IV
With Luisa Miller begins what is usually known as Verdi’s second period—the period in which he shook himself free from the grandiose bombast, from which none of his earlier works is entirely free. In this so-called second period he becomes more restrained, more coherent, more net; he leans somewhat more to the suave cantabile of Bellini and Donizetti, a little more—if the truth be told—to the trite and mawkish. Cammarano fashioned the libretto of Luisa Miller from Schiller’s immature Kabale und Liebe. It was a moderately good libretto and moderately good, perhaps, sufficiently describes the music which Verdi wrote to it. Stiffelio, a work of little merit, with a poem by Piave, was the next product of Verdi’s second manner. It was given without success at the Grand Theatre, Trieste, in November, 1850.
After Stiffelio, however, there came in rapid succession from Verdi’s pen three works whose enormous success consummated his fame and whose melodiousness has since reëchoed continuously from every opera stage and street organ in the universe. When Stiffelio was produced he was under contract with the impresario Lasina to write an opera for the Fenice of Venice. At his request Piave again made free with Victor Hugo, choosing this time the unsavory melodrama, Le roi s’amuse, which he adopted under the title of La Maledizione. When the Italian police got wind of the project, however, there was serious trouble. Le roi s’amuse contains some implied animadversions on the morals of royalty, and the censorship absolutely forbade the appearance in Italy of such an iniquitous trifling with a sacrosanct subject. Verdi, who possessed a generous share of obstinacy, refused to write an opera on any other subject, to the despair of the Fenice management who had promised the Venetians a new opera by the illustrious maestro. A way out of the impasse was finally found by a commissary of police named Martello, who advised some substitution in the names of the characters—such as the duke of Mantua for the king—and also suggested the title Rigoletto, Buffone di Corte. These suggestions proved acceptable to Verdi and within forty days the score of Rigoletto was written and orchestrated from first note to last. Its première, on March 11, 1851, was an unqualified success. The too famous canzone, ‘La donna e mobile,’ caused a sensation which was so accurately foreseen by the composer that he would not put it to paper until a few hours before the performance. Rigoletto was presented at the Italian Opera, Covent Garden, London, in the season of 1853 and at the Théâtre Italien, Paris, on January 17, 1857. Its London reception was very cordial.
Certainly Rigoletto marks a decided advance on its predecessors. It is simpler in design, more economical of material, more logically developed and dramatically more legitimate—notwithstanding such puerilities as Gilda’s eccentric and irrelevant aria in the garden scene. There are present also signs which seem to indicate the influence of Meyerbeer; but it is difficult to trace specific influences in the work of a man of such absorbing individuality as Verdi.
After Rigoletto came Il Trovatore, which was produced at the Apollo Theatre, Rome, on January 19, 1853, and was received with extraordinary enthusiasm. From Rome it spread like wildfire throughout Italy, everywhere achieving an overwhelming success. In Naples three houses gave the opera at about the same time. Soon all the capitals in Europe were humming its ingratiating melodies. Paris saw it at the Théâtre Italien in December, 1854; London at Covent Garden in May, 1855—even Germany extended to it a warm and smiling welcome. Truly, Il Trovatore is, to an extent, unique in operatic annals. It probably enjoys the distinction of being the most popular and least intelligible opera ever written. The rambling and inchoate libretto was made by Cammarano from El Trovador of the Spanish dramatist, Antonio Garcia Gultierez, and nobody has ever lived who could give a succinct and lucid exposition of its story. For that reason probably the work as a whole is such as to deserve the name of ‘a concert in costume,’ which someone has aptly applied to it. Verdi could not possibly have woven a dramatic score of consistent texture round such a literary nightmare. What he did do was to write a number of very pleasing solos, duets, and trios, together with some theatrical and ingratiating orchestral music. Anyone inclined to question the theatricalism of the score may be interested in comparing the ‘Anvil Chorus’ of Il Trovatore with the ‘Forging of the Sword’ episode in Siegfried. Still, one cannot deny distinct merit to a work which has held a place in the affections of millions of people for more than half a century. Its amazing popularity when it first spread contagiously over Europe aroused a storm of critical comment which reads amusingly at this day. In the eyes of Verdi’s enthusiastic protagonists Il Trovatore naturally marked the zenith of operatic achievement, while his antagonists placed it unequivocally at the nadir of uninspired and commonplace triviality.
