Verdi

The Great Composers

Michael Steen

• Publisher: Icon Books
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781848318052
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music. Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.With Verdi, Italian opera reached its zenith, where music and drama are fused into an indissoluble whole. Although he wrote 28 operas, less than half remain regularly performed. Yet those which are remain a gold standard of characterisation, stagecraft and musical vocabulary. Rigoletto, La Traviata, Un Ballo in Maschera, Aïda – the roll call is long, but it is especially with his final two operas, Otello and Falstaff, that he becomes the unassailable master.But it was not just the excellence of Verdi's artistry which propelled him to fame. Verdi was writing just as Italy was becoming increasingly resentful of Austria's domination, and there was a growing movement to unite the patchwork of territories of which Italy was composed at the time into a unified country. He became identified with the ambitions of reunification, and many of his operas, with their political subtexts, became rallying calls for the nationalists. Michael Steen unpicks how this most unsociable of men, a reluctant politician but a brilliant composer, became the figurehead for the birth of a nation.Born into a modest background, Verdi, with his sound business sense, grew rich and famous; rich enough to ignore the scandalised disapproval of his neighbours at his living openly with his mistress for many years before marrying her. At his death 200, 000 people lined the streets to bid farewell to their hero.

VERDI

AROUND 10 OCTOBER 1813, less than six months after Wagner was born in Leipzig, Giuseppe Verdi was born near Busseto close to Parma. This was then part of Napoleon’s puppet Kingdom of Italy, so the boy was registered as Joseph rather than Giuseppe. When he died on 27 January 1901, Queen Victoria was lying in state in Osborne. Their demise was celebrated with comparable state funerals. Just as the Queen dominated 19th-century Britain, Verdi stands astride the music of 19th-century Italy.

Verdi knew exactly how to convey emotion and drama in beautiful melody. The arias which we love, such as ‘La Donna è Mobile’ from Rigoletto, have a naturalness and simplicity. His operas therefore provide a contrast to the complex, ‘orchestral’ operas of Wagner. They are essential items in the opera house and elsewhere: how many brides have walked down the aisle to the strains of the Grand March from Aïda! No matter that theat-rical productions of the March often include elephants and giraffes.

With a canny sense of timing and some genuine sympathy, Verdi espoused the cause of Italian nationalism. The combination of his music and his stories conveyed an emotional message to his compatriots, who yearned for delivery from despotic monarchs. This was an aspect which the check-list used by the strict but pedantic censors was not designed to identify. Thus, Verdi could emulate the work of the poet Alessandro Manzoni, whose tragedy Adelchi, about Charlemagne’s overthrow of the Lombard domination in Italy, contained many veiled allusions to the burden of Habsburg rule. In Verdi’s La Battaglia di Legnano, the knights swear to repel Italy’s tyrants beyond the Alps. No wonder that, on the eve of their revolution, the citizens of Rome were delirious about it. No wonder that the chorus in Nabucco, ‘Va, pensiero’, in which the captive Hebrews long for their homeland, launched Verdi’s career.

Verdi’s direct contribution to the revolutionary cause was, however, limited to setting rousing words to beautiful and memorable tunes. During the upheavals of 1848, he was actually based in Paris pursuing his career and his mistress, the former prima donna Giuseppina Strepponi. However, the story of the unification of Italy is such important background to Verdi’s life that, having considered his early years, we must return again to it and to the achievements of Giuseppe Garibaldi, the colourful freedom-fighter, who led the battle for it.

The 1850s saw the three important and very popular operas by Verdi – Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata – which were less obviously political. Thereafter, the rate of composition decelerated and came to a halt with Aïda, which was produced in Cairo on Christmas Eve 1871, and the Requiem of 1874, written in honour of Manzoni. There was a long pause before Verdi emerged from retirement to write the two last operas, Otello, produced in February 1887, and finally Falstaff, which was premièred in 1893, just before he was 80.

Verdi kept away from, and was not asked to join, the titanic struggle that rent the musical world to the north: he is not to be found on either side of the fissure which divided Brahms and his adherents from the New Music of Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. This irritated Verdi, who was annoyed that the new generation did not regard his work as modern art. But with Otello and Falstaff, one an opera seria, the other an opera buffa, both unarguably great works of art, Verdi brought the development of Italian opera to its ultimate conclusion. Italian operas composed afterwards, even those of Puccini, are at best but an imitation of what Verdi achieved.

