This was the opera with which Verdi landed in Milan in 1838. Masini, unfortunately, was no longer director of the Philodramatic Theatre, but he promised to obtain for Oberto a representation at La Scala. In this he was assured the support of Count Borromeo and other influential members of the Philodramatic, but, beyond a few commonplace words of recommendation—as Verdi afterward remarked—the noble gentlemen did not exert themselves. Masini, however, succeeded in making arrangements to have Oberto produced in the spring of 1839. The illness of one of the principal singers set all his plans awry; but Bartolomeo Merelli, who was then impresario of La Scala, was so much impressed with the possibilities of the opera that he decided to put it on at his own expense, agreeing to divide with Verdi whatever price the latter might realize from the sale of the score.[121] Oberto was produced on the seventeenth of November, 1839, and met with a modest success. Merelli then commissioned Verdi to write within two years three operas which were to be produced at La Scala or at the Imperial Theatre of Vienna. None of the librettos supplied by Merelli appealed to Verdi; but finally he chose what appeared to him the best of a bad lot. This was a work in the comic vein, called Il Finto Stanislao and renamed by Verdi Un Giorno di Regno.
It was the supreme irony of fate that set Verdi just then to the composition of a comic opera. Poverty, sickness, and death in rapid succession darkened that period of his life. Between April and June, 1840, he lost, one after the other, his baby boy, his little girl, and his beloved wife. And he was supposed to write a comic opera! Un Giorno di Regno naturally did not succeed, and, feeling thoroughly disheartened by his successive misfortunes, Verdi resolved to abandon a musical career. From this slough of despond he was finally drawn some months later by the attraction of a libretto, written by his friend Solera, which Merelli had succeeded in inducing him to read. It was Nabucco.[122]
The opera Nabucco was finished in the fall of 1841 and was produced at La Scala on March 9, 1842. Its success was unprecedented. The first performance was attended by scenes of the wildest and most fervent enthusiasm. So unusually vociferous was the demonstration, even for an Italian theatre, that Verdi at first thought the audience was making fun of him. Nabucco, however, was a real sensation. It had a dramatic fire and energy, a massiveness of treatment, a richness of orchestral and choral color that were new to the Italians. The chorus of the Scala had to be specially augmented to achieve its magnificent effects. Somewhat crude it was, no doubt, but it possessed life and force—qualities of which the Italian stage was then sorely in need. One is amused at this date to read the complaints of an eminent English critic—Henry Fothergill Chorley of the Athenæeum, to wit—touching its noisiness, its ‘immoderate employment of brass instruments,’ and its lack of melody. Familiar charges! To the Italians Nabucco was the ideal of what a tragic music drama should be, and certainly it approached that ideal more nearly than any opera that had appeared in years.[123]
The great success of Nabucco placed Verdi at once on an equal footing with Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, Ricci, and the other musical idols of contemporary Italy. The management of La Scala commissioned him to write the opera d’obbligo[124] for the grand season of the Carnival, and Merelli gave him a blank contract to sign upon his own terms. Verdi’s demands were sufficiently moderate, and within eleven months he had handed to the management of La Scala the completed score of a new opera, I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata.
With I Lombardi began Verdi’s long and troublesome experience with the Austrian censorship. The time was almost ripe for the political awakening of Lombardo-Venetia, and some of the patriotic feeling which Verdi, consciously or unconsciously, expressed in Nabucco had touched an answering chord in the spirit of the Milanese which was partly responsible for the enthusiasm with which the opera was received. Such demonstrations were little to the taste of the Austrians, and when I Lombardi was announced they were prepared to edit it into complete political innocuousness. Accordingly, in response to an ill-tempered letter from Cardinal Gaisruk, Archbishop of Milan, drawing attention to the supposed presence in I Lombardi of several objectionable and sacrilegious incidents, the director of police, Torresani, notified the management of La Scala that the opera could not be produced without important changes. After much discussion Torresani finally announced that, as he was ‘never a person to cut the wings of a young artist,’ the opera might go on provided the words Salve Maria were substituted for Ave Maria.[125]
I Lombardi was produced in February, 1843, and met with a reception rivalling that which greeted Nabucco. As in the case of the latter opera a certain amount of this excitement was political—the audiences reading into many of the passages a patriotic meaning which may or may not have been intended. The chorus, O Signore, dal tetto natio, was the signal for a tremendous demonstration similar to that which had been aroused by the words, O, mia patria, si bella e perduta in Nabucco. Additional political significance was lent to the occasion by the interference of the police to prevent the repetition of the quintet. In truth, Verdi owed much of his extraordinary success of his early operas to his lucky coincidence with the awakening patriotic and revolutionary sentiment of the Italian people. He put into fervent, blood-stirring music the thoughts and aspirations which they dared not as yet express in words and deeds. We cannot believe that he did this altogether unconsciously, for he was much too near the soil and the hearts of the people of Italy not to feel with them and in a measure express them. Indeed, as he himself acknowledged, it was among the common people that his work first met with sympathy and understanding.
