The original title was Gustave III., but the police, watchful of Verdi, and freshened by the Orsini attempt upon Napoleon III.'s life, positively refused to permit an assassination scene to be played. Verdi was furious, and declined to adapt his music to other words, whereupon the management of the San Carlo Theatre at Naples (who had originally contracted for this work) sued Verdi for 200,000 francs damages. Soon the public learned the news. Then was there something resembling a revolution; thousands of excited Neapolitans followed the musician wherever he went, shouting "Viva Verdi!" So heated did the feeling grow, steeped as it was with virulent political animosity, that the situation became dangerous, and eventually the authorities were glad to allow Verdi to depart "out of their coasts" with his opera under his arm. It next turned up at Rome. Jacovacci, the impresario of the Teatro Apollo, wanted a novelty, and hearing of the squabble at Naples, sought Verdi and offered to take the opera. The official element insisted upon some alteration, but finally the opera was produced on 17th February 1859, and met with a splendid reception, once more sending Verdi's name and tunes over all Europe. The artists were, Mesdames Julienne Dejeau, Scotti, and Sbriscia, with Signori Fraschini and Giraldoni, but Verdi was not satisfied with their interpretation of his score.
On the 15th June 1861, Un Ballo in Maschera was produced at the Royal Opera, Lyceum, and met with an enthusiastic reception. The subject is the same as that of Auber's celebrated opera Gustavus III.—the assassination of the King of Sweden at a masked ball. Undoubtedly it is one of the best of Verdi's Second period operas. The audience were delighted with the music, and all good judges perceived that the work was in every sense a grand opera.
Un Ballo in Maschera, when produced for the first time in England, brought The Times again to the fore. "It presents enough," the review ran, "to show his (Verdi's) talent still ripening, and his inventive faculty in its prime; but it cannot be regarded as 'his Guillaume Tell,' Rigoletto being out of all comparison a better work, while Il Trovatore and La Traviata (to say nothing of those earlier compositions Nabucco and Ernani) contain isolated passages of marked superiority.... Unquestionable as are the merits of his score, piece after piece demonstrates his musical inferiority to Auber.... To describe the opera scene after scene would be a work of supererogation. Its pretensions as a whole are not of a sort to call for technical analysis, or even to bear a very close scrutiny; while the beauties by which it is enriched (and they are frequent) se déroulent, as the French say, so easily, reveal themselves with such complacency, start out from the canvas, in short, in such bold relief and endowed with so marked an individuality, that they render themselves familiar at a glance, and put that into shade which, after all, is scarcely worth bringing to light—we mean the general framework in which they are set. Those pieces which are not the most likely to become popular, but which in the majority of instances are also, from a musical point of view, decidedly the best, may be summed up in a 'catalogue' not over raisonnée."[58]
This criticism, unmarked though it be by any evident sympathy with Verdi's muse, might pass as a somewhat favourable estimate of an effort of Verdi's. But it is illogical. Upon reference to what appeared in The Times eight years before, respecting Rigoletto, we fail to trace a good word. "A very few (words) will suffice to recall its beauties. Its faults we have not space to describe. The continental critics have informed us that Rigoletto presented a transformation in Signor Verdi's style as complete as that of Beethoven when the Second Symphony was succeeded by the Eroica. A very attentive hearing, however, left us convinced that Signor Verdi's style in Rigoletto was much the same as in his other operas. There is certainly no difference.... Verdi is as essentially Verdi as in Nabucco and Ernani, with the proviso that in Nabucco and Ernani there are stirring tunes and flowing melodies which are nowhere to be met with in Rigoletto."[59]
Such language, and that which appears on page [110] is plain, unmistakable, emphatic. How, then, shall we read the line of comparative comment upon Un Ballo in Maschera—"Rigoletto being out of all comparison a better work"?
One more opera, and we must close this chapter. This was La Forza del Destino, the libretto of which by Piave was borrowed from a Spanish drama entitled Don Alvar. The work was a commission from the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg, and was produced there on the 10th November 1862. It was only a succés d'estime, the Court of Russia and the Muscovite populace not being greatly moved by it. Yet it was well rendered by Mesdames Barbot and Nautier-Didiée, with Signori Tamberlik, Graziani, Debassini, and Angelini. Precisely the same fate that attended the work in the Russian capital befel it at La Scala, Milan, in 1869, as well as at the Paris Théâtre Italien seven years later.
There was not a little that was restless and novel in La Forza del Destino, which probably accounts for its cool reception from those who were ready enough to welcome another of the old and approved Verdi operas. That change of style which was, later on, to show itself so unmistakably in Aïda, Otello, and Falstaff was beginning to possess the composer's mind. Sufficient of the new manner oozed out in La Forza del Destino for critics and analysts now to point to that opera as the work in which Verdi's Third style first begins to be traceable, and it can scarcely be surprising that an unprepared public failed to be impressed with the first hintings at a new style which had yet to be placed before the musical world in a matured and comprehendable state.
With this work, Verdi appeared to bid farewell for ever to the operatic stage; but, as all the world knows, a long artistic silence meant merely a retirement for the gathering up of resources that were to burst forth and bring Verdi into a perfect blaze of popularity.
[36] Illustrated London News, 21st May 1853.
[37] Illustrated London News, 21st May 1853.