Verdi

Remaking Italian Opera

Summary of Macbeth
Uses Shakespeare ! still relatively new to Italy
Casts against operatic conventions of beauty
Requires voices to make harsh, stied sounds
Orchestra used more actively to narrate drama
Coaches the singers both dramatically & musically
Dictates certain scenic e#ects $eg., staging of Banquos
ghost%
Pushes against the boundaries of operatic form to create
longer, more complex scenes
Wanted $but didnt always get% more unusual setting of
words
Verdis soundscape
Closeness of libretto to source material
Prioritising drama over music $to the extent of breaking
conventions of musical form and genre%
Choice of dark, tempestuous narratives based on strong
conicts between individual and state, father and child,
social or family vendettas
Choice of unusual characters, often with inner conicts
Brevity and compression of action
Emphasis on innovation
Verdis soundscape
Unusual rhythmic patterns & accents $slancio%
Use of dynamic extremes
Loudness ! use of brass instruments & large orchestra
Angularity of vocal line ! wide leaps, irregular phrase
lengths
Emphasis on passion and the upper third of vocal range
Expansion of vocal expressivity ! il grido
Use of chorus
Development of new voices ! baritone & dramatic
mezzo&soprano
Verdis Middle Period
You know that the chord of grief 'dolore( is that which
finds greater resonance in our hearts, but grief assumes a
different character according to the times and according to
the temperament and the condition of a nation. The kind of
grief that interests the souls of us Italians is that of a people
who feel needful of a better destiny; it is the grief of
someone who has fallen and desires to raise himself up
again; it is the grief of someone who repents, and waits and
wishes for his regeneration. My dear Verdi, accompany your
noble harmonies with this high and solemn grief, nurture it,
strengthen it, lead it to its goal. Music is a language
understood by all, and there is no great effect that music
cannot produce. The fantastic is something that can
demonstrate genius; truth 'il vero( is something that
demonstrates genius and soul.
Letter from Giuseppe Giusti to Verdi, 19 March 1847
Verdis response

Yes, you are right: the chord of grief !dolore" finds greater
resonance in our hearts: you speak as the great man you
are, and I will certainly follow your suggestions
because I understand what you mean.


Letter from Verdi to Giuseppe Giusti, 27 March 1847.
1848 uprising
early incidents at Palermo and Messina, then
Paris, Vienna and Venice
Milan ! Cinque Giornate, 18&22 March
Carlo Alberto, king of Sardinia and Piedmont,
declares war on Austria on 23 March
29 April ! Pope Pius IX denounces war against
Austrians
5 August ! Austrians re&enter Milan
9 February 1849: Roman Republic
2 July 1849 ! French defeat of Roman Republic
23 August 1849 ! Austrian defeat of besieged
Venice
Liberals then, like the liberals today, were divided into two parties:
those who wanted to go forward slowly, and those who wanted to run.
The first, believing that without the people no solid revolution could
be achieved, were preparing the populace for liberty through the
means of instruction in religion and morals, by opening schools,
publishing good books, founding banks, societies of mutual aid etc.
And by discussing systems of education they were preparing
themselves to form systems of government. The second group, who
wanted take a shorter path, were gathering at night in cellars to write
proclamations, to prepare pamphlets, to study ways of collecting
money in order to fund the war. But both parties could not be said to
amount to many: most people, numerically speaking, were
either ignorant, indifferent or inimical to political things: that
is, either they knew nothing, or they did not want to know
anything.

Giovanni Frassi, 1859
After the Uprising
In November 1849, Verdi wrote to Escudier: Italy is
nothing more than a large and beautiful prison! "# A
paradise for the eyes: an inferno for the heart!
Marcello Conati, Giuseppe Verdi: Guida a#a vita e a#e opere $Pisa: ETS, 2003%, 68.
domestic operas
Luisa Mi!er $1849%
Sti"elio $1850%
Rigoletto !1851"
Il trovatore !1853"
La traviata !1853"
The theme of love

Oberdorfer claims that Verdis early heroines & Elvira,
Alzira, Amalia & do not know love: they speak of love,
"yet# they do not love.

