Verdi the Man and Verdi the Dramatist

Verdi the Man and Verdi the DramatistAuthor(s): Gerald A. MendelsohnSource: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Nov., 1978), pp. 110-142Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/746308Accessed: 21/06/2010 17:03

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucal.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to 19th-Century Music.

http://www.jstor.org

Verdi the Man and Verdi the Dramatist

GERALD A. MENDELSOHN

Throughout his life, Giuseppe Verdi was an intensely private man who deeply resented efforts to inquire into his personal affairs. He regarded journalists and would-be biographers, as well as his neighbors in Busseto and the operatic public at large, as an intrusive lot, against whose prying attentions he needed constantly to defend himself. Even in letters to his closest friends, Verdi was quite reserved about his private life; and though the gloomy and pessimistic cast of his disposition is unmistakable, the correspondence is rarely re- vealing in a psychological sense. As far as correspondence goes, we can certainly gain a much richer and a more intimate sense of Verdi's character, personality, and emotional life from his wife Giuseppina's letters than from his

own. He left no diaries, and save for a brief, but significant, autobiographical account of his early years as a composer, he wrote no memoirs. Neither can we look to Verdi for ex- planations of the meaning of his work or of how it related to the man Verdi.

This reticence--perhaps I should say se- cretiveness-makes any answers to the question of how Verdi's personal life affected his choice and treatment of dramatic themes most difficult to attain. The difficulty is increased by the character of his operas, for they seem to be objective and impersonal, a setting down, without self-consciousness, commen- tary, or moralizing, of how things are. Unlike Wagner, born likewise in 1813, Verdi enter- tained no explicit philosophical program in his work, and he sought no spiritual and artistic reform. It is clear from even a casual acquaintance with Wagner's life and writings that his operas are on one level, at least, an extension

0148-2076/78/1100-0110 $0.25 @ 1978 by The Regents of the University of California.

110

of his psyche: it is his ideas, his needs, his conflicts, his wishes, his visions that form the core of the drama. But where do we find Verdi in his operas? In contrast to Wagner, a proto- typical sentimentalisch artist, Isaiah Berlin describes Verdi as a naif, as "perhaps the last complete, self-fulfilled creator, absorbed in his art, ... seeking to use it for no ulterior purpose, ... suspicious of anyone curious about his inner life, wholly, even grimly, impersonal, drily objective, at one with his music. A man who dissolved everything in his art, with no more personal residue than Shakespeare or Tintoretto. In Schiller's sense, the last great naive poet of our time."' A naif Verdi surely was, but it is my objective to show that a significant personal residue remains and that to understand it illuminates his work and his dramatic art.

I Verdi's life was not in an outer sense a

dramatic one. Although he was deeply involved in the revolutionary political events of his time, he was never a conspirator, a fugi- tive, or an exile. He had no flamboyant love affairs, nor was he even a discreet womanizer. Romantic posturing or melodramatic gestures were unkown to him, and though he could be hurt and angered by criticism he shunned public controversy. Fundamentally, Verdi was a very conservative man, more peasant, by far, than artist in the nineteenth-century sense. He was devoted to his work, his country, his paese and to those people whose love and friendship he treasured. In this, he could scarcely seem more different from the characters and ambience of his operas, which are generally regarded as the quintessence of the romantic melodrama. That they abound in extreme and irrational passions, vendettas, con- spiracies, exotic historic settings and the like is obvious. But as important as these romantic trappings were to Verdi, they constitute only the surface of his work. The themes to which he returned again and again are of a more intimate character, for the dramatic core of his

operas, as of his life, is to be found in the family drama, in those intense and enduring emotional relationships between people bound together by blood and marriage.

Perhaps the greatest mystery of Verdi's career is how, given the circumstances into which he was born, his musical interests and ability developed and were encouraged. With few exceptions, significant composers of the nineteenth century had a parent of at least some musical or intellectual attainment. Ver- di's parents were unlettered, perhaps illiterate, and, though the Verdi family had been prop- erty owners in the region of Le Roncole for several generations, his father, Carlo, was an im- poverished tavern keeper and seller of wine and groceries. Yet by the age of seven a spinet had been provided for the young Verdi, and soon thereafter he was substituting for his first teacher and music master, the village organist Baistrocchi.2 Upon the latter's death in 1823, Verdi was sent to live with a friend of his father's in the neighboring town of Busseto so that he could attend the ginnasio there. It is clear, as Matz points out, that Carlo Verdi recognized his son's talents and did, at considerable sacrifice, what was in his power to nur- ture them. It is also clear that Verdi received as good an education as a provincial town like Busseto could provide.

By 1825, he was officially the organist in Le Roncole, and his earnings from this position helped pay the cost of his lodgings. We do not know how Verdi reacted to his early independence and separation from his parents. He later referred to these years as a "hard time" but that probably refers more to the poverty and work than to his emotional state; he did, after all, see his parents regularly and such separations for the future welfare of the first son were probably not uncommon. What is most significant, however, is that during the

GERALD A. MENDELSOHN Verdi the Man and Dramatist

1I. Berlin, "The Naivete of Verdi," Hudson Review 21 (1968), pp. 140-41.

2My account of Verdi's life is based primarily on Frank Walker, The Man Verdi (New York, 1962; hereafter cited as "Walker"), and to a lesser degree on Carlo Gatti, Verdi (New York, 1955). Also, for the earliest period and the background of the Verdi family the work of Mary Jane Matz is indispensable. See especially "Verdi: The Roots of the Tree," Bollettino dell' istituto di studi verdiani 3 (1969), pp. 333-64.

111

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC years in Busseto Verdi acquired a second father, one who became more important in his life than his biological father.

Antonio Barezzi was a prosperous mer- chant and a passionate amateur musician, the founder and president of Busseto's Philhar- monic Society. He became interested in Verdi quite early on; according to Gatti, he was con- sulted about the boy's education. In 1831, Verdi moved into Barezzi's house, where he had long since become virtually a member of the family. Shortly thereafter, it became apparent that Verdi and Margherita Barezzi had fallen in love (her father was pleased) and that the educational possibilities in Busseto were exhausted. During his eight years there, Verdi had continued as organist at Le Roncole, copied parts for and directed rehersals of the Philharmonic Society, played in concerts, taught younger students in the school of music, and had written a great variety of music for a great variety of occasions. He had, in short, gained so much practical musical experience that his teacher Provesi could regard him as an equal. With Barezzi's active help, Verdi obtained a scholarship for further study and applied to the Conservatory of Milan. To his abiding bitterness, his application was rejected and he studied instead with a private teacher, Lavigna. Most of his expenses at this time were willingly borne by Barezzi, for the scholarship covered only a small portion of the costs. In both an emotional and a material sense, Verdi owed much to Barezzi's gener- osity.

By twenty-one, Verdi had had his first success in Milan, as a conductor, and there was some discussion of an operatic project. Clearly he had come a long way from the hamlet of Le Roncole. The difference between the route he travelled and that typical of his predecessors and contemporaries in the primo ottocento is striking. Very few had a rural background, many had a musician for a father, and almost all went to a conservatory in one of the major musical centers of Italy. At an age when Verdi was a village organist and attended to the musical needs of his town, Bel- lini, Mercadante, Coccia, the Ricci brothers and Petrella were students at the Naples conservatory, Rossini and Donizetti were at

Bologna, Bottesini and Arditi at Milan, and Poniatowski was at Florence. Verdi was a provincial in what was at that time an in- tellectually provincial country; if he was not quite the peasant he claimed to be, he certainly stood outside the polite society whose conservative taste dominated the arts. Verdi was conservative, too, of course, in his acceptance and use of the musical forms and dramatic conventions of the day. But he was scarcely genteel. It may well be that his vigor and his vulgarity (the word is meant literally), his status as an outsider, and the unhappy turn his life took at the start of his operatic career were crucial factors in keeping him from the derivative superficialities of his contemporaries. At the very least, I believe these factors were crucial to Verdi's distinctiveness as an operatic dramatist.

The completion of Verdi's studies and his subsequent employment as Busseto's maestro di musica made it possible for Verdi and Mar- gherita Barezzi to marry in May 1836. Their first child, Virginia, was bom in March 1837, their second, Icilio, in July 1838. During this time Verdi was occupied with his official duties, but he was also making efforts to have an opera of his performed, efforts which cul- minated in the production of Oberto in November of 1839.

By the time of Oberto's premiere, an ap- palling series of tragedies had already begun for Verdi. In August 1838 Virginia died, in Oc- tober 1839 Icilio died, like his sister in his second year, and then in June 1840 Margherita died. Verdi had earlier experienced significant losses: his teachers Provesi (in 1833) and Lavigna (in 1836), both of whom were important to him personally as well as profession- ally, and (also in 1833) his only sister, Giuseppa, aged seventeen. But these losses were mild compared to the disasters which deprived him of his entire family in a period of less than two years. The effects were profound and enduring. Accompanied by his father-in- law, he returned immediately to Busseto, "crushed," in a friend's words, and "reduced ... almost to the point of mental aberration."3

3Gatti, Verdi, p. 51.