La Traviata sounds like a feminine counterpart of Il Trovatore, which it followed and with which it has been so often associated on operatic bills. The two works, however, are drawn from widely different sources and are about as dissimilar in every way as any other two operas of Verdi which might be mentioned. Piave made the libretto of La Traviata from La Dame aux Camélias of Alexandre Dumas, fils. The subject does not appear to be an ideal one for musical treatment; but it is of a style which seems to have a peculiar appeal to composers, as witness Bohème, Sappho, Manon, and many others. One is inclined to award to the Traviata a very high place among Verdi’s works. It stands alone among them, absolutely different in style and manner from anything else he has done. There is in it a simplicity, a sparkle, a grace, a feminine daintiness, an enticing languor, a spirit quite thoroughly Gallic, suggesting, as Barevi has observed, the style of the opéra comique (cf. Chap. I). La Traviata, produced at Venice in 1853, was a flat failure, partly owing to the general incapacity of the cast; about a year later, with some changes, it was reproduced in Venice and proved a brilliant success.
Two years of silence followed La Traviata. During that time Verdi was engaged on a work which the management of the Paris Opera—passing over Auber, Berlioz, and Halévy—had commissioned him to write for the Universal Exhibition of 1855. The libretto was made by Scribe and Duveyrier and dealt with the sanguinary episode of the French-Italian war of 1282, known as the Sicilian Vespers—a peculiar subject to select under the circumstances. After an amount of delay, caused by the eccentric disappearance of the beautiful Sophie Cruvelli, idol of contemporary Paris, Les Vêpres Siciliennes was produced at the Opéra in 1855. It was received with great enthusiasm, but did not outlive the popularity of its first prima donna. It was followed by Simon Boccanegra, composed to a poem adapted by Piave from Schiller’s Fieschi, which, produced at the Fenice, Venice, in 1857, with little success, was later revised by that excellent poet, Arrigo Boïto, and, with the music recast by Verdi, was received at La Scala, Milan, in 1881 with distinct favor.
Verdi’s next opera, Un Ballo in Maschera, has a peculiar history, turning on the curious interaction of art and politics which is such a feature of Verdi’s career. It was adapted from the ‘Gustave III’ of Scribe, which Auber had already set to music for the Paris Opera, and was at first entitled La Vendetta in Domino. Written for the San Carlo Theatre, Naples, it was about to be put into rehearsal when word arrived of the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Orsini. The Italian police, morbidly sensitive in such matters, at once forbade the representation of Un Ballo in Maschera without radical modifications, and Verdi, with his customary obstinacy, emphatically refused to make any alteration whatsoever. Even when the San Carlo management instituted a civil action against him for two hundred thousand francs Verdi declined to budge. He was openly supported in his attitude by the entire population of Naples, which greeted his appearance everywhere with enthusiastic shouts of Viva Verdi!. Eventually, feeling that the affair would create a revolution on its own account, the authorities requested Verdi to take himself and his opera out of Naples. The opera was then secured by Jacovacci, the famous impresario of the Apollo Theatre in Rome, who swore he would present it in that city at any cost. ‘I shall arrange with the censure, with the cardinal-governor, with St. Peter if necessary,’ he said. ‘Within a week, my dear maestro, you shall have the libretto, with all the visas and all the buon per la scena possible.’ Nevertheless the papal government did not prove so tractable, and, before Un Ballo in Maschera could appear in Rome the scene of the action had to be shifted from Sweden to America and the character of Gustave III transmogrified into the Earl of Warwick, Governor of Boston! Indifferent to historic accuracy, however, Rome received the opera with enthusiasm, when it was produced in February, 1859. Upon the occasion of its presentation at the Théâtre Italien, Paris, on January 13, 1861, the scene was shifted to the kingdom of Naples—where it still remains—because Mario refused to wear the costume of a New England Puritan at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Un Ballo in Maschera was given in London in 1861 and was received very cordially.
It is, in effect, one of the most mature works of Verdi’s second manner. Still more mature and suggestive of what was to come is La Forza del Destino, which was written for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg, and was produced there on November 10, 1862, encountering merely a succès d’estime. Repellantly gloomy and gruesome is the story of La Forza del Destino, adapted by Piave from Don Alvar, a tragedy in the exaggerated French romantic vein by Don Angel de Saavedra. The oppressive libretto perhaps accounted in large measure for the lack of success which attended the opera, not only in St. Petersburg, but in Milan, where it was produced at La Scala in 1869, and in Paris where the Théâtre Italien staged it in 1876. Yet La Forza del Destino contains some of the most powerful, passionate and poignant music that Verdi ever wrote, and one can see in it more clearly than in any of his other works suggestions of that complete maturity of genius which was to blossom forth in Aïda, Otello, and Falstaff.[127]
Notwithstanding the indifferent reception accorded Les Vêpres Siciliennes in Paris, the management of the opera again approached Verdi when a new gala piece was needed for the Universal Exhibition of 1866. The opera management was singularly unfortunate in its experience with Verdi. For this occasion the composer was supplied by Méry and Camille du Locle with an indifferent libretto called Don Carlos, and he was unable to rise above its level.