Original subtitles

Viewers like you make this program possible.

Support your local PBS station.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 about00 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The music was married to the drama in a whole new way.

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.

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.

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.

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.

St. Patrick's was my church.

I lived just around the corner

in a walk-up tenement apartment on Elizabeth Street.

In the 1920s, 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.

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 the30 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

OK, let's do

Breathe.

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.

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.

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.

It does not exist, the person who can sing

this kind of repertoire and sings everything.

Yeah.

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.

Yeah, together, we make Maria Malibran.

I looked... for years trying to find...

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.

So he altered course for London.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Everything is in constant change,

but this church, this basilica

has been and remains a constant, an anchor.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This would be my little Italian sound.

Ah.

Oops. Ha ha ha!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I'd like to think this will be

an historic stepping stone to another creative moment,

some new venture artistically and spiritually.

Music gives a soul to the universe

and life to everything.