112

Naturally, the grief moderated in time, but it never entirely passed. In 1845, well launched in his career, Verdi wrote, "Physically I am well, but my mind is black, always black, and will be so until I have finished with this career that I abhor. And afterwards? It's useless to de- lude oneself. It will always be black. Happi- ness does not exist for me."4

Eight years later he wrote to his long-time correspondent, the Countess Maffei, "They say this opera [I1 Trovatore] is too sad, and that there are too many deaths in it. But after all, everything in life is death! What else is there?"' He speaks in another letter to the Countess at this time of the "destiny, which in strange ways robs me one by one of everything I love'" and much later, in 1867, "This is an ill-fated year for me, like 1840!! For two months I have heard of nothing but deaths and misfortunes of every kind."' The same year, the year of Barezzi's death, Verdi asked a friend to locate the graves of his wife and son, but they could not be found. He added at that time a lock of Barezzi's hair to the marriage rings, two pieces of jewelry and a strand of Margherita's hair he kept in a small box on which he had written "Mementos of my poor family. "

Some forty years after the events, Verdi's grief is vividly conveyed in the autobiographical statement Giulio Ricordi induced him to set down:

But now there began the most terrible series of misfortunes for me. At the beginning of April my little boy fell ill . . . and the poor little fellow wasted slowly away in the arms of his mother who went nearly mad with grief. But this was not enough. A few days later my little daughter sickened in her turn, and this child too was taken from us! And even this was not all. During the first days of June my young helpmate herself was seized with an acute encephalitis, and on the nineteenth of June, 1840, the third coffin was carried out of my house.

I was alone! ... alone! ... In a little over two months I had lost three loved ones. My whole family was gone. And in this terrible anguish of soul, to avoid breaking the engagement I had contracted, I was compelled to write an entire comic opera!8

The inaccuracies in Verdi's report, as much as the words themselves, suggest that the wound had not healed. At the end of his life, the theme still sounded: "There is a comfort, among all those which I lacked, which would have meant more to me than any other." And finally, on the eve of the anniversary of the death of his second wife, with whom he had lived for fifty years, he wrote to a friend, "Tomorrow ... is a dire day for me ... but you have devoted and loving children around you, while I am alone and indescribably sad."9

"Alone and indescribably sad"!': these feelings were perhaps most intense when Verdi was a young man and a very old man, but after 1840 they seem a fundamental aspect of his nature. He had never been a sanguine or easy- going person, but the loss of his family confirmed and deepened his melancholic and brooding side. Happiness had proved an illusion and the doom of his love had left a void which, it appears, was never filled. Many writers have suggested that these experiences influenced Verdi's choice and handling of his dramatic material. This effect was, I believe, even more pervasive than has been generally recognized.

The personal catastrophe was followed in a short while by a professional catastrophe, the utter failure of Verdi's second opera, Un Giorno di regno, in 1840. After the moderate success of Oberto, Verdi and Merelli, the impresario at La Scala, agreed to a contract for three additional operas during the next two years. The first of these was to have been a serious opera, but Verdi was not taken with the libretto, so that when Merelli found that he needed instead an opera buffa for the au- tumn season, Verdi agreed to the change. Again there was a problem with the libretto; none of those Merelli had in stock were to


4Walker, p. 181. SCharles Osborne, ed., Letters of Giuseppe Verdi (London, 1971), p. 89. 6George Martin, Verdi, His Music, Life and Times (New York, 1963), p. 289. 7Franz Werfel, ed., Verdi: The Man in His Letters (New York, 1942), p. 247.

8Ibid., pp. 86-87. 9Gatti, Verdi, p. 350.

113

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC Verdi's liking. He selected what he considered the best of the lot, but, for the only time in his career, he set a subject which was not really of his own choosing and he set the libretto as it was. It was during the composition of Un Giorno di regno that his wife died. Merelli, probably with good intentions, would not release him from the contract, and Verdi's only comic opera until Falstaff was first performed at La Scala in September 1840, less than three months after Margherita's death. It was a fiasco. The audience, Verdi bitterly recalled nineteen years later, "slaughtered the work of a poor ailing young man working under pressure and heartbroken by a terrible catastrophe. All this was known but it in no way restrained their discourtesy ... I don't intend to con- demn the public; I allow its severity, I accept its whistles on condition that I'm not asked to be grateful for its applause."10

He decided to give up composing. In the autobiographical note quoted above, he says that "with my mind tormented by my domestic misfortunes" and "embittered by the failure of my work ... I decided never to compose again.""11 This is something of an exaggeration, for he remained in Milan, supervised a production of Oberto in Genoa and wrote new music for that production and a revival at La Scala. But he did persuade Merelli to release him from his contract. Thus Verdi's operatic career, which had already begun quite late by the standards of his day, was stalled at its beginning.

Fortunately, Merelli seems never to have doubted that he had a winner, and the story of how he induced Verdi to undertake Nabucco is well known. The overwhelming success of the opera at its premiere in 1842 was significant for Verdi in many ways. It established his reputation as a leading young composer and created the demand for new works which was to remain constant virtually until his death. It permitted him an uncommon degree of independence in his choice of subjects and in his dealings with librettists, performers,

publishers and impresarios, an independence which grew with time. This is not to say that Verdi was free of the many constraints im- posed on composers by the system of opera production in the primo ottocento; but it was the case that, from his third opera on, he was in a position to assert his will in artistic and dramatic matters. With a few exceptions, the post-Nabucco operas can be taken as direct expressions of Verdi's decisions and intentions. It is significant that, in their next contract, Merelli left the specification of the composer's fee to Verdi; his financial security and eventual prosperity also began in 1842. Fi- nally, his entrance into Milanese intellectual circles, and particularly his friendship with the Maffeis, resulted from the success of Nabucco. In time, Verdi became a cosmopoli- tan and sophisticated person, but it is important to remember that until the age of 30 his social, cultural, and intellectual experience had been quite limited. Following Nabucco, his world suddenly enlarged greatly and continued to expand thereafter. Though Oberto, Un Giorno di regno and some early songs should not be discounted, Verdi's own as- sessment seems just: "With this opera . . . my artistic career began."'12

In the nine years between Nabucco and Rigoletto, Verdi, despite periods of illness and consequent inactivity, wrote twelve new operas and firmly established his reputation as Italy's foremost composer. Certainly part of the special enthusiasm his operas aroused was due to the patriotic meanings Italian audi- ences perceived in them, but far more significant was the realization that the old forms had been revitalized by a new vigor and passion. Verdi, however, derived little pleasure from his successes or his growing stature. Composition took a toll on his health in the form of chronic stomach and throat problems, and he intensely disliked the world of the theatre and its concommitant dealings with singers, impresarios, and publishers. He looked forward to an early retirement after he

1OJulian Budden, The Operas of Verdi from Oberto to Rigoletto (New York, 1973), p. 72. "Quoted from Walker, p. 34.

12Charles Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi (Lon- don, 1969), p. 42.

114

had succeeded in becoming rich. In fact, it is clear that Verdi was driven during this decade by a passion for financial success; Walker describes it as "an almost frenzied search for the wealth that alone could bring him independence." Strepponi knew this well and in 1853 cautioned him, "Sometimes I fear that the love of money will re-awaken in you and con- demn you to many further years of drudgery."13

Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that there are a good many meretri- cious and conventional passages in these operas, and that few if any of them can be considered a satisfying whole aesthetically or dramatically. Yet the most impressive aspects of Verdi's career during these years are the manifest growth of his musical and dramatic resources, his increasing seriousness of purpose, and his venturesomeness. Since the subjects he set were entirely of his own considered choosing, the great variety of theme, setting, emotional tone and musical treatment in these twelve operas must reflect Verdi's interests and aspi- rations at the same time. He generally resisted the temptation to repeat past successes; rather he seems to have sought opportunities to expand his expressive means and to refashion to his needs the conventions he inherited. De- spite his "love of money," his artistic ambi- tions made the "years in the galleys" a period of steady, if irregular, deepening of the emotional and psychological substance of his operas.

II If any single opera can be regarded as a

turning point in Verdi's career, it is Macbeth. Verdi clearly saw it as a very special work, taking an exceptionally active and demanding role in the preparation of the libretto, the de- tails of staging, and the rehearsal of the performers. He made it clear to everyone concerned that this was no conventional piece, but rather one in which all elements had to be subordinated to the drama. As Budden points out, after Macbeth Verdi no longer provided alternative arias for the benefit of singers;

more significantly still, it was at this time that Verdi first proposed contractual prohibi- tions on altering his scores.14 But nothing speaks more eloquently of his regard for the opera than its dedication to his father-in-law, Barezzi: "For many years I have intended to dedicate an opera to you who have been my father, my benefactor, and my friend. Here now is this Macbeth which is dearer to me than all my other operas, and which I therefore deem more worthy of being presented to you. I offer it from my heart; accept it in the same way, let it be witness of my eternal remembrance and the gratitude and love of your most affectionate Verdi."15 The bond between the two men never seriously weakened, for they had become in any meaningful psychological sense father and son.

