A five-act opera entitled Montezuma which Verdi wrote in 1878 may be passed over with the remark that it was produced in that year at La Scala, Milan. Then for nearly ten years Verdi was silent. The world was content to believe that his silence was permanent, that the marvellously productive career of the great master had come to a glorious and fitting close in Aïda and the Requiem. Nobody then could have believed that Aïda, far from making the culmination of Verdi’s achievement, was but the beginning of a new period in which his genius rose to heights that dwarfed even the loftiest eminence of his heyday. There is nothing in the history of art that can parallel the final flight of this man, at an age when the wings of creative inspiration have usually withered into impotence, or crumbled into dust. Under the circumstances one can, of course, very easily overestimate the æsthetic value of the last works of Verdi, surrounded as they are in one’s imagination with the halo which the venerable age of their creator has inevitably lent to them. As a matter of fact, the ultimate place of Verdi’s last works in musical history it is not within our power to determine. The mighty weapon of popular approval—which bestows the final accolade or delivers the last damning thrust, according to one’s point of view—has as yet missed both Otello and Falstaff. Critics differ, as critics will and ever did. Musically, dramatically, formally, and technically Otello and Falstaff are the most finished examples of operatic composition that Italy has ever given to the world; and even outside Italy—if one excepts the masterpieces of Wagner—it is doubtful if they can be paralleled. Whether, also, they possess the divine spark which alone gives immortality is a moot point. We cannot say.
The goddess of fortune, who on the whole kept ever close to Verdi’s side, secured for him in his culminating efforts the collaboration of Arrigo Boïto, a poet and musician of exceptional gifts. Undoubtedly Boïto made very free with Shakespeare in his libretto of Otello, but, compared with previous attempts to adapt Shakespeare for operatic purposes, his version is an absolute masterpiece. Even more remarkable, and much more faithful to the original, is his version of Falstaff, which, taken by and large, is probably the only perfect opera libretto ever written. Otello is a story which might be expected to find perfect understanding and sympathy in the mind and temperament of an Italian, and consequently the faithful preservation of the original spirit is not so remarkable; but that an Italian should succeed in retaining through the change of language the thoroughly English flavor of Falstaff is truly extraordinary.
Otello was produced on February 5, 1887, at La Scala, Milan. That it was a brilliant success is not artistically very significant. Verdi to the Milanese was something less than a god and more than a composer. Its first performance at the Lyceum Theatre, London, in July, 1889, and at the Paris Opéra on October 12, 1894, were both gala occasions, and the enthusiasm which greeted it may safely be interpreted in part as a personal tribute to the venerable composer. Outside of such special occasions, and in the absence of the leather-lunged Tamagno, Otello has always been received with curiosity, with interest, with respect, with admiration, but without enthusiasm and, generally speaking, without appreciation. A certain few there are whose appreciative love of the work is fervent and sincere; but the attitude of the public at large toward Otello is not sympathetic.
Much the same may be said of the public attitude toward Falstaff—though the public, for some reason difficult to fathom, is provided with comparatively few opportunities of becoming familiar with this greatest of all Verdi’s creations. Excepting Die Meistersinger and Le Nozze di Figaro there is nothing in the literature of comic opera that can compare with Falstaff, and in its dazzling, dancing exuberance of youth and wit and gaiety it stands quite alone. ‘Falstaff,’ says Richard Strauss, ‘is the greatest masterpiece of modern Italian music. It is a work in which Verdi attained real artistic perfection.’ ‘The action in Falstaff,’ James Huneker writes, ‘is almost as rapid as if the text were spoken; and the orchestra—the wittiest and most sparkling riant orchestra I ever heard—comments upon the monologue and dialogue of the book. When the speech becomes rhetorical so does the orchestra. It is heightened speech and instead of melody of the antique, formal pattern we hear the endless melody which Wagner employs. But Verdi’s speech is his own and does not savor of Wagner. If the ideas are not developed and do not assume vaster proportions it is because of their character. They could not be so treated without doing violence to the sense of proportion. Classic purity in expression, Latin exuberance, joyfulness, and an inexpressibly delightful atmosphere of irresponsible youthfulness and gaiety are all in this charming score....’ Nowhere in Falstaff do we find the slightest suggestion of Wagner. Its spirit is much more that of Mozart. Naturally it invites comparison both with Die Meistersinger and with Figaro, but the comparison in either case is futile. In form and content Falstaff is absolutely sui generis.
