Withal Luisa Miller was a success at Naples, if not later on in London and Paris. Madame Gazzaniga took the part, singing the music superbly, and on all sides it was agreed that the composition was one of Verdi's grandest efforts. Later opinions have somewhat confirmed this, while not a few connoisseurs have regarded Luisa Miller as the most coherent and consistent of the composer's works, excepting always his latest operas.
Luisa Miller was another of the operas which Mr. Lumley produced during his unfortunate reign at Her Majesty's Theatre. Here is the account of its introduction:—
"On Tuesday the 8th June (1858) was given for the first time on the Anglo-Italian boards, Verdi's opera of Luisa Miller, and both Mademoiselle Piccolomini and Madame Alboni were included in the 'cast.' Of this work some Italian critics had been accustomed to speak as the chef d'œuvre of this favourite composer. But the production of Luisa Miller did not greatly benefit the management. The 'Little Lady' (Piccolomini) displayed all her attractive qualities as an actress, and as an actress reaped her harvest of applause. But by general accord, on the part of Verdi-ites, the opera was declared to be the weakest of his many productions. It was considered to be wanting in melody, a charge seldom brought against Signor Verdi. There were no particular salient points to be looked forward to as the grands bouquets of Signor Verdi's musical fireworks, as is the case in most of his other operas. The libretto, also, founded upon Schiller's early tragedy of Kabale und Liebe, a subject, it might be thought, highly favourable to lyrical working out, had lost so much of its true dramatic metal in passing through the crucible of the Italian poeta, that it had come out a mass of unattractive and unsightly ore. Passages of interest and passion could not be altogether wanting with a subject in which the dramatic instincts of the composer could not be utterly silent; but the true element, both musically and dramatically speaking, was evidently absent, at least to English minds. Signor Giuglini sang the one pleasing romanza to the delight of a crowded audience; and Alboni poured forth her mellifluous notes in an interpolated cavatina; but Luisa Miller failed to win the suffrages of the frequenters of Her Majesty's Theatre. It lingered, hoping for success 'against hope,' on the boards of Her Majesty's Theatre for a very few nights, and then fled them to return no more."[31]
An able critic, writing of this feature of the 1858 season, says:—
"The only real novelty that Mr. Lumley ventured to mount and bring forward was Verdi's Luisa Miller ... the result of which was unequivocal failure, for dull and mawkish as is the work itself, Mademoiselle Piccolomini had not the slightest pretension to have been thrust into the leading character, and Madame Alboni made nothing of the small part of the Duchess Fredrica, although she evidently tried to do so, by substituting a cavatina for the original duet of the opera. Giuglini alone was appreciated, the music being somewhat suited to his style; but he began to manifest the bad taste of relying upon long breaths, loud A's, and other meretricious devices, instead of singing legitimately and sensibly. Beneventano, Vialetti, and Castelli, who undertook the other parts, trenched so closely upon the grotesque, that they produced amusement rather than pleasure. In spite of its being said that Luisa Miller had thoroughly succeeded, its immediate withdrawal from the bills positively enough proved the contrary."[32]
Luisa Miller found no favour in the eyes of the Athenæum critic.
"There is little from first to last in the music to reconcile us to the composer.... As regards the solo music, Luisa Miller contains nothing so good.... The heroine might be Gilda, Violetta, or Abigaille for any touch that marks her life or her country.... The want of local colour, however, might be overlooked (in consideration of the master's school and country), were there any compensating beauty of melody. Everything that is not trite in the score is unpleasant.... The songs are in the known Verdi patterns, full of fever, empty of feeling.... The music of I Due Foscari was meagre and dismal enough, but the music of Luisa Miller, so far as idea is concerned, seems yet more meagre and dismal."[33]
In these and similar terms did Mr. Chorley dismiss Luisa Miller. Nor was The Times criticism more hopeful, since that summed up the opera "as an uninterrupted series of commonplaces, pale, monotonous, and dreary, which may fairly be symbolised as the sweepings of our composer's study or the rinsings of his wine-bottles.... The music of Luisa Miller is not worth the consideration to which an ambitious failure might be entitled."[34]