After the enthusiastic reception of Mac- beth by the Florentine audience in March 1847, Verdi resumed work on I Masnadieri, the second of his operas based on a Schiller play. It is worth noting that his first four operas were not based on sources of any great significance, but thereafter-and particularly in the mid-forties--Verdi regularly selected his subjects from the work of major literary figures important to the Romantic movement (Hugo, Schiller, Byron, Voltaire, and, of course, Shakespeare). This undoubtedly reflects the influence of the Count Maffei and the intellectual circles in which Verdi moved as well as that increasing seriousness of artistic purpose previously noted. There is little evidence that he or his librettists grasped or accepted the deeply anti-bourgeois, revolutionary, irrational and anarchic elements in northern Romanticism; consider, for example, how those elements are trivialized in Ernani, say, or I Masnadieri. But if the sentimentalisch and neurotic remained foreign to him, a relationship between his work and the pro- gressive intellectual currents of his day was nevertheless established through his choice of


"1Walker, pp. 180, 182.

14Julian Budden, "La Battaglia di Legnano: Its Unique Character with Special Reference to the Finale of Act I," Atti del III0 Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma, 1974), p. 73. "SBudden, Operas, pp. 274-75.

115

I9TH CENTURY

MUSIC subjects. By 1847, Verdi's progress from provincial Italian musician to composer of inter- national significance and aspiration had been accomplished.

If the year 1847 was of particular importance in Verdi's musical career, it was of even greater importance in his personal life, for by the end of that year, he and Giuseppina Strep- poni were deeply in love. They had first met several years before (she sang Abigaille at the first performance of Nabucco and helped Ver- di's early career in a number of ways) but had seen each other only rarely until 1847. Strep- poni, after an early retirement (at age thirty- one) brought on by vocal difficulties, established herself in Paris as a singing teacher in Fall 1846. Verdi had written a letter of intro- duction to the Escudier brothers for her and she had inquired about him in letters written early in 1847, so it is not surprising that they met when Verdi returned to Paris to work on Jrusalem. Barezzi met and was charmed by her that winter. By the summer of 1848 she and Verdi were living together in the country at Passy. They were to remain together, even- tually as a married couple, for the next forty- nine years, though not always in undisturbed happiness.

Strepponi was an extraordinary woman, passionate, perceptive, witty, and generous; there can be little doubt of the profound effect she had on Verdi the man and musician. But when they met in Paris, she was passing through a prolonged crisis. She had made her debut in 1834 and by the next year her career was well launched. From the start she was clearly an outstanding and much admired singer, and her early vocal decline, which was already evident at the time of Nabucco, was probably attributable directly to a combina- tion of overwork and emotional stress. Her father had died in 1832, so that she became in time the financial mainstay of her mother, sister, and two brothers. To that burden was added the support of an illegitimate child in 1838 and another in 1841 (and there was probably a miscarriage in between). It appears that the father, most likely the tenor Moriani, did not act honorably toward Strepponi; but because he was a married man, she protected his

identity carefully. Her acute distress during this period is evident in her letters, but her financial needs obliged her to continue an ex- cessively heavy schedule of performances. Fi- nally in 1842 her health broke down and she did not sing again for more than a year.

She returned with some success in 1843, prompting the impresario Cirelli to write, "God grant that it [her success] may continue and that, giving up the crazy love affairs that compromise her, she may begin to think of her future." But neither her voice nor her physical and mental condition could maintain a comeback: by late 1844 a critic referred to her "continual distraction" on stage and she had to be replaced in some roles by another prima donna. Her last performances and her last successes were in Nabucco early in 1846, by which time she had decided to try her fortunes in Paris. The closing years of her career, then, were exceedingly painful ones, and it is significant that this once-celebrated singer seems to have retained no mementos at all of the splendid days of her past.16

There is no way of knowing how Verdi came to grips with the knowledge of Strep- poni's affairs, but it is difficult to believe that he, or any Italian man of the nineteenth century, however understanding and liberated, could entirely have avoided feelings of jealousy and uneasiness about such a past. Surely he knew too much about her to believe that she was just a poor innocent who had been led astray by the sophisticated and amoral world of the theater. In fact, his operas at this time and certain puzzling aspects of the relationship between the two suggest that Verdi could not dispel his ambivalence easily. Strepponi's feelings are much clearer: she viewed herself as a fallen woman who had been rescued from a desperate position by Verdi's love and she, in turn, loved him passionately. But in a letter of 1853, the one in which Strepponi warned Verdi against the return of his old love of money, we can also see the complexity of their relationship. "We shall have no children (since God, perhaps, wishes

"1This outline of Strepponi's career follows Walker, ch. 5.

116

to punish me for my sins, in depriving me of any legitimate joy before I die). Well then, not having children by me, I hope you won't cause me sorrow, by having any by another woman.""17 What provoked this surprising reference to the possibility of infidelity is a mystery; it is but one of the puzzling aspects of their relationship.

This letter of 1853 was written to Verdi in Rome where he had gone for the production of II Trovatore and certainly reflects her loneli- ness as well as her feelings of vulnerability. Despite the distress it caused her, Verdi did not permit Strepponi to accompany him on the various trips his career required. Why? To prevent the gossip that her presence would likely have evoked? To keep her away from the environment of her past? To remain un- encumbered during the difficult period of pre- paring a first performance? Or did he feel a need to preserve his feeling of freedom and au- tonomy? Certainly it was not the case that Verdi was unaware of her feelings; it was evidently a matter of regular discussion between them, and her letters to him are as forthright as they are charming and poignant. He would also have known that remaining alone in Bus- seto or later at Sant'Agata was particularly distressing to her. But then it is also not clear why Verdi chose to flaunt his scandalous relationship with Strepponi before the Bussetani. Matz notes a similarity in this behavior to that of Rossini: "Both men succeeded in forc- ing their mistresses upon their outraged fellow citizens, in maneuvers which served the ego of both men, and almost certainly injured both women psychologically."'18

Perhaps it is fair to describe Verdi's actions as serving his ego, but before concluding that he was so egocentric, it is well to consider that before moving with Strepponi to Busseto he had offered to live elsewhere with her, and further that Sant'Agata and its sur- rounding region had been the home of the Verdi family for generations. He was, then, re-

turning to his paese and Strepponi would surely have been sensitive to that fact. Verdi might well have been genuinely surprised by the reaction of the Bussetani, but being Verdi the outrage of his neighbors would hardly have moved him to alter his behavior. Quite the contrary, a stubborn refusal to compromise in any way with their conventional narrow-mindedness and an increasing se- cretiveness and isolation are precisely what one would have expected of him. Nevertheless it was Strepponi who suffered most-she was the outsider and the most vulnerable target of scorn. Yet her dependence on Verdi and her need for him, which are so manifest in her letters and which can only have been increased by their circumstances, did not move him from his course, nor induce him to take steps to ameliorate her distress. After the production of La Traviata in Venice (1853), Verdi finally relented; subsequently they were rarely parted, and, following Strepponi's wishes, they often spent winters away from Sant'Agata. In the usual absence of direct documentary evidence of Verdi's motives, the reasons for the change must remain a matter of conjecture.

Obscurity likewise covers other aspects of their relationship. Why did Verdi and Strep- poni wait eleven years to marry? Walker ar- gues that Strepponi "felt herself unworthy of Verdi" and that he "had almost certainly offered" to marry her.19 That would be consistent with certain aspects of er character, but Verdi's behavior gives equally good reason to believe that it was he who did not wish to marry. Might he, for example, have seen it as a concession to external pressure, as a con- straint on his freedom? To further add to the mystery, there is evidence that by 1856 Strep- poni was using Verdi as her surname, and he actually calls her his wife in a letter of 1857. In this connection Strepponi's letter of 1853 quoted before is particularly interesting, first because it suggests that they had wanted to have children and second, because she speaks of the "legitimate joy" that those children would have provided. This certainly suggests


17Walker, p. 209. "1Mary Jane Matz, "Verdi and the 'Total Theater' of Our Time," Atti 3 (1974), p. 305. g1Walker, p. 205.

117

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC that by the early '50s they considered themselves to be, in effect, married. In light of this, their seemingly sudden and unmotivated decision to marry in 1859 is as unexplained as the long delay which preceded it.

