Verdi's output

For a few weeks now, I've been listening to Verdi operas from the earliest of his output, at least as available in CDs from the library. The most recent listening has been the Lorengar performance of La Traviata (1853) under Maazel (Berlin 1968). I just picked up La Battaglia di Legnano (1849), available just a bit out of order.

The operas available excluded only the two earliest (Oberto of 1839 and Un giorno di regno of 1840) and a couple others of the output before Rigoletto: Alzira (1845), Il corsaro (1848), and Stifellio (1850). Since early March, I've listed to these operas several times each:

• Nabucco (1842)
• I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843)
• Ernani (1844)
• I due Foscari (1844)
• Giovanna d'Arco (1845)
• Attila (1846)
• Macbeth (1847)
• I masnadieri (1847)
• Jérusalem (1847)
• La battaglia di Legnano (1849)
• Luisa Miller (1849)
• Rigoletto (1851)
• Il trovatore (1853)
• La traviata (1853)

Fifteen down, eight to go. I'll miss out on hearing the Paris versions of Le trouvère (1857), Macbeth (1865), Don Carlos (1867), and La force du destin (1881). I expect that their greatest difference from the originals is the addition of ballet in the third act. That, in my opinion, is no great loss, as Verdi's modifications of I Lombardi into Jérusalem were not compelling.

My favorites of the list are Giovanna (despite it's non-historic plot), Luisa, Rigoletto, and La traviata. I had high hopes for I masnadieri with its basis in Schiller's Die Räuber. But I was disappointed, as I was with Macbeth.

What I found surprising are these observations:

1. Verdi was more an imitator than I had thought. His melodic lines are seldom innovative, orchestration mundane, and harmony pandering. Generally pleasing, I'll give you that. It's little wonder that his popularity was so strong. I remember some wag's observation that the public were humming Verdi's tunes as they went into his operas.
2. I suspect that Verdi worked quickly and perhaps overbooked his commitments to produce new operas—and rework established hits—for European stages. His schedule left little opportunity to reflect on improving what he was considered a master at.
3. Of his output through 1853, great acclaim is misplaced for Il trovatore. The book is overly complex, the score is full of tunes but devoid of provoking music. What could have become a masterful tale of doubles, discovery, and damnation was squandered in petty melody.
4. Most striking is Verdi's dependence on recitative, even through Il trovatore and La traviata. Though the half-generation of great Italian opera composers before him—Donizetti, Bellini, Rossini—also used recitative, the practice had whithered elsewhere. Wagner was writing Der fliegende Holländer and on the way to leaving the set-piece and recitative entwined in a shallow grave.

Lamenting the end of lyric opera

I've recently been listening to early Verdi operas. So far, my listening has consisted of a few hearings each of his earlier work:

• Nabucco (1842)
• I Lombardi (1843)
• Ernani (1844)
• I Due Foscari (1844). 
• Attila (1846)
• Macbeth (1847)
• I masnadieri (1847)
• Jérusalem (a revision and translation of I Lombardi alla prima crociata for Paris, 1847)
• Luisa Miller (1849)

And with the Met in HD performance of Rigoletto (1851) and the Met Opera radio broadcasts of Don Carlo (1867) and La traviata (1853), each of which I heard once—at least recently. Luckily, the Dayton library has a good selection of other Verdi operas, which are in my listening stack: Rigoletto, (1851), Il trovatore, (1853), La traviata, (1853), Les vêpres siciliennes, (1855), Un ballo in maschera, (1859), La forza del destino, (1862), Don Carlos, (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887), and Falstaff, (1893). In the mad rush of producing a new work (or three!) for each season from 1839 (Oberto) through 1857 (Simon Boccanegra and Aroldo), I suspect that Verdi had little interest in forging new paths in composition. I hope to find a different attitude toward composition in his later seven works, which appeared at an average frequency of five years.

I've held that Verdi (1813-1901) was not at all a man of his time, but rather was happy to revel in bel canto techniques of an earlier generation—for example, Donizetti (1797-1848) and Rossini (1792-1868). The art of bel canto wallowed in lyricism, often at the expense of strong narrative linkages between arias. Typically any link was afforded through a recitative, rather than a through-composed music that developed parallel to—and separate from—Verdi, in the German opera. Verdi was disinterested in forging new paths for lyric opera. In fact, Verdi remained more aligned with those born a couple decades before him than his exact contemporary Richard Wagner (1813-1883), who developed his art from Beethoven (1770-1827) and von Weber (1786-1826). But Wagner was not the only possible development from Beethoven and von Weber; consider the directions taken by Mendelssohn (1809-1847), Lortzing (1801-1851), Meyerbeer (1791-1864), Nicolai (1810-1849) , and von Flotow (1812-1883).

Pursuing the lyric mode in opera is no fault. Sadly, true lyric expression in more contemporary opera has succumbed to narrative and dialogue. The dwindling lyricism comes not solely from the direction of music composition, but the less-lyric expression results also from the selection of a subject matter by composers and the development of text and narrative structures by librettists. But what exactly is lyric mode? I've begun a set of parallel analyses of Verdi arias, which will receive occasional addition. (Most recent work includes a completed analysis of D'Egito la sui lidi from Nabucco.)


Of parallel interest to me is how 20th-Century Italian opera made its leap beyond Verdi, both in musical style and libretto cohesiveness. The verismo reaction to Verdi in works by Puccini (1858-1924), Mascagni (1863-1945), and Leoncavallo (1857-1919) is persuasive both as drama and as lyric expression. As such, the influence of Wagner is strong, though more perhaps in libretto than music. The works both in verismo and of Wagner mark an ascendance of the librettist, who broke from the set-piece to a more compact poesy. Where the bel canto aria often followed an A B A structure in music, the formal structure became more free—and in words, the aria in the new libretti became less set apart from the expository text. Expository and linking text became more integrated than it had been in the bel canto recitative.

The development continued by another leap further with the operas of Luigi Nono (1924–1990) and Luciano Berio. Perhaps the leaps in Italian opera were supported by the oeuvre of Busoni (1866-1924), and Respighi (1879-1936), whose operas I know little of. Certainly the influence of Schönberg (1874-1951) and Berg (1885-1935) is strong, and the flowering of new techniques of musical composition and libretto writing is fertilized by international infusions from Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012) and Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928-2007). Two other 20th-C Italian opera composers that I have little knowledge of are Luigi Dallapiccola (1904-1975) and Sylvano Bussotti (b. 1931). More listening is in my future.

References