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In the final cadenza, the composer has cut out the word “ora” altogether. The whole air is of interest to the musical student, as it shows clearly the little value attached by Verdi, at that period of his career, to the exigencies of the verbal or poetic phrase. This neglect of the verbal punctuation is in marked contrast to the care he bestowed on it in his later works, witness Aida, Otello, and particularly Falstaff.
Here I may say that it is sometimes necessary to alter the words on account of the impossibility of performing certain passages as written. In the earlier published scores of Samson et Dalila (Saint-Saëns), the following passage in Act II, “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix,” as the composer wrote it, occurs as one phrase:
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This being impracticable of execution in one phrase, and there being no opportunity of retaking breath until the close of the passage, it was altered in the later editions, and now stands thus:
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This device of repetition, applied either to a word or to part of a phrase, is perfectly justifiable in cases where the artist, for physical reasons, is unable to sing the phrase in one breath. I give an excerpt from Weber’s Der Freischütz (Grand Air, Act II):