The puzzles about their relationship by no means cease with their marriage. Walker notes that in 1860, despite compelling reasons to stay at Sant'Agata through the winter, Verdi decided to spend two months in Genoa, leaving Giuseppina behind, though she was neither well nor in good spirits at the time. There is no evidence of any preceding un- pleasantness between them; Giuseppina in a letter to a friend suggests that Verdi's motive was "a strange desire to explore the world." In fact, he returned after five days, but the incident prompts Walker to observe, "One does not know what arrangement there was between them." Much earlier, in a remarkable letter to Barezzi of 1852, Verdi wrote "Who knows what relationship exists between us? What affairs? What ties? What claims I have on her, and she on me? "20 This is Verdi in his most deliberately obfuscating style, but those questions cannot fail to arise in the mind of anyone seeking to understand their life together.

However, there is no reason to doubt the strength of their fundamental attachment to each other. Giuseppina's letters reveal again and again her passionate and consuming devotion to Verdi; they are an eloquent and moving testimony to her profound love. Verdi, of course, was far more reticent about his feelings, but there are few finer tributes to a woman than in that letter to Barezzi: In my house there lives a lady, free, independent, a lover like myself of solitude, possessing a fortune that shelters her from all need. Neither I nor she owes to anyone at all an account of our actions ... in my house she is entitled to as much respect as myself-more even; and no one is allowed to forget that on any account. And finally she has every right, both on account of her conduct and her character, to the consideration she never fails to show to others.21

Though Verdi was often hard on her, at only one period in their long life together is there evidence of a serious estrangement between them. Precisely what happened in the decade between 1867 and 1877 is uncertain. It is clear that Verdi was ill-tempered, morose and unsettled much of the time, that he and Giuseppina had frequent quarrels, and that she felt rejected by him and was intensely jealous of his relations with the singer Teresa Stolz whom he had met in 1868. Giuseppina's distress, resentment and despair are evident in her letters:

Permit my exacerbated heart therefore to find at least the dignity of refusal, and may God forgive you the most acute and humiliating wound you have dealt me. [To Verdi, 1869] I-in profound discouragement I tell you this-I no longer believe in anything or anybody, almost. I have suffered so many and such cruel disillusionment as to become disgusted with life. [To Coun- tess Maffei, 1874] I don't know if there's anything in it, or not ... I do know that since 1872 there have been periods of as- siduity and attentions on your part that no woman could interpret in a more favorable sense ... You know how you have repaid me with harsh, violent, biting words! You can't control yourself ... Think sometimes that I, your wife, despising past rumours, am living at this very moment a* trois, and that I have the right to ask, if not for your caresses, at least for your consideration. [To Verdi, 1876] Since fate has willed that that which was my whole happiness in this life should now be irreparably lost ... [To Verdi, 1876]

But the fever subsided and by 1878 they had begun a final, serene phase of their life together. "To my Verdi, with my former affection and veneration!" she inscribed on a pho- tograph that year, and in a letter of the next year she wrote, in a way reminiscent of much earlier times, "I still love you with a crazy affection and sometimes when I am in a bad mood it's a sort of loving fever, unknown to the doctors."22

20Ibid., pp. 227, 204. 21Ibid., p. 204.

2The excerpts in this paragraph are quoted from Walker, pp. 405, 419, 431-32, 435, 440, 442.

118

III Whether Verdi did or did not have an affair

with Stolz is as difficult as it is pointless to determine.23 What is important is the evidence of profound turmoil in the composer's life in the period between Don Carlos (1867) and Otello (1887), a period which, despite the continued growth of his musical powers, saw only two new major works, Aida (1871) and the Requiem Mass (1874). The breaking of his close friendship with Mariani provides further evidence of his state of mind in the early '70s.24 This painful incident shows Verdi at his worst: extreme in his demands for loyalty, easy to take offense, intransigent and unsym- pathetic, harsh and remote in manner. These are not entirely new characteristics -they simply appear in exaggerated form during these years. Similarly, there is an intensified bitterness toward the public and critics.

Look how I've been treated by the press ... Stupid criticism and praise more stupid still ... No one has wished to point out my intentions; absurdities and stupidities all the time, and at bottom a sort of spite against me ... No one has said to me "Thanks, dog!" [January, 1873] After twenty-five years absence from La Scala I was hissed after the first act of La Forza del destino. After Aida endless chatter; that I was no more the Verdi of Un Ballo in maschera (that Ballo that was hissed the first time it was performed at La Scala); ... that I didn't know how to write for the singers; ... and that, finally I was an imitator of Wagner!!! A fine result, after a career of thirty-five years, to end up as an imitator!!! ... I can't take as anything but a joke your sentence: "The whole salvation of the theatre and of art is in your hands!!" Oh no! Never fear, composers will never be lacking, and I will myself repeat what Boito said in a toast to Faccio after his first opera: "... . and perhaps the man is born who will sweep the altar" ... Amen! [The reference is to an unforgotten cut of twelve years earlier.]25

It is certainly no surprise that Verdi had decided that he would write no more for the public: "When I want to make music I can make it in my own room, without hearing the

verdicts of the learned or the imbeciles!" (1875).26

Verdi's discouragement and bitterness are hardly consistent with the immense critical, popular and financial success of Aida. Further, his concern for the health of Italian opera had, if anything, increased over the years. Why, then, his decision that "the account is set- tled"? I believe that the evidence indicates that during his mid-fifties and sixties, Verdi passed through a psychological crisis which affected all phases of his life, personal and professional. From the time of the loss of his family, Verdi never seems to have been at ease with himself or his environment, not even, as we have seen, with the most stable and de- pendable part of his world, Giuseppina. Al- though he could be good-humored, affectionate, and generous, a sense of restlessness and of intense emotion barely controlled is always present. At times his actions appear designed to prevent too close a look inside. "I run all day from the house to the fields, from the fields to the house, until, when evening comes, dead tired, I throw myself into bed, in order to begin all over again next day" (1858).27 There can be no mistaking the significance of Sant'Agata to Verdi, but the periods of intense physical activity in the fields, described by Giuseppina in a letter of 1857 as "a mania, madness, rage, fury-anything you like that is exaggerated" point to something other than a love of farming and a wish for the tranquil- lity and solitude of the fields as their source.28 The unhealed wounds of his past had left Verdi vulnerable, prey to despairing thoughts, sensitive to the inevitable dangers of close attachment, and consequently self-protective and demanding in his personal relationships. He had long since bid farewell to content and the tranquil mind.

In 1867, both of Verdi's fathers died, Carlo Verdi in January during the rehearsal of Don Carlos and Barezzi in July after the opera's premiere. Relations between the two Verdis had not been close for many years-if, indeed,


23See Walker, ch. 8 for a detailed account. 24See Walker, ch. 7. 25Letters quoted from Walker, pp. 469, 469-70.

26Ibid., p. 470. 27Ibid., p. 221. 28Ibid., p. 219.

119

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

they had ever been close. After his early successes had earned him the resources to do so, Verdi provided quite well for his parents, but there are clear signs of conflict between him and his father after his return to Busseto with Strepponi. In 1851, Verdi realized completely his intention "to be separate from my father both in my domestic and business affairs," partly by means of moving his parents to a farm at Vidalenzo, a short distance away from Sant'Agata. Shortly after the writing of this letter and the move to Vidalenzo, Verdi's mother died. All reports agree on the strength of the bond between them; Verdi's grief, perhaps heightened by guilt, was intense. One does not get a sense of comparably intense feeling at the time of Carlo's death. Again, a letter of Giuseppina is illuminating: "Verdi is extremely grieved and I, in spite of the fact that I have lived very little with him, and that we were at the antipodes in our way of thinking, feel the keenest regret-perhaps as keen as that of Verdi."29

In contrast, with the exception of one brief period of misunderstanding, the affection between Verdi and Barezzi deepened over the years. Barezzi seems not to have objected to the liaison with Strepponi and indeed rapidly grew to love his "most affectionate quasi- daughter" (her phrase). Both Verdi and Giuseppina experienced an acute sense of loss at his death. Earlier, when it was clear that the old man was dying, Verdi wrote, "You see how generous, how good and loving he was! I've known many men but never one better! He has loved me as much as his sons, and I have loved him as my father."30 These two deaths cannot have failed to stir in Verdi many painful reflections and memories. It was after Barezzi's death that he attempted to locate the graves of his wife and son.

One consequence of the death of Carlo Verdi was that his niece, Filomena, later called Maria, who had been living with him, was adopted by the Verdis. She was (and continued to be) a source of great joy to them, but

in 1869, Verdi, despite the pain it caused Giuseppina, sent Maria away to boarding school. This may have been a sensible decision but in the context of Verdi's life it is nevertheless curious. One might expect that a man who never ceased to grieve the loss of his children would have seized an opportunity to compensate for that loss. He could likewise have done so earlier by taking Strepponi's son Camillino into his home, but there is no indi- cation that this was ever considered. To have adopted another man's illegitimate son would surely have been an extraordinary act, and it is unlikely, moreover, that Strepponi, though she maintained regular contact with the boy until 1852, would have desired such an intru- sion of her unhappy past into her new life. Nevertheless it remains the case that in neither instance did Verdi seek directly to fill the void in his life.

