's painted.
It's not just a dog.
The dog is painted a different color.
So like on Easter, it's like Easter-colored painted dog.
It's like, yeah, that's the person with a dog at our church.
Anywhere else in the world, people are like, "You can't bring a painted dog to church."
But it's like, "All right, it's New York."
Great day, guys.
This church has become just kind of central in our lives.
Yeah, it's interesting to look at the church and to see that, you know, it's a piece of history and it has this presence in our life.
Got married there, had all our kids baptized there and, you know, and I'll probably die there.
Ha ha.
[instrumental music] ♪ So to truly understand the story of this old cathedral, you have to understand the story of its chief benefactor: a freed slave by the name of Pierre Toussaint.
He was originally laid to rest in the north cemetery here, but because of his benefactoral work and charity, he's been put on the path to sainthood and he was removed from the cemetery here.
He's actually up in St. Patrick's in Midtown.
He's now the Venerable Pierre Toussaint.
♪ Very intriguing story and most people haven't even heard of - started off as a Haitian slave and was brought over here by a French family; it was actually the family that owned him, the Bérards.
Mr. Bérard had passed away.
His wife was left with no source of income now, and so Pierre decided to become a hairdresser and he became so talented and successful, he actually tapped into the cream of society.
This man was doing the hair of Mrs. Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton's wife, and Mrs. Livingston, all the wealthy women of New York.
And we're talking about women who spent over a thousand dollars a year on hair.
This was in the late 1700s.
Now, he was able to support the woman that owned him, the entire family, and so in exchange for that, she allowed Pierre to buy his freedom, and he bought the freedom of his sister, his niece, and the woman he would ultimately marry.
Now, through all of these challenges, he remained a devout Catholic.
He actually never missed a morning mass in 66 years.
And then when St. Peters planned to have the cathedral built, he was the first one to step up and said, "I will finance the construction of the cathedral."
He was the biggest contributor to having this church built.
[instrumental music] [bird chirps] ♪ St. Patrick's was my church.
I lived just around the corner in a walk-up tenement apartment on Elizabeth Street.
In the 1820s, this was an Irish neighborhood, but by the time I was growing up in the 40s and 50s, it had become Italian, or I should say that it was Sicilian on Elizabeth Street, Neapolitan on Mulberry, and sort of mixed on Mott Street somehow.
My grandparents' and parents' time, it was actually building by building - people from a small village in the old country found themselves in one building, then from another small village next door, and so on.
[traditional music] [city noise] [birds chirping] This church was really the center of all the activities of this neighborhood, and it goes way back.
This courtyard, for example, was very important.
We played in here all the time.
We hid in the graveyard and, you know, all kinds of things.
It was kind of a refuge; come in here and, you know, you hide out if you're in trouble, whatever.
But...as we got a little older, we stayed out very late on Saturday nights and stumbled into the 12:30 mass.
And we stood up in the back usually and came in a little late, you know, and come in late and leave early.
And after a while, the priests caught on to that and they would insist that we come and sit down.
But this place was, in a sense, something that ultimately affected the way I view the world and the way I hear the world and through my work.
And this is where it came from, this area right here.
[indistinct chatter] Growing up here, you know, in 1949, all the way up to 65, 66, music was something that was in the air - it was constant.
And, you know, this place was not a - it was not that private, everyone could hear everything, everybody knew what was going on in the other apartment and also they listened to the music; if your taste was a certain kind - playing a record over and over again - that's what you heard.
Then you had jukeboxes here, too, and jukeboxes had that incredible sound, the sound that would just go through the streets at night.
[rock music] ♪ But you got to imagine, particularly in the summer, with the windows open, people's radios playing American pop music, American standards, the late 40s, all the way to swing, jazz, the beginnings of rock and roll, all of this emanating from everywhere, everywhere, including classical music and opera, which for me was very important.
[opera music, singing in Italian] And I still have a relationship to opera and arias of that time.
I'm always allowing that music to guide me in daydreaming up new visual stories or visual images.
[opera music, singing in Italian] I think of like the antithesis of what I would want to see is an opera.
I don't know - I don't know anything about opera.
My grandmother was an opera singer.
So it's actually - it's in my blood to like opera.
Opera is amazing.
It's just not like a mainstream thing anymore, and if this concert could bring it back and bring it to this neighborhood, that's amazing.