Aldo Oberdorfer, Giuseppe Verdi: Autobiograa da!e lettere $1941; Rizzoli, 2001%, 155!
VERDI, OPERA AND LOVE
In a letter to Ricordi on 9 March 1848, Verdi complained of
Cammaranos reluctance to set Cola di Rienzi because although
there were two wonderful female roles, neither centred on
love:
My God! Is it possible that one can never ever move or want
to move away from treating subjects in the restricted, feeble
style with which they have been dealt with until now? Why
make love always the mainstay of drama?
Neither Nabucco nor Macbeth had a romantic element, he
argued, but both were stupendous topics.
Letter from Verdi to Ricordi, 9 March 1848; Carte#io Verdi$Cammarano, 22.
RIGOLETTO
Librettist: Francesco Maria Piave
Teatro La Fenice, 11 March 1851, Venice
Source material: Le Roi samuse $Victor Hugo,
1832%
Rigoletto and Love
paternal/lial a'ection
romance
eroticism
Le Roi samuse
1832
plot ostensibly based on Francis I $1494(1547%,
but regarded as an attack on Louis Philippe I
$1773(1850%
One performance at Comdie(Franaise, then
banned by the censors
Verdi and Hugo
VERDI VICTOR HUGO
Ernani 1843 Hernani 1830
Rigoletto 1851 Le Roi samuse 1832
Verdi on Hugo
After the powerful e'ect of Victor Hugos dramas
everyone has searched for e'ect without recognising, in
my opinion, that it always resides in Hugos one goal:
that of creating powerful, passionate and above all
original characters. Observe those characters such as
Silva, Maria Tudor, Borgia, Marion, Triboulet and Francesco
etc., etc. Great characters produce great situations, and
e'ect is born naturally.

Letter to Cesare De Sanctis, 16 May 1853; cit. Luzio, Carte#i Verdiani, Vol. I, 19.
Cast
Rigoletto, the dukes jester & Felice Varesi
Gilda, his daughter & Teresa Brambilla
Duca di Mantova & Ra#aele Mirate
Sparafucile, an assassin & Paolo Damini
Maddalena, his sister & Annetta Casaloni
Opening scenes
unprecedented variety of music ) dukes comic(
opera ballad, minuet, Rigolettos sarcasm,
Monterones curse
dramatic economy
Parker: one of the richest and most complex
opening scenes hitherto attempted in 19th(
century Italian opera
musical form
Five arias & only one in double(aria form $Possente
amor, Act II%, three in single movements
Five duets
No grand nales to acts
Male chorus only, with only one formal chorus $near end
of Act I%
No aria di sortita $entrance aria% for prima donna
Elimination of recitative in Act II; sometimes unusual use
of recit elsewhere $eg., parlante duet between Rigoletto
and Sparafucile in Act I; preface to storm in Act III%
Musical Form and
characterisation
Parker argues that the drama of the opera is centred
around Rigoletto, who typically expresses himself in a
musical style $free, orchestrally accompanied arioso%
that delivers the words with a minimum of repetition
or distortion, a style that minimizes the formal
constraints music may place upon words. "Parker, 298#
Yet these moments are juxtaposed with traditional,
Rossinian xed forms: areas in which the words
frequently lose their semantic freshness $through
distortion, selective repetition, or rearrangement% in
the service of strictly musical closure. "Parker, 298#
Musical Form and
characterisation
The duke remains musically immobile: his
opening ballata and nal canzone are the most
stylized numbers in the opera;
In contrast, Gilda matures emotionally through
the opera, abandoning the vocal ornaments and
formal conventions of her earlier music and
increasingly adapts her musical language to that
of her father. "Parker, 298#
Letter to Carlo Borsi, 8 September 1852:

I conceived Rigoletto without arias, without nales, as an
unbroken chain of duets, because I was convinced that
that was most appropriate.

Cesari and Luzio $eds.%, I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, 497.
Other innovative
elements
Onstage action juxtaposed by perspective of o'(
stage action
Incompleteness of words & duke falls asleep
mid(word; Gilda dies mid(word
Operas reliance on dramatic irony
What is irony?
What is irony?
a rhetorical device playing on an incongruity
between literal and implied meaning.
what is
dramatic irony
what is
dramatic irony
When the audience has information about
events within the narrative that the character
doesnt.
Dramatic Irony
I, i: The courtiers believe Rigoletto has a mistress; we
learn later in the act that she is his daughter.
I, v: When the duke desires countess Ceprano, Rigoletto
advises him to kidnap her.
I, vi: Rigoletto laughs at Monterones despair and threats
of vengeance; Monterone replies: You who laugh at a
fathers grief, may you be cursed!
I, viii: Gildas belief that the duke is a poor student;
I, x: The blindfolding of Rigoletto so that he connives in
the kidnap of his own daughter $end of Act I%
Dramatic Irony
II, i: The duke thinks that he has lost Gilda; we
know she has been stolen by his courtiers;
II: Rigoletto does not know the whereabouts of his
daughter & we do;
III: The duke thinks that La donna mobile & we
see Gilda sacricing her life for his;
III: Sparafucile and Maddalena think Gilda is a boy;
III: Rigoletto thinks that the body in the sack is
that of the duke.
Caro nome (Gilda), Act I
Cortigiani, vil razza
dannata (Rigoletto, Act II)
Rigoletto and Love
paternal/lial a'ection
romance
eroticism
Letter to Carlo Borsi, 8 September 1852:

There would be one place, but God help us! We would be
agellated. It would be necessary to see Gilda with the
Duke in the bedroom!! Do you understand me? In any
case, it would be a duet. A magnicent duet!! But the
priests, the monks and the hypocrites would cry scandal.
Oh, happy were the days when Diogenes could say in the
public piazza to whoever was questioning what he did:
Hominen quaero! "I am looking for a man#

Cesari and Luzio $eds.%, I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, 497.
Seduction and rape
In nineteenth(century Italy, rape considered as a
crime against honour and social value, rather
than as a crime against the body and psyche
Punishment therefore designed to correct loss of
value
Penalties
Marriage with the victim $rape sometimes used
as a strategy to enforce marriage%
Payment of all ensuing childbirth costs
Prison & four(month term $1832%; three years
$1857%
Gazzetta musicale di Firenze,
7 July 1853
What would "Verdi# reply to his daughter if, taken to
Rigoletto, she asked him what the Duke did to poor
Gilda? Is it thus the theatre is meant to be an educator?
And meanwhile those would(be geniuses drag it into the
mud; and, for the wretched satisfaction of "making# an
e'ect, demoralise, brutalise and divide the public. Today
beauty is sought in the most peculiar formulae, in the
most atrocious crimes, in the most repugnant
immorality.
Gazzetta musicale di Firenze,
29 September 1853
There you will learn that when youre at the keyhole $or
better, at the crevice of a wall, if it has one% in order to see
whats happening in the room, and you see preparations
for the killing of a man, instead of arousing the
neighbourhood in order to save him "# you must allow
yourself to be killed for him & even more so if the person
who is doing the looking is a woman, and if the one who
must be killed is the lover who has betrayed her. Perhaps
in this case another woman, if generous, would have
shouted for help or hammered immediately on the door in
order to interrupt that bloody work, or, if vengeful, would
have left him to be killed.
Gildas death
Gildas death
This nal scene met with little acclamation from the critics &
even from those whom might be regarded as generally
supportive of Verdi. Abramo Basevi declared bluntly: The nal
duetto makes very little e'ect. However, it must not be forgotten
that music has nothing to lend to a situation so disgusting.

Another critic, Marco Marcelliano Marcello, whose praise for
the storm scene was fulsome, was similarly disappointed: the
nal scene, however well(treated, does not produce the e'ect
one would wish; the spirit remains too lacerated to be able to
feel other impressions.
Extracts
Opening scene
Rigolettos scene with Sparafucile
Gilda and the Duke ( Caro nome
Rigolettos curse
Quartet, storm, Gildas death
Gildas death
This nal scene met with little acclamation from the critics & even
from those whom might be regarded as generally supportive of Verdi.
Abramo Basevi declared bluntly: The nal duetto makes very little
e'ect. However, it must not be forgotten that music has nothing to
lend to a situation so disgusting.

Even Marco Marcelliano Marcello, whose praise for the storm scene
was fulsome, was disappointed: the nal scene, however well(treated,
does not produce the e'ect one would wish; the spirit remains too
lacerated to be able to feel other impressions.
Letter to Carlo Borsi, 8 September 1852:

There would be one place, but God help us! We would be
agellated. It would be necessary to see Gilda with the
Duke in the bedroom!! Do you understand me? In any
case, it would be a duet. A magnicent duet!! But the
priests, the monks and the hypocrites would cry scandal.
Oh, happy were the days when Diogenes could say in the
public piazza to whoever was questioning what he did:
Hominen quaero!

Cesari and Luzio $eds.%, I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, 497.
Extracts
Opening scene
Rigolettos scene with Sparafucile
Gilda and the Duke ( Caro nome
Rigolettos curse
Quartet, storm, Gildas death