It may well be, however, that in his relationships first with Mariani and then with Boito Verdi came closest to recovering a son. Al- though Mariani was only eight years his junior, Verdi clearly did not regard him merely as a friend; he ordered him about, criticized or ad- vised him freely and often treated him as an ir- responsible boy. There was a great deal of affection between them and Verdi thought him a great musician, but the relationship was not that of two equal adults. The intensity of Ver- di's feelings at the time of their break seems to reflect a sense of disappointed hopes and of personal betrayal which was quite out of proportion to Mariani's behavior. He had clearly expected more of Mariani than was reasonable. Fortunately Boito, with his more subtle and mature intelligence, later won for himself, in Walker's phrase, "a truly paternal affection." It is doubtful that Verdi could have had, in his last fifteen years, a more devoted son.

Verdi was in his mid-fifties when his fathers died. This is a period which under the best of circumstances can be difficult, a time when a sense of waning powers can become acutely troubling. Verdi's status as a leading European composer was never more secure, but that status also made him a special target of critical scrutiny, particularly by younger art-

"Walker, p. 268. "3Martin, Verdi, p. 432.

120

ists. He was to a degree puzzled and bothered by new musical trends and the growing influence of German models on Italian musical life. The lukewarm success of Don Carlos, his most ambitious, subtle, and complex opera to date, was disappointing, and Verdi had to contend moreover with the charge that he had become an imitator. The political situation, too, had taken a depressing turn which undoubtedly served to exacerbate Verdi's bitterness at the failure of the project to prepare a composite Mass in memory of Rossini. It was, of course, during this period that his relationships with Strepponi and Mariani deteriorated. Even the triumph of Aida left a bitter taste, for, as we have seen, Verdi seems to have been more affected by what he regarded as insults than by the virtually unanimous praise the opera received.

The act of composition had remained physically trying for Verdi through the years, and he periodically wrote, not without a little self-dramatization, of ending the career he claimed to detest. It appears that after Aida this decision was actually made-motivated, in part, by a deep, if irrational, anger at the public, the critics, and the musical world at large, which in his view failed fully to ap- preciate him yet never ceased in its demands. I suspect that Verdi had also come to see himself as out of step with the times, too old and perhaps too uncertain of the reception of his work to risk presenting himself again to the public. Lurking behind the anger may well have been the genuine self-doubts of a vulnerable and aging man for whom the struggle had become pointless.

Of course, Verdi did write another major, though non-operatic, work two years after the premiere of Aida, but that was prompted by the death of a man he regarded almost as a saint. The writing of the Requiem was an act of patriotism as well, and one which served to atone for the shame of the failure of the Ros- sini Mass. Though both works of this period clearly reveal Verdi's ever increasing technical mastery, they are very different in character. Aida is a triumph of workmanship, but compared to the complexities and subtleties of Don Carlos it is a reversion to the more

straightforward and conventional characteri- zations of earlier operas; only the jealous Am- neris is portrayed with the acute dramatic penetration of which Verdi was manifestly capable. The drama, in sum, seems externalized. The Requiem, however, unmistakably reflects the circumstances in which it was written; the work is permeated with grief, uncertainty, and despair. As many have noted, it is not an abstract cosmic drama, but an intimately personal one, continuous with the psychological and spiritual atmosphere of the later operas. Verdi must, at the time, have regarded it as his final public statement.

During the next five years Verdi remained actively involved in the performance of his works, conducting the Requiem Mass in the major musical centers of Europe, for example. But he firmly rejected efforts to induce him to return to composition. By 1878, however, the turmoil and exacerbated feelings of the past decade had eased greatly and one senses a readiness on Verdi's part to resume his career. It still took something of a conspiracy, or- ganized by Giulio Ricordi, to launch the next operatic project. Ricordi chose the circumstances and the bait astutely; after a very successful benefit performance of the Re- quiem Mass in Milan, which was followed by a public outpouring of affection for the composer, the idea of setting Otello with Boito as librettist was suggested. Verdi's reaction was one of great interest coupled with great cau- tion, but by 1880 Verdi and Boito were in correspondence about the libretto. Clearly, though, as Verdi's committment to Otello increased, his doubts about his capacity to suc- ceed in the undertaking likewise increased. "I'm becoming too deeply involved," he wrote, "things are going too far and I don't want to be constrained to do what I don't wish to do."31 In fact, what was at issue seems less what Verdi wished to do than what he be- lieved himself able to do.

The successful revision of Simon Boc- canegra in 1881 was undoubtedly reassuring to Verdi both in a personal sense and with re-


31Walker, p. 478.

121

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC gard to the possibilities of working with Boito, yet it was not until 1884 that he actually began composition. Progress was slow and fitful, but finally, some seven years after he had received the first draft of the libretto, Verdi completed the score. Otello had an overwhelming success: those principles of Ital- ian art which had guided Verdi's entire career had been vindicated. The considerable income derived from the opera was dedicated to char- ity, notably a hospital for the commune of Vil- lanova d'Arda and a home for aged musicians, the Casa di Riposo in Milan, which Verdi once referred to as his greatest work. These are characteristic acts of a man who, despite his love of money and conservatism in many matters, had an acute sense of social justice throughout his life.

The struggles which accompanied the creation of Otello were not repeated in the writing of Falstaff. Verdi responded at once with enthusiasm to Boito's sketch for the libretto, though he did raise questions about whether "the enormous number of my years" would permit completion of the project. He worried, too, and continued to worry that work on Falstaff would interfere with Boito's progress on his own opera Nerone. But this time, the questions seem perfunctory, and, most significantly, he wrote to Boito (July 1889), "what joy to be able to say to the public: 'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!!! COME AND SEE US!' ",32 The premiere on 9 February 1893 at La Scala was again a triumph, a triumph which Verdi, as he had done four years earlier, insisted should be shared with Boito. And, indeed, without Boito's "voluntary servitude" the two masterpieces of Verdi's old age cannot be imagined.

Verdi's last two completed works, the Te Deum and Stabat Mater, were written between 1895 and 1897. His interpretation of the former was 'original and characteristic, for, in contrast to the usual festive and joyous treatment of the hymn, Verdi was caught by its dark side, "Humanity believes in the ludex venturus, invokes Him in Salvum fac, and ends with a prayer, Dignare Domine die

isto-moving, sad to the point of terror. All that has nothing to do with victories and coronation.. ."33 In November 1897 Giusep- pina died, and with her death and the subsequent performances of the Pezzi Sacri in Mi- lan, Verdi's career and life were ended. In his last years, he was attended constantly by his friends and his adopted daughter, Maria, and her family. Work on the Casa di Riposo continued to engage his attention and, though often in good spirits, he wondered to a friend, "What am I doing still in this world?" In January 1901 he suffered a fatal stroke. One month later he was buried next to Giuseppina, as he had requested, in the courtyard of the Casa di Riposo.

IV This account of Verdi's life, though it cov-

ers the span from birth to death, can in no sense be considered inclusive or fully-rounded. It is not intended as a short biography, nor certainly as a case study or a psychological analy- sis of his artistic career. Rather I have focused on particular aspects of Verdi's character and personal history which relate most directly to his choice and treatment of those dramatic themes which recur most consistently in his operas. My object is to try to see how the personality and the experiences of the man Verdi led to a metamorphosis of the Italian romantic melodrama into a unique, personal oeuvre concerned with primary and fundamental human relationships.

Verdi was essentially a traditional composer, a willing product of the primo ottocento. The conventions established by Ros- sini and elaborated by Bellini, Donizetti, and Mercadante permeate his early works and provide the raw materials from which he refined his mature style. Consequently, precedents can be found for virtually every aspect, musical and dramatic, of Verdi's work. This is important to keep in mind while considering Verdi's most characteristic dramatic themes, for on the surface there is little to distinguish his subjects and librettos from those of his immediate predecessors and contemporaries.

32Osborne, The Complete Operas, p. 474. 33Walker, pp. 502.

122

Like other nineteenth-century Italian composers, he used the work of foreign writers as his principal sources. The librettos are written in the grandiloquent theatrical poetry of the day, the plots are romantic and melodramatic, full of outlaws, distressed ladies and implacable villains, the settings are historical, usually medieval or Renaissance, and the behavior of the characters is rarely distinguished by its ra- tionality. There are important exceptions to this, which will be noted later, but the major difference between Verdi and his contemporaries is the manner in which he treated these conventions. Instead of a drama of plot and situation, Verdi's is primarily a drama of character in which the mainsprings of the action are inherent in the personalities and in- terrelationships of the actors. While maintain- ing the external forms, then, he internalized and psychologized the drama and in so doing gave expression to his personal view of human affairs.