And I would love to expose my kids to opera because it's in their roots and then him too, he needs some culture too.
I need some culture.
He needs culture.
[piano playing] OK, let's do ♪ I love to sing ♪ Breathe.
♪ I love to sing ♪ For me, music is this language.
I'm not somebody who plays an instrument, I'm not somebody who really understands it, but it's something that I'm grateful that we've instilled in all our children, because music is is this rare language that is the language of creativity.
[instrumental music] [translation] [piano music] ♪ ♪ [speaking foreign language] ♪ [translation] ♪ [cello music] ♪ ♪ [translation] [orchestra rehearsing] ♪ [speaking Italian] [woman and man singing in Italian] [translation] [woman and man sing in Italian] ♪ ♪ One of the really interesting things about the oratorio is that it was an early showcase for Maria Malibran and she would become the most famous and beloved singer of her time, a singer who defined her era and truly was the first opera diva in the world.
[translation] After the concert in 1826, young women living in households with pianos wanted to take singing lessons.
They dreamed of becoming divas like Maria Malibran.
[translation] [translation] It does not exist, the person who can sing this kind of repertoire and sings everything.
Yeah.
[classical music, singing in Italian] [classical music, singing in Italian] I'm performing, for example, Domine Deus.
It's an alto register.
And what are you singing?
Yeah, I sing With Verdu Clad and Let the Bright Seraphim - with all the coloratura, it's high and different from Domine Deus.
Absolutely different.
[classical music, singing in Italian] [translation] Yeah, together, we make Maria Malibran.
[classical music, singing in Italian] [translation] I looked... for years trying to find... [translation] [piano music] ♪ ♪ [classical music] ♪ So Da Ponte found himself banished once again.
He set out for Paris, hoping to secure a position in the court of Marie Antoinette, whose brother was actually Da Ponte's most recent patron.
♪ During his journey, he must have caught word that the party was over.
[guillotine slices] So he altered course for London.
[translation] Da Ponte could never pay his bills and always wanted to purchase more books.
He was not a good businessman.
He wasn't able to adapt and was not able to secure himself financially, and after several failed attempts at business, he got himself in trouble yet again and was forced out of London.
He sets his sights on a new country still in its infancy called America, and eventually finds his way right here to New York City.
[translation] [translation] Da Ponte also seemed to reconnect with his faith, putting his life of debauchery behind him and actually became a devout parishioner of this cathedral.
[city noise] So we're now in the south cemetery of the basilica here.
This cemetery is unique because we have this wall around the whole perimeter here.
Now, we believe the wall was built a year after the burning of St. Mary's Church down on Grant Street, burned down by the nativist gangs, gangs like the Bowery Boys that were anti-Catholic and all.
Back in 1844, there was real reaction against immigrants coming in.
The nativists, the "Americans" did not want the Irish in.
This was a movement of first and second generation born New Yorkers.
They didn't like immigrants, OK?
The wall was actually built as a defense point so that the Irish Catholics of the cathedral here could defend this church from ever being burned down as well.
Archbishop Hughes was the archbishop of the city, the Catholic community.
But groups called the Know Nothings attacked the church, and the church was defended by Hughes, actually, gathering the forces and putting them behind this wall.
They threatened to burn the church down and he was kind of a firebrand - he threatened them and it didn't happen.
But they did defend the church from this wall.
So that gave me a kind - I don't know.
It gave me - when I was a kid, I heard these stories and I saw - now these streets are paved, but it was all cobblestone.
It's like "Gangs of New York" going way back.
And I wondered - everything had a story to tell... the history of the church, not necessarily what you may feel about it in terms of your own personal beliefs, but the history of this church, you know, this place was just breathing stories and lives long forgotten.
[classical music] The Irish literally fought to earn their place here in the city, so they became very protective of the community and they were very protective of this church as well... and then you started to see a large wave of Italian immigrants flooding the city.
♪ But now the Italians come in and they weren't accepted.
♪ There was no doubt that there were cultural, language differences back then, but, you know, there was also this wonderful synthesis that took place.
I think that if you just look at our church records and you see the amount of marriages that occurred between Irish and Italians, I think it tells you a great deal about what it is to be an American.
[classical music] ♪ [religious music, singing in Mandarin] [religious music, singing in Mandarin] Everything is in constant change, but this church, this basilica has been and remains a constant, an anchor.