La Scala, which witnessed the first Verdi triumph, also witnessed his last. Falstaff had its première there on February 9, 1893, in the presence of ‘the best elements in music, art, politics and society,’ to quote a contemporary correspondent of the London Daily Graphic. The audience, so we are informed, grew wildly riotous in its enthusiasm. Even the ‘best elements’ so far forgot themselves as to wax demonstrative; while that part of the population of Milan which was not included in the audience held a demonstration of its own after the performance in front of Verdi’s hotel, forcing the aged composer to spend most of the night walking back and forth between his apartment and the balcony that he might listen to reiterated appreciations of an opera which the majority of the demonstrators had not heard. Paris heard Falstaff at the Opéra Comique in April, 1894, and London at Covent Garden in the following month. Falstaff was the crowning effort of a distinguished genius, of a composer who had shed great lustre on the fame of Italian music, of a man venerable in age and character and achievement. It was Verdi’s swan-song. He died in Milan on January 27, 1901.[129]
Verdi’s extended career brings practically every nineteenth-century Italian composer of note within the category of his chronological contemporaries; but of contemporaries in the philosophical sense he had practically none worthy of mention. Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Mercadante, Frederico and Luigi Ricci all outlived the beginning of Verdi’s artistic career. I Puritani first appeared in 1834, Don Pasquale in 1843, the Crispino e la Comare of the Ricci brothers in 1850.
Rossini died only three years and Mercadante only one year before Aïda was produced, though both had long ceased to compose. But all of these men belong artistically to a period prior to Verdi. Many of the younger Italians, including Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Puccini, had already attracted attention when Falstaff appeared; but they again belong to a later period. Boïto[130] is hard to classify. He is the Berlioz of Italian music, on a smaller scale—a polygonal figure which does not seem to fit into any well-defined niche. His Mefistofele was produced as early as 1868, yet he seems to belong musically and dramatically to the post-Wagnerian epoch. Apart from those who were just beginning or just ending their artistic careers Italy was almost barren of meritorious composers during most of Verdi’s life. It would appear as if that one gigantic tree absorbed all the nourishment from the musical soil of Italy, leaving not enough to give strength to lesser growths. Of the leading Italian composers chosen to collaborate on the mass in honor of Rossini, not one, except Frederico Ricci and Verdi himself, is now remembered.[131] There remains Amilcare Ponchielli (1834-86) who is important as the founder of the Italian realistic school which has given to the world I Pagliacci, Cavalleria Rusticana, Le Gioje della Madonna, and other essays in blood-letting brutality. His operas include I Promessi Sposi (1856), La Savojarda (1861), Roderica (1864), La Stella del Monte (1867), Le Due Generale (1873), La Gioconda (1876), Il Figliuol Prodigio (1880), and Marion Delorme (1885). Of these only La Gioconda, which still enjoys an equivocal popularity, has succeeded in establishing itself. Ponchielli wrote an amount of other music, sacred and secular, but none of it calls for special notice, except the Garibaldi Hymn (1882), which is likely to live after all his more pretentious efforts have been forgotten.
There is nothing more to be said of Verdi’s contemporaries. The history of his career is practically the history of Italian music during the same time. He reigned alone in unquestionable supremacy, and, whatever the future may have in store for Italy, it has not yet disclosed a worthy successor to his vacant throne.
W. D. D.