In what follows, I shall consider two major groups of themes in Verdi's work, sexual love and the relationships between parents and children. The former is, of course, a staple of Italian opera, indeed of all opera. The latter has a centrality in Verdi's operas which has no parallel in any other composer's work.

With the possible exception of Macbeth, each of Verdi's operas includes a significant love relationship, usually involving the primo tenore and the prima donna soprano. Yet, as William Weaver points out, there are surprisingly few love duets in Verdi.34 In fact, if we define a love duet as an extended number in which a man and a woman celebrate their mutual love, only the first act duets of Don Carlos and Otello qualify, and neither is a conventional representative of the genre. Sev- eral operas entirely lack a formal duet between the lovers. In Nabucco, Verdi excised a duet between Ismaele and Fenena originally in Solera's libretto; the duets between Elvira and Emani are embedded within larger numbers, and a similar situation occurs in Luisa Miller; there can be no question of a love duet in Macbeth; Manrico and Leonora sing a brief

duettino, but its bars are sandwiched in between "Ah! si, ben mio" and its cabaletta; and finally, in Falstaff Fenton and Nanetta have fleeting amorous exchanges, but are never permitted the luxury of a real duet. In each of the remaining operas (excluding Oberto and Un Giorno di regno), although the tenor and soprano have a scena e duetto or a duetto, an examination of their character and settings shows them to be something other than a mere exchange of tender sentiments.

In several operas, a conventional pattern of the primo ottocento, denunciation-distress- explanation-reconciliation (or despair) occurs, e.g. Attila, La Battaglia di Legnano, the second duets of H6l1ne and Henri in Les VWpres siciliennes, and of Gabrielle and Amelia in Simon Boccanegra. In others, the situation prevents the fulfilment or even the continuation of the love in this world, e.g. I Lombardi, I due Foscari, I Masnadieri, the final duets of La Traviata, Les V~pres siciliennes, and Don Carlos.

Another most interesting pattern is one in which the heroine is distressed and conflicted by the hero's ardent avowals of love, e.g., Giovanna d'Arco, Un Ballo in maschera, La Forza del destino, the second duet of Don Carlos. In each of these cases the love is requited but it is incompatible with other ob- ligations. Several duets do not easily fit into any of these admittedly rough groupings, but they too are quite removed from what we normally regard as a love duet. For example, Weaver aptly describes the scena e duetto in the last act of Stiffelio as a "divorce duet"; in Rigoletto, there is no good reason to believe that the Duke loves Gilda; and in Aida, the first Radames-Aida duet consists of her attempt to seduce him away from his duty while her father listens in to be sure that she does hers. Even in the Fountainebleau scene, Elisabeth does not know the identity of Don Carlos until the end of the duet and, of course, their happiness is very short-lived. This duet is unique in Verdi in the sense that nothing has prepared either the lovers or the audience for the sad disillusionment which occurs at once. It is interesting to note as well that this is one of the few Verdi operas in which we see the first meeting of the lovers. One has to turn


34William Weaver, "Verdi and the Drama of Love," Atti 3 (1974), pp. 523-28.

123

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

to the Puccini of Manon Lescaut, La Bohbme and Madame Butterfly to find a composer truly interested in portraying the process of falling in love.

The first-act duet of Otello and Des- demona is unquestionably a full and whole- hearted expression of mutual love, but it is perhaps even farther from a conventional tenor-soprano number than the examples cited before. How often in opera does a mature, married couple reminisce about the origins of their love and passionately dedicate themselves to its contination? It is essential to the drama that Otello and Desdemona are not adolescents in the first flush of love, that they are a husband and wife, two equals in love who have given the most central parts of themselves to each other. It is from this that the deeply erotic character of the duet arises; love, self and sexuality are fused. Thus when Otello believes his wife unfaithful, his life is rendered meaningless-he has been wounded mortally, where he lives. Despite its celebration of love and its serene ending, then, the duet is ultimately disquieting, not only because we know already of Iago's plots, but also because Verdi uses the duet to delineate Otel- lo's turbulent character and the extravagence of his feelings. His outbursts at "Pingea dell'armi il fremito ..." (so tellingly con- trasted with Desdemona's serene response) and the overwhelming emotion of "Ah! la gioia m'innonda si fieramente ..." show us a man barely able to contain his passions. And Otel- lo's lines begining "Tale e il gaudio del- l'anima che temo ..." contain a presenti- ment of the tragedy to come. The duet, then, is far from a mere celebration of love, for it establishes the dramatic and psychological core of the drama and in so doing reveals the tragic end in what seems a joyful beginning.

What accounts for this absence of straightforward love duets in Verdi's operas? Weaver concludes that the composer subordinated the theme of love to the necessities of the drama as a whole. "There is rarely time for heroes and heroines to linger over a single emotion; the drama is too rich and demanding. As in life-but not always in the operas of other composers-love is only one problem. Others are really more frequent, and more im-

portant."35 That is true to a degree and, as Budden points out, Verdi's idea of drama was essentially confrontational in nature.36 Nonetheless there are numerous instances in which Verdi does permit his heroes and heroines to linger over a single emotion, in- cluding love. It is typically in arias rather than duets that he does so, however, e.g. "Ernani involami," "Caro nome," "I1 balen del suo sorriso," "De' miei bollenti spiriti," "La rivedra nell'estasi," and "Celeste Aida." Fur- thermore, the baritone-soprano duets of Luisa Miller, Rigoletto, and Simon Boccanegra, among others, are expansive, lyrical treat- ments of filial and paternal love which are far from confrontational in character. Nor is it evident that love duets are, as Weaver suggests, inevitably dramatically static. The example of Otello shows how they can estab- lish critical aspects of character and, in fact, define central dramatic themes. The same point can be made about love arias; consider how varied are the five arias cited above, how surely each defines a distinct personality in a specific dramatic context. It does not seem reasonable to conclude, then, that the nature of Verdi's dramaturgy precluded conventional love duets.

It also will not do to argue that love is a relatively unimportant theme in Verdi's operas. Though absent as a factor in Macbeth and distinctly subsidiary in Nabucco and At- tila, love motivates the drama or is the subject of the drama in each of his other twenty-some operas. In many of them, other themes are of equal or greater significance, but in none would the essential action remain unchanged if the love relationship were excised. Even in La Battaglia di Legnano, a frankly patriotic piece d'occasion, the love triangle assumes a prominence equal to the political events. In sum, no theme is more prominent in Verdi's work as a whole than that of sexual love.

Now it must be recognized that the operas of Donizetti (though not of Bellini or Rossini) provide precedents for several of the features of Verdi's treatment of love. For example, unhappy endings abound in Donizetti's work,

3Ibid., p. 528. 38Budden, Operas, pp. 33-35.

124

love relationships may be absent or insig- nificant (as in Lucrezia Borgia, L'Assedio di Calais or Maria Stuarda), and rarely are the tenor and soprano secure in their love for very long. The parallels are clearest in Verdi's pre-Macbeth works, when he was most strongly gripped by the modes of Donizettian melodrama. But what in Donizetti so often seems conventional becomes in Verdi truly psychological--an expression of a personal view of life. It has often been suggested, and rightly, I think, that the prominence of parent-offspring relationships in Verdi's work is a consequence of the loss of his children. It is less often noted, however, that at that time he also lost his wife, probably the most crush- ing blow of all, for not only did he love her deeply, but it was at her death-which followed those of the children-that he was left alone. Never of a sanguine temper, this experience can only have impressed upon Verdi how transitory happiness is, how cruel and ar- bitrary fate can be, and how love exposes one to the pain of loss.

I argued earlier that Verdi never recovered from this great misfortune of his youth, that it permanently colored his thinking and emotional life, affecting even his relationship with Giuseppina, whose love and devotion he cannot have doubted on any reasonable grounds. It also colored his operas: Verdi does not present love as a happy state, but rather as a prelude to grief and despair. Often it seems more a malady than a blessing, and in such characters as Silva, di Luna, Amelia, Don Car- los, or Otello, love becomes something of a derangement of the emotions. The absence of conventional love duets, then, is symptomatic of Verdi's pervasive pessimism about the possibilities of love, for as he knew too well, happiness in love is an illusion.