VERDI’S EARLY LIFE

Verdi’s story was by no means the rags to riches one that legend (and particularly he) would have it be: his family, small-holders, were among the less than ten per cent of the population who could read and write.¹ Carlo, his father, was an innkeeper who got into trouble for failing to pay his rent and for various irregularities such as permitting unlicensed gambling to take place on his premises; his mother was the daughter of another inn-keeper from a few miles away.

Giuseppe Verdi was born in a small two-storey house* in Le Roncole, a small village a few miles from Busseto. We can imagine that, outside Carlo’s inn, ‘there hung a grey dishcloth attached to a stick; on the cloth was inscribed the word Trattoria’. Perhaps ‘a tattered bedsheet, supported on two very slender wooden hoops and hanging down to within three feet of the ground, protected the door from the direct rays of the sun’. Perhaps the bed-room was very large and fine; perhaps it had ‘grey canvas instead of glass in its two windows’ and ‘four beds, each six feet wide and five feet high’.²

As he grew up, solemn young Peppino helped in the inn and played the organ in the little church which was about a hundred yards from where he was born. One day, the priest, whom he was assisting at Mass, angrily swore at him, saying ‘May God strike you down’. Shortly afterwards, the cleric and two choristers, but fortunately not Verdi, were struck by lightning. This episode did not endear Verdi to religion.³

Verdi was keen to progress, so the local organist persuaded Carlo to buy him an old spinet, hardly a normal item of furniture for such people. A friend repaired it for free. When the organist died, Verdi took over, and on high days and holidays he had to return to Le Roncole from Busseto, where he went to school, and lodged with a cobbler.

When he was twelve, Verdi had lessons in counterpoint and composition from a Busseto organist. He was sponsored by Antonio Barezzi, a prosperous, flute-playing grocer and distiller who started the local Philharmonic Society. Barezzi became a second father to him; on Barezzi’s death many years later, Verdi said: ‘I owe him absolutely everything.’⁴ The Philharmonic Society of around 70 amateur musicians no doubt played marches, overtures and variations, and the latest hit by Rossini. It also played compositions written by the young Verdi, who soon fell in love with Barezzi’s elder daughter Margherita, and wanted to be in a position to marry her.

When he was nearly nineteen, Verdi applied to enter the Milan Conserv-atoire, but he was turned down on several grounds: he was too old, there was no room, he had learnt an inappropriate piano method, and his counterpoint needed discipline. Also, he was a foreigner: his home state of Parma, although a puppet of Austria, was a separate country from Austrian Lombardy.*

Having been rejected, Verdi was advised to go to Milan and study privately. Apart from the Napoleonic interlude, the walled city of Milan had long been one of the most important and lucrative possessions of the Habsburgs. It had a correspondingly impressive musical tradition, employing Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and, for a time, Bach’s son Johann Christian, who later moved to London. The Ducal Theatre, which had been burnt down in 1776, had been replaced by La Scala on the site of the church of Santa Maria della Scala. With financial support from Barezzi, Verdi studied privately with Vincenzo Lavigna, a minor composer who had had some success at La Scala. He gave Verdi an excellent grounding in counterpoint and fugue.

Verdi, who seems to have led the high life, lodged with his former headmaster’s nephew and chased his daughter.⁶ There were complaints about his ‘boorish manners’. He was described as ‘ill-educated in his manners, arrogant and … something of a scoundrel’.⁷ Barezzi ticked him off. But Verdi was learning works by Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini, and hearing performances by prima donnas such as Malibran and Pasta. He was progressing: he accompanied a rehearsal of Haydn’s Creation on the piano, but soon had taken over the baton; in the end, it was agreed that he should conduct the performance.

Although apparently Verdi could have been appointed to the well-remunerated post of organist in Monza Cathedral, he chose to return to Busseto as local director of music. Verdi’s behaviour in Milan, and his freethinking religious views, may have led the residents of Busseto to suspect him of being a liberal; indeed, had he worn his distinctive black beard at this time, they would have been sure that he was a member of that ‘most insolent set of people’. The novelist Stendhal, who knew Italy well, wrote in 1839 that ‘the deepest dungeons were reserved for the blackest Liberals’.⁸ We should not therefore be surprised that the residents of Busseto did not want Verdi as organist of their principal church. They put forward their own candidate, one Giovanni Ferrari, for that job. What may seem petty to us was important to them: the violence between Ferrari’s and Verdi’s supporters reached such a pitch that the dragoons were called in, and at one stage the duchess felt obliged to forbid music in the Busseto churches.

