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.
V
Don Carlos, however, was but the darkness before the dawn of a new period more brilliant and glorious than was dreamed of even by those of Verdi’s admirers who did him highest reverence. At that time Wagner had not yet come into his own, and, in the eyes of the world at large Verdi stood absolutely without peer among living composers. Consequently, when Ismaïl Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, wished to add lustre to the beautiful opera houses he had built in Cairo he could think of nothing more desirable for the purpose than a new work from the pen of the great Italian. That nothing might be wanting to make such an event a memorable triumph, Mariette Bey, the distinguished French Egyptologist, sketched out, as a subject for the proposed work, a stirring, colorful story, recalling vividly the picturesque glories of ancient Egypt. This story set fire to Verdi’s imagination. Under his direction a libretto in French prose was made from Mariette’s sketch by Camille du Locle and done into Italian verse by A. Ghislanzoni. So ardently did Verdi become enamoured of the work that within a few months he had handed to Ismaïl Pasha the completed score of Aïda. The opera was to be performed at the end of 1870, but owing to a number of causes—including the imprisonment of the scenery within the walls of Paris by the besieging Germans—its performance was delayed for a year. It was finally given on December 24, 1871, before a brilliant cosmopolitan audience and amid scenes of the most intense enthusiasm.[128] The success of Aïda was overwhelming; nor was it due, as in the case of so many other Verdi operas, to causes extraneous to the work itself. Milan, which heard Aïda on February 7, 1872, received it with an applause which rivalled in spontaneous fervor the enthusiasm of Cairo, and the verdict of Milan has been emphatically endorsed by every important opera house in the world. Within three years, beginning on April 22, 1876, the Théâtre Italien presented it sixty-eight times to appreciative Parisian audiences, and later, at the Opéra, its reception was still enthusiastic. England, hitherto characteristically somewhat cold to Verdi, greeted Aïda warmly when it was given at Covent Garden in 1876, and bestowed upon the work the full measure of its critical approval.
Giuseppe Verdi
Aïda was the storm centre around which raged the first controversy touching the alleged influence of Wagner on Verdi. In Aïda, apparently, we find all the identifying features of the modern music-drama as modelled by Wagner. There is the broad declamation, the dramatic realism and coherence, the solid, powerful instrumentation, the deposition of the voice from its commanding position as the all-important vehicle, the employment of the orchestra as the principal exponent of color, character, expression—putting the statue in the orchestra and leaving the pedestal on the stage, as Grétry said of Mozart. Yet, in spite of all this, in spite of much specious critical reasoning to the contrary, Aïda is altogether Verdi, and there is in it of Wagner not a jot, not a tittle! It is, of course, impossible to suppose that Verdi was unacquainted with Wagner’s works, and equally impossible to suppose that he remained unimpressed by them. But Verdi’s was emphatically not the type of mind to borrow from any other. He was an exceptionally introspective, self-centred and self-sufficient man. Besides, he was concerned with the development of the Italian lyric drama purely according to Italian taste, and in directions which he himself had followed more or less strictly from the beginning of his career. From the propaganda of Wagner he must inevitably have absorbed some pregnant suggestions as to musical dramatics, particularly as Wagner was in that respect the voice of the zeitgeist; but of specific Wagnerian influence in his music there is absolutely no trace. Anyone who follows the development of Verdi’s genius from Nabucco can see in Aïda its logical maturing. No elements appear in the latter opera which are not appreciable in embryo in the former—between them lies simply thirty years of study, knowledge and experiment.
During a period of enforced leisure in 1873 Verdi wrote a string quartet, the only chamber music work that ever came from his fertile pen. His friend, the noble and illustrious Manzoni, passed away in the same year, and Verdi proposed to honor his memory by composing a requiem to be performed on the first anniversary of his death. The municipality of Milan entered into the project to the extent of planning an elaborate public presentation of the work at the expense of the city. Verdi had already composed a Libera me for a mass which, in accordance with a suggestion made by him to Tito Ricordi, was to be written in honor of Rossini by the leading composers of Italy. For some undiscovered reason or reasons this mass was never given. The Libera me which Verdi wrote for it, however, served as a foundation for the new mass in memory of Manzoni. On May 22, 1874, the Manzoni Requiem was given at the church of San Marco, Milan, in the presence of musicians and dilettanti from all over Europe. Later it was presented to enthusiastic audiences at La Scala, at one of the Matinées Spirituelles of the Salle Favart, Paris, and at the Royal Albert Hall, London.
Hans von Bülow, with Teutonic emphasis, has characterized the Requiem as a ‘monstrosity.’ While the description is perhaps extreme, it is, from one point of view, not altogether unjustified. Certainly a German critic, having in mind the magnificent classic structures of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, could hardly look with tolerance upon this colorful expression of southern genius. The Manzoni Requiem is, in fact, a complete contradiction of itself, and as such can hardly be termed a successful artistic achievement. The odor of the coulisses rather than that of the sanctuary hangs heavily about it. But, if one can forget that it is a mass and listen to it simply as a piece of music, then the Requiem stands revealed for what it is—a touching, noble, and profound expression of love and sorrow for a friend departed. This is Verdi’s only important essay in sacred music, though mention may be made of his colorful and dramatic Stabat Mater, written in 1898.