There are, of course, several operas in which the lovers are alive and together at the end, for example Alzira and Simon Boc- canegra, but with the exception of Un Giorno di regno, a comic opera and the only libretto Verdi passively accepted as it was given him, and Stiffelio (Aroldo), an extraordinary case to which we shall return, the fate of the lovers is more a footnote to the conclusion than its focus. Only in Falstaff is the happy union of

the lovers a central element of the finale. Fen- ton and Nanetta are sometimes regarded as akin to the second leads of a musical comedy, a light romantic contrast to the main action. They are indeed a contrast to the main action, but in no sense can they be considered a sen- timental creation of a fond old man, who, at the age of eighty, was willing to accept the illusions he would not permit himself before. It is of the essence that these two young innocents live in a dramatic and musical world apart from that of the other characters. Their brief snatches of duet are of substance quite unique in Verdi, ardent as always, but wistful and gay as well. The staging, about which Verdi was quite particular, emphasizes their separation from the rest of the world, and so does the way in which their musical line soars above and free of the turbulence and foolish- ness around them in the second scene of Act II. Finally, we are made to realize in the last scene that they inhabit a different spiritual world. Edward Cone points out that "when Nanetta appears as the Queen of the Fairies (a role assigned to Mistress Quickly in the original) .. . her separation from the real world, already prepared, ... is now complete; contrasting, earthly counterpoint is no longer present. She has become the fairy she is pre- tending to be, and the elves she summons are real elves. The magical orchestration of the passage ensures the transformation."'37

Verdi, then, at the end of his career gives us a vision of pure and innocent love, uncor- rupted by everyday passions and entirely self- sustaining. But it exists only in a magical sphere; it is not part of this world. In earlier operas, the lovers hope to be reunited in a better world, after death. In Falstaff, Fenton and Nanetta are united in this world, but only through the trickery of the merry wives. The irony is poignant, for the continuation of their love depends upon the scheming and decep- tion which are its very opposites. The partici- pation of the lovers in the final fugue signals the acceptance of the sad reality that the dream of love must be compromised by the facts of ordinary existence. For all the mirth


37Edward T. Cone, "The Old Man's Toys: Verdi's Last Operas," Perspectives USA 6 (1954), p. 132.

125

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC and good humour of the opera, Verdi's view of love remained fundamentally unchanged. Cer- tainly, what once caused pain can now be regarded with a measure of amused detachment, but beneath the merriment, Verdi mourns for what can never be. Although the world is still the enemy of love, Verdi, in this wonderful summing-up, seems finally to have reconciled himself to its ways.

V The year 1847, as we have seen, was a

turning point both in Verdi's career and in his personal life. Macbeth was the product of a great advance in his powers of expression and characterization. Before he was free to pursue the new directions embodied in that remarkable achievement, however, Verdi had first to discharge a number of earlier commitments, I Masnadieri, II Corsaro and the revision of I Lombardi. One can only speculate about what turn Verdi's career would next have taken had he not met Strepponi in Paris at that point. As things turned out, by the time his first post- Macbeth opera was conceived and written, their affair had been firmly established. The post-Macbeth operas are also post-Strepponi operas.

Until recently, it was the general critical view that the seeds planted in Macbeth did not mature until Rigoletto, that the interven- ing operas were typical products of the anni di galera. Closer acquaintance with the three operas which followed Macbeth shows, however, that the more advanced and subtle style begun in 1847 continued to develop in these works. Budden provides many examples from La Battaglia di Legnano, Luisa Miller, and Stiffelio of Verdi's more varied and refined use of orchestral resources, of his modification of conventional forms to suit dramatic purposes, and of "a new concentration of lyrical elements within the dramatic scheme.""' It is clear, too, that Verdi himself regarded these works as special. He prepared extensive sketches for Luisa Miller, probably the first time he had done so in his career, and of the other two operas he later (1854) wrote, "Among

my operas which don't do the rounds, I leave some alone because the subjects are wrong, but there are two which I wouldn't want forgotten-Stiffelio and La Battaglia di Legnano.'"39 Verdi subsequently did revise the former (the unsuccessful Aroldo of 1857) and for two years seriously pursued the possibility of doing the same to the latter.

As Budden points out, it was unusual for Verdi to be concerned about the fate of his operas after their initial production; generally he accepted the verdict of the public and went on. Why then did he not want these two to be forgotten? The reason was, I think, that the operas written and conceived between Mac- beth and Rigoletto represented for Verdi the beginning of a new phase in his artistic and personal life. With them, he left behind many of the conceptions and modes of the primo ottocento melodrama and confirmed the new set of dramatic ideals which were to underpin his mature works. Certainly none of these works is entirely consistent in this regard, but in each he succeeded in creating individual characters, rather than types. They are credi- ble people whose emotional states are par- ticularized. Accordingly, the musical style is more differentiated, poetic, and nuanced than before. With the exception of the public scenes of La Battaglia di Legnano, fur- thermore, the scale of these operas is much reduced: a great deal of the critical action in all three occurs in a domestic setting, and in two of them the fate of a marriage is at the center of the drama. With these operas Verdi had entered definitively into a new realm of sentiment as well as artistic ambition.

Despite their diverse sources and settings, these three transitional operas are themati- cally linked, for in each, male jealousy and the guilt or innocence of the heroine are the central interpersonal issues. Now both these themes were staples of nineteenth-century Ital- ian opera; but prior to La Battaglia di Leg- nano they rarely served as a motivating force in Verdi's dramas. Of the twelve earlier operas, sexual rivalry figures prominently in only two, Ernani and Alzira. There is a triangle of

38Budden, Operas, p. 446. 39Budden, "La Battaglia di Legnano," p. 71.

126

sorts in Nabucco, I Masnadieri, and II Corsaro, but the villanies of Abigaille, Francesco or Seid can scarcely be considered the consequence of frustrated love. The jealousy of Pagano and Foresto are distinctly peripheral to the main action in I Lombardi and Attila, and sexual rivalry does not occur at all in the remaining five operas. With La Battaglia di Legnano, sexual jealousy and betrayal become predomi- nant themes in Verdi's work, and will be absent only in Les V~pres siciliennes and La Forza del destino.

At the same time his heroines underwent a corresponding transformation. They are now essentially innocents who are corrupted or destroyed by the world, a world ruled by the passions of men and the inflexible order created by men. These women react to circumstances rather than create them; they are the victims of forces beyond their control. Their conflicts are consequently internal, the product of con- tending emotions. Again precedents can be found for much of this in earlier operas and, of course, it is not the case'that all these characteristics are present in every one of the heroines of the later operas. But after 1847, they occur with impressive consistency.

It would be foolhardy to claim that Verdi focused on this interrelated set of themes in an intentional or self-conscious manner, as he appears to have done with the patriotic elements which recur in his operas. But it does seem reasonable to argue that he was drawn to them by events in his personal life. As far as we know, between the death of his first wife and the liaison with Strepponi Verdi had formed no at- tachments to any other woman. There can be little doubt that both he and Strepponi were emotionally needy at the time of their meeting in Paris, and that for many reasons they were very well suited to each other. Nevertheless, as Verdi well knew, Strepponi was a woman with a past whose career had been ruined by a passionate, and, it seems, rather sordid affair. The contrast between Margherita Barezzi and this woman of the theater could, at least on the surface, scarcely have been more extreme. It is also clear that, even after Strepponi had established a new life for herself, her feelings of un- worthiness persisted in her correspondence for many years. It requires little psychologizing to

believe that, for all the positive elements in the new relationship, Verdi also found in it much that was unsettling-for he had now to come to grips not only with his own past, but also with Strepponi's. It was not, nor could it be, an un- complicated and untroubled love. As we have seen, there are many indications of ambiva- lences on Verdi's part in the succeeding years, ambivalances which were not fully resolved until his old age.

If we return now to the first operas conceived after 1847, the influence on them of the affair with Strepponi seems unmistakable. Considering the circumstances of the composition of La Battaglia di Legnano, Verdi could easily have focused exclusively on the patriotic elements and written a piece in the grand manner. Instead he gave equal weight to the private and the public domains. In fact, Verdi and Cammarano had to augment the public side of the play on which the opera was based to produce a properly stirring patriotic specta- cle, while they retained largely intact the private drama of Joseph Mery's original. In that original the emotional focus is the heroine, and Verdi took care that the role of Lida should not be swamped by the opera's more obviously exciting and powerful characters and events. Of the three principals, it is she who is the internally conflicted one, and it is primarily in her music that we find, in Bud- den's words, "something new to Verdi: an an- ticipation of that intimacy of sentiment that finds its perfect expression in La Traviata."4 Both her remarkable recitative in Act III, scene ii and the following duettino with her husband were additions suggested by Verdi. Evidently his imagination was caught by the character and dilemma of the innocent woman who, despite appearances, is wrongly accused of infidelity, and who, despite her guiltlessness, feels guilty. In many ways Lida is a prototype of the female characters to come, just as the destructive jealousy of the males around her was to find expression again and again in the subsequent operas.

In his next opera, Verdi pursued similar themes and created in Luisa perhaps his purest


4?Budden, Operas, p. 414.

