VERDI AND THE RISORGIMENTO
NATIONALISM IN NABUCCO, LA BATTAGLIA
DI LEGNANO AND DON CARLO(S)
MA Thesis in European Studies
Graduate School for Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Author: Marlene Cornielje
Main Supervisor: dr. K.K. Lajosi
Second Supervisor: dr. M.E. Spiering
June 2012
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This dissertation would not have been possible without the guidance and the help of several
individuals who in one way or another contributed and extended their valuable assistance in the
preparation and completion of this study.
First and foremost, my utmost gratitude to my supervisor dr. Krisztina K. Lajosi, lecturer in
Modern European Literature and Culture at the Department of European Studies at the University of
Amsterdam, whose sincerity and encouragement I will never forget. Dr. Lajosi has been my
inspiration as I hurdle all the obstacles in the completion this research work.
Secondly, I would like to thank my parents for their love and guidance and reminding me to
never give up.
Finally, I express my profound appreciation to my partner and friend Niso for his
encouragement, understanding, and patience even during hard times of this study.
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
‘VIVA ITALIA’
p. 4
OPERA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
p. 5
METHOD
p. 6
THE ANALYSIS
p. 7
STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS
p. 9
CHAPTER 1
POLITICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 ‘IL RISORGIMENTO’
p. 10
1.2 THE THEORY OF NATIONALISM
p. 13
1.3 VERDI AND THE RISORGIMENTO
p. 16
CHAPTER 2
NABUCCO
p. 18
2.1 POLITICS AND STEREOTYPES IN NABUCCO
p. 18
2.2 THE MYTH OF ‘VA, PENSIERO’
p. 22
2.2.1 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ‘VA, PENSIERO’
p. 24
LA BATTAGLIA DI LEGNANO
p. 26
3.1 POLITICAL RECEPTION OF LA BATTAGLIA DI LEGNANO
p. 26
3.2 THE POLITICS IN ACT II ‘BARBAROSSA’
p. 29
3.3 PATRIOTISM: LIBRETTO AND GESTURES
p. 30
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
3.3.1 PATRIOTIC GESTURES
p. 31
3.3.2 THE MYTH OF THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO
p. 32
DON CARLO(S)
p. 34
4.1 POLITICS OF REALPOLITIK
p. 34
4.1.1 THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN PHILLIP AND RODRIGO
p. 35
4.1.2 THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN PHILLIP AND THE INQUISITOR
p. 37
4.2 ELIZABETH’S POLITICAL ACTIONS
p. 39
4.3 THE RECEPTION OF ‘SPUNTATO ECCO IL DÌ D’ESULTANZA’
p. 40
CHAPTER 5
VERDI’S WORK IN COMPARISON - A CONCLUSION
p. 42
5.1 LIBRETTOS AND MISE-EN-SCÈNES IN COMPARISON
p. 42
5.2 POLITICAL MUSIC
p. 44
5.2.1 THE FUNCTION OF THE CHORUS
p. 10
2
p. 45
IMAGES
p. 48
APPENDIX
p. 50
BIBLIOGRAPHY
p. 57
3
INTRODUCTION
‘VIVA ITALIA’
Coro:Viva Italia! Un sacro patto. Tutti stringe i figli suoi: esso alfin di tanti ha fatto un sol
popolo d'Eroi! Le bandiere in campo spiega, O Lombarda invitta Lega, e discorra un gel
per l'ossa al feroce Barbarossa. Viva Italia forte ed una colla spada e col pensier! Questo
suol che a noi fu cuna, tomba sia dello stranier!.
(Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi & Salvadore Cammarano)1
[Chorus: Long live Italy! A sacred covenant. It binds all her sons: at last it did of many
one people of Heroes! It unfolds the flags in the field, O unconquered Lombard League,
and a gel flows through the bones of the fierce Barbarossa. Long live strong Italy with a
sword and with the thought! This soil that a cradle was for us, is the grave of the
stranger!]2
At the time that Giuseppe Verdi composed this patriotic first scene, Act I of the opera La
Battaglia di Legnano, the Italian Risorgimento was at its peak during the Revolutions of 1848-9. In
March 1848, the Milanese rebelled against their Austrian overlords during the famous cinque giornate.
In these five days, there was desperate fighting in the streets, barricades were put up and the entire city
rallied. The fact that the Austrians had allowed themselves to be driven out of Milan, rather than
destroy the entire city, did not mean the whole withdrawal of Austria from northern Italy. The
Milanese appealed to Piedmont for help and the Piedmontese reluctantly declared war on Austria. The
other northern Italians states, far from being united, began to argue among themselves over allegiances
and pledges.3
In this revolutionary background of the Risorgimento, which as a term has traditionally been
used to designate the period from 1815 to 1870 the founding era of Italian national unity, Verdi
composed most of his work.4 Due to the many political themes and the developed musical vocabulary
that suited to the expression of political ideas, Verdi is often seen as the ‘Risorgimento composer’.
Because of his relationship to politics, much of his work has been already interpreted by his
contemporaries as the representations of