After the success of I Lombardi Verdi was beset with requests for a new work from all the leading opera houses in Italy. He finally made a contract with the Fenice in Venice and chose for his subject Victor Hugo’s drama Ernani, from which a mediocre libretto was arranged at his request by a mediocre poet named Francesco Maria Piave. The subject appealed strongly to Verdi and resulted in a score that was a decided advance on Nabucco and I Lombardi. It brought Verdi again into collision with the Austrian police, who insisted on certain modifications; but, in spite of careful censorship, it still furnished an opportunity for patriotic demonstrations on the part of the Venetians, who read a political significance into the chorus, Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia. Under the circumstances one cannot say to what extent, if any, the artistic appeal of Ernani was responsible for the enthusiasm which greeted its première at La Fenice on March 9, 1844. Some of the other Italian cities—notably Florence—received it coolly enough; but, on the whole it was very successful in Italy. Abroad the impression it produced was less favorable. It was the first Verdi opera to be given in London, where Lumley opened the season of 1845 with it at Her Majesty’s Theatre. The manner of its reception may be described in the words of a contemporary wag, who declared after the performance: ‘Well, the “I don’t knows” have it.’ In Paris it was presented at the Théâtre Italien, in January, 1846, but, owing to the excusably strenuous objections of Victor Hugo, its name was changed to Il Proscritto and the name of its characters were also altered. Hugo did not admire Piave’s version of his drama; neither did it succeed with the Parisian public.
Verdi’s next effort was I due Foscari, a long-winded melodrama constructed by Piave, which was produced in 1844, and received without enthusiasm. Its merit is far below that of its three immediate predecessors; nor was its successor, Giovanna d’Arco, of much more value, though it had the advantage of a good poem written by Solera. Giovanna d’Arco was followed, respectively, by Alzira and Attila, neither of which attained or deserved much success. Great enthusiasm, it is true, marked the reception of Attila in Italy, but it is attributable almost solely to the susceptible patriotic fervor of the people, who were aroused to almost frantic demonstrations by such lines as Avrai tu l’universo, resti l’Italia me. In London Attila attracted to the box-office the magnificent sum of forty dollars, though in Paris a fragment of the work produced what was described as ‘a startling effect,’ through the medium of the statuesque Sophie Cruvelli.[126]
Yet during all this time Verdi was advancing, as it were, under cover. His failures were not the result of any decline in his powers. They showed no loss of the vigor and vitality that gave life to Nabucco, I Lombardi, and Ernani. Simply, they were less felicitous, but no less the crude and forceful efforts of a strong man not yet trained to the effective use of his own strength. Some of their defects, too, were no doubt due to the poverty of the libretti, for Verdi was essentially a dramatic genius, dependent for inspiration largely upon the situations with which he was supplied. Certainly the quality of his works seems to vary precisely with the quality of their libretti. Thus, Macbeth, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, made by Piave, proved a distinct advance on its immediate predecessor, Attila—even though Piave did not improve on Shakespeare. It was produced at La Pergola, Florence, on March 14, 1847, with complete success. Like so many other Verdi operas, ‘Macbeth’ provided an excuse for patriotic demonstrations, and in Venice the Austrian soldiery had to be summoned to quell the riotous and seditious excitement aroused by Palma’s singing of the verse:
La patria tradita
Piangendo c’invita
Fratelli, gli oppressi
Corriamo a salvar.