127

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

example of the destruction of innocence. Her progress from the ingenuous, loving girl of the opening to the weary, tragic woman of the last act gives the opera its psychological coherence and much of its emotional force. We find later in Gilda a similar progress, though she, unlike Luisa, shares in the responsibility for her fate. Again, in Luisa Miller the hero is led by circumstances to believe his beloved is false, and it is his jealousy and sense of betrayal which leads to the final tragedy. Luisa, like almost every succeeding heroine, is the victim of the machinations, irrationalities, and needs of men.

This is certainly also true of the heroine of the next opera, Stiffelio. But Lina is unique among Verdi's creations in that she has, in fact, been unfaithful. Although she claims to have been betrayed by Raffaele and never to have loved him, it remains the case that their affair extended over some time and involved a measure of cooperation on her part. She is clearly a guilty woman, and in the opera, unlike the play, she is given little excuse for her conduct. Her remorse and her love for her husband are never in doubt, but it requires an act of extraordinary forgiveness on the part of Stiffelio to overcome his jealous rage and to pardon his repentant wife.

There is nothing else quite like Stiffelio in all Verdi's work, or, for that matter, in all Ital- ian opera. Though some melodramatic trappings remain, it is essentially a problem play with a bourgeois domestic setting. The hero is no impetuous youth full of ardor and poetry, like all of his predecessors and most of his successors, but an older man, a leader of a Prot- estant sect, who has seen much of the world and has suffered for his beliefs. He is a cuckold but not a figure of ridicule, and instead of aveng- ing himself on his wife as a proper husband should, he first offers her a divorce and then accepts her back. And all of these strange goings-on are placed in a contemporary setting.41 That a composer so astute and so at- tuned to his audience should have chosen a

subject so remote from their experience and expectations is remarkable.

Not surprisingly, Stiffelio was far from a success and received few performances after its premiere. Certainly much of its integrity was destroyed by problems with the censor- ship. But even apart from this, it seems clear that Verdi had simply ventured into areas that were beyond the comprehension of his conservative audience. In the attempt to rescue Stiffelio as Aroldo Verdi and Piave conven- tionalized it by providing a medieval setting, changing the hero to a knight, and much reduc- ing the religious elements. The rescue failed and both operas have continued in obscurity. It could hardly have been otherwise; even to a twentieth-century audience, Stiffelio must seem a strange subject for treatment within the conventions of Italian opera. But whether it remains a curiosity or ultimately is judged "worthy to stand beside the three masterpieces which it immediately precedes,"42 we cannot doubt that it meant a great deal to Verdi. In choosing to set Stiffelio he was deliberately seeking to create a new kind of operatic drama, one of greater psychological truthfulness and contemporary relevance. And it seems clear that Verdi's feelings toward Strepponi are reflected in this drama of jealousy mastered by acceptance, of an unfaithful woman redeemed and of reconciliation through love.

VI These three operas which preceded

Rigoletto, and the many thereafter in which the themes of innocence, betrayal, and jealousy recur, cannot rightly be considered autobiographical. There is a sense in which they are about the relationship with Strep- poni, but certainly no character can be taken as a representation of Verdi or his mistress. But there is one opera, La Traviata, which comes very close to being directly autobiographical. It is impossible to believe that Verdi was not aware of the parallel between

41In only one other case, La Traviata, did Verdi intend an opera to have a contemporary setting, but in that instance he was dissuaded from his plan. I believe it is a measure of the personal significance of these two operas that Verdi

favored a setting so out of keeping with operatic tradition and the expectations of his audience. 4Budden, Operas, p. 474.

128

Dumas's drama of an illicit love destroyed by convention and his own affair with Strepponi, an affair which caused such scandal in Bus- seto, alienated him from his father, and even ruffled momentarily his relationship with Barezzi. This surface resemblance, however, is only one of several elements in the opera which make it Verdi's most personal and, for many, his most touching work.

With few exceptions, Verdi's operas are dominated by their male characters. Indeed, to fill his dramatic needs Verdi virtually created the baritone as a separate dramatic category and gave to that voice many of his most powerful and characteristic roles. It is all the more striking a feature of La Traviata, then, that its focus is so completely on its heroine. Al- though Alfredo and Germont are clearly de- lineated figures who develop and change in the course of the opera, neither is one of Ver- di's more complex or interesting creations. Nor is La Traviata really a story of thwarted love. Rather it is an intense and subtle por- trayal of a woman destroyed and redeemed by her own character.

Psychologically, the key to Violetta's tragedy is her sense of guilt and worthless- ness. From the very outset Violetta knows her life will be short and meaningless, that the most she can hope for is a brilliant career of pleasure; she knows perfectly well, too, that no one really cares about her, "A poor woman, alone, abandoned in this crowded desert that they call Paris."43 Initially she treats Alfredo's declaration of love lightly, though with considerable kindness, for she cannot believe herself capable any longer of love or of being loved. The evident sincerity of this naive young man, though, reawakens dreams from the past. In a passage usually omitted in performance, Violetta recalls that "When I was a girl, an innocent and timid desire depicted

him, the tender lord of my future... ." This contrast between innocence and corruption serves as a refrain which is repeated in each of the succeeding acts. Violetta is well aware that her decision to accept love is a dangerous gamble. ("Would a serious love be a misfortune for me?"), but it is her last chance to re- deem her life. "Sempre libera," then, is a desperate attempt to dissuade herself from a course she knows she must take but which nevertheless frightens her deeply.

The second-act scene between Violetta and Germont pare forms the musical and dramatic crux of La Traviata and is surely one of Verdi's masterpieces of psychological penetration. Rapidly he establishes Germont's character, underlines Violetta's dignity, independence, and sophistication, and-most significantly-shows us how Violetta has and Germont phre forms the musical and dramatic crux of La Traviata and is surely one I love Alfredo, and God erased it, with my re- pentance." But her defeat is inevitable: what- ever God has done, she remains a prey to her own guilt. Germont's plea in its sweet con- ventionality is dramatically perfect. Violetta cannot sacrifice the girl, "pure as an angel," to her own, undeserved happiness. She fights on a bit, but Germont relentlessly pursues her most vulnerable points, finally insinuating that, with desire satisfied, Alfredo's love will fade; it is more than she can resist. Her response to Germont is not, as might be expected, a defense of Alfredo, but a simple "E vero! e vero!," as if Germont had merely given voice to her own unacknowledged fears and her realization that she has no claims on her lover. Her capitulation, "So for the wretched girl, who one day fell, any hope of rising again is silent! Even if God is kind and indulgent to her, mankind will always be implacable," is a passage of the purest pain and grief. Nothing remains for Violetta; her "seductive dream" is shattered and she is ut- terly without illusions about what is to come. In a most moving and significant phrase, she asks Germont to embrace her "qual figlia," then urges him to console his son and let him know, in time, the truth so Alfredo will not curse her memory. Through all this Germont remains sympathetic but uncomprehending.


43Where possible translations have been taken from Wil- liam Weaver, Seven Verdi Librettos (New York, 1975). For operas not included in that volume, I have used Weaver's translations of Luisa Miller and I Vespri siciliani (accom- panying the RCA Victor recordings LSC-6168 and ARL4- 0370), Lionel Salter's translation of Simon Boccanegra (Deutsche Grammophon Gesellschaft 2740169), and Peggy Cochrane's translation of Don Carlo (London OSA1432).

129

19TH CENTURY

MUSIC

His viewpoint is conventional and he gets what he wants not because his arguments are compelling, but because Violetta, despite her brave words, is psychologically unable to transcend her past. It is only in the last act, when she is dying, that she can finally make peace with herself.

In terms of dramatic action, what follows the scene between Germont and Violetta is really anti-climactic: all that happens subsequently--Violetta's farewell, her degra- dation and despair, Alfredo's jealous rage, and the final death scene-has already been foretold. Yet the last scene is not merely the obligatory mournful tableau. To treat it as such reduces Verdi's carefully judged resolu- tion of the drama to sentimentality. In the last act each of the three main characters achieves a new understanding. Germont's is the most obvious and the least significant ("Too much remorse is consuming my soul ... Only now do I see the harm I did!"). More striking is the deepening of Alfredo's character. Though he has been consistently presented as a sincere and ardent lover, his self-centeredness, im- maturity, and insensitivity to Violetta are manifest throughout the first two acts, most tellingly in his smug response to Violetta's outburst of love and grief in the second act. "Ah, that heart lives only for love of me," he reflects, as if she had just given him an unex- pected peck on the cheek. Only in the last act does he grasp the depth of her love and come to realize what truly he has lost. His searing phrase at "No, non morrai, non dimelo" tells us in a stroke that at last he comprehends.

But it is in Violetta, inevitably, that the most complex change occurs. "Addio, del pas- sato" is her final renunciation of all hopes, and, above all, her acceptance of her past. It is immaterial, I think, that her acceptance of guilt may strike a modern audience as quit

Verdi the Man and Verdi the Dramatist

Documents

Transcript of Verdi the Man and Verdi the Dramatist