Eventually, Ferrari was appointed organist and Verdi took the municipal duties, which entailed giving lessons at the music school and conducting concerts of the Philharmonic Society. Verdi entered into a three-year contract with the municipality for 657 lire per annum, rising to 1,000 lire.* Although embittered, this gave him security and a position. He could marry Ghita Barezzi and settle down for three years to the life of a provincial music master in this insignificant town, which is set in flat countryside relieved only by the view of the Apennines in the far distance.

A daughter was born nine months after the wedding, and then a son. They were called Virginia and Icilio, both names with liberal overtones. Virginia lived only for seventeen months. It must have been a difficult time for the restless and ambitious Verdi, who had started work on an opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio. He did not renew his three-year contract in 1839, but moved back to Milan. There he could try to get Oberto staged. He could also attend the salons, where aristocracy and artists could mingle well away from the government, whose officials were usually kept out.¹⁰

La Scala was run by the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, who also ran the Kärntnertor theatre in Vienna. Oberto was premièred at La Scala in November 1839, after Verdi had made various adaptations as requested. It was sufficiently successful that the publisher Giovanni Ricordi** bought the rights for 2,000 lire. Merelli commissioned three further operas to be given at intervals of eight months.¹²

Although Verdi seemed to be starting to make his way, this was a difficult and tragic time. After deducting the 50 per cent payable to Merelli, the proceeds from Oberto were equivalent to Verdi’s previous annual salary; but money was short and Ghita had to pawn her jewellery in order to pay the rent. Then Ghita and Icilio died quite suddenly; Verdi himself suffered throat trouble.¹³ Disaster struck professionally as well: the first of the commissioned operas, Un Giorno di Regno, was taken off after the first performance. Verdi never forgave Milan for this, just as he nurtured his dislike of the citizens of Busseto, and kept in his desk a reminder of his rejection by the Conservatoire.

NABUCCO AND SUCCESS

According to one account, Merelli found Verdi a libretto which had been turned down by a leading composer based in Vienna, Otto Nicolai. Verdi was particularly attracted by its Hebrew chorus ‘Va, pensiero’, with its yearning for freedom. Nabucco was produced at La Scala in Spring 1842.

The lead role of Abigaille, the unpleasant eldest child of King Nabucco, was sung by Giuseppina Strepponi, a star prima donna of the 1830s. (Verdi had nearly succeeded her father as organist of Monza Cathedral.) Verdi was apprehensive about the première. Exhausted by overwork and the stress of giving birth to a succession of abandoned children,¹⁴ Strepponi’s voice had deteriorated to such an extent that it was unusual for her to perform well for three successive days. Fortunately, she was in good voice on the night, and the première was a success.

Indeed, it was a triumph. When it was revived in the following autumn, it ran for 57 performances, ‘a figure unmatched before or since’ in the annals of La Scala.¹⁵ Verdi visited Vienna and toured Italy. Old Carlo was able to witness his son’s success during the run at Parma in the spring of 1844. Nabucco was put on in all the major centres in Europe, in New York, and in such less likely places as Algiers, Constantinople, Havana and Buenos Aires.

The censors seem to have overlooked the political message in Nabucco, as they did for Verdi’s next opera, I Lombardi, which was premièred at La Scala in November 1843. This was about crusaders who express much the same emotions as the Hebrews in Nabucco. When the censors reviewed I Lombardi, they were primarily concerned with changing an aria beginning with ‘Ave Maria’ and having the baptism of an infidel removed. They seem to have had no premonition of the effect that Verdi’s melodies and ‘strong, slow-surging rhythms’ would have.¹⁶ Verdi asked Count de Bombelles if he could dedicate it to the Duchess of Parma; she received him and presented him with a diamond pin.

After Verdi’s initial success, he thought about writing operas based on King Lear and Byron’s The Corsair. Occasionally, he returned to the idea of an opera about King Lear, but he never created it: perhaps the story was too like Nabucco, the mad king with a nasty child. For Venice, he thought about The Two Foscari, also by Byron: but he was worried, at this stage, that the story might offend some of the Venetian nobility. Then Verdi was introduced to Francesco Maria Piave, the son of a glass manufacturer from Murano. Verdi was not motivated by Piave’s suggestion of an opera about Cromwell, and instead they worked together on Victor Hugo’s Ernani, the drama which had caused such a sensation in Paris on its fi...

Table of contents

• INTRODUCTION
• VERDI’S EARLY LIFE
• NOTES
• Other Books in the Series