[man singing in Mandarin] And it was built by people who flocked here to start a new life in this city, a city where people still come from all over the world, a city that for me has always been synonymous with America itself, America at its very best.
[religious music, singing in Spanish] [religious music, singing in Spanish] The Henry Erben Organ is one of America's great musical treasures.
When it's played by a master and it hits these grand chords, I mean, you can feel it vibrating deep within you.
And it means something special that my grandparents and my parents, who also lived in this neighborhood, heard and felt the same sounds bellowing out of this massive instrument.
It really connects you with the history that has taken place within these walls and, of course, the history of this city.
[organ music] ♪ It's not just an historical artifact because these pipes rang out and resounded through this entire neighborhood over the years - cheering troops returning from war, comforting people in the wake of September 11th and the sinking of the Titanic, mourning the loss of presidents from Grant to Kennedy.
And it still plays today, it's a living, breathing instrument that's been played in joy and in sorrow, in celebration and in mourning.
[organ music] ♪ Ah.
Yeah, the light's just coming in through the windows right now.
Wow.
This is the organ, the Henry Erben organ.
It's about the size of a three bedroom apartment.
Ha ha!
Yes.
Yes.
It's fantastic.
[three organ notes] This would be my little Italian sound.
[organ music] ♪ [organ malfunction] Ah.
Oops.
Ha ha ha!
[speaks Italian] Yeah, there it goes.
Here we go.
This organ's a hundred and fifty years old, and after 150 years, I turn it on, I don't know if it's going to play the way it played yesterday or not.
[random organ notes] The Erben has thousands of parts.
A lot of them are made out of wood, and the wood is dried and cracked because of, you know, changes of environment over the years.
The... OK, is the coupler on?
Oh, they're all on the floor there, Right, they broke off.
The holes are worn so badly that they're just breaking in half.
[creaking mechanics] With the leather being 150 years old in a lot of cases, the pollution it's been subjected to over the time, every pipe is just full of dust, it's a miracle it plays when I turn it on and it's just sort of a matter of time until it stops playing altogether.
♪ In light of its rarity, certainly, at this point and in light of its historic value, it's time for a comprehensive restoration of the instrument.
[organ music] ♪ So I'm thrilled that everything has worked out the way it has.
The choir here...
The restaging of this oratorio will be a benefit for the restoration of this aging instrument.
3, 4.
[classical music] Music and music making have their origins in houses of worship like this glorious cathedral.
It's a beloved sanctuary for me and the millions of others who have walked through its doors since it was built almost 200 years ago.
And this performance, like this cathedral and the people working to maintain its relevance and traditions, reinforces the importance of nurturing the cross-cultural bridges that make this city so vibrant and dynamic.
[classical music] ♪ [classical music] ♪ Lorenzo Da Ponte's whirlwind of a life landed him right here in New York City.
His financial woes followed him as he fled bankruptcy three more times before finding stability by giving Italian language lessons.
♪ Sharing his Italian culture must have been an addiction for him because it consumed the rest of his life.
♪ He found his way into the elite social scene of New York City, no doubt thanks to his charm and stories of his life of adventures.
[classical music] ♪ [translation] [translation] Da Ponte was a tireless promoter of Italian culture, and that included Italian opera.
Those efforts eventually led to Da Ponte staging the 1826 oratorio.
♪ [translation] He lived in the neighborhood and arranged to put on a performance of music.
Those very notes resounded in these very halls back in 1826 and brought us here tonight.
[classical music] [translation] [vocal warm ups] [vocal warm ups] [translation] [sustained applause] [applause abates] [classical music] ♪ ♪ [singing in Italian] [singing in Italian] [classical music] ♪ [classical music] ♪ In 1826, people were transformed by the experience of this music, so it set the stage for this cultural awakening that accompanied the commercial might of New York City.
"Music is beginning to do wonders among the inhabitants of our gay city."
Those words were written after the concert for an editorial in the newspaper.
It was a real cultural awakening in the city of New York, and it extended beyond music to all the arts.
[classical music, singing in Italian] I'd like to think this will be an historic stepping stone to another creative moment, some new venture artistically and spiritually.
[classical music, singing in Italian] [translation] [classical music, singing in Italian] ♪ Music gives a soul to the universe and life to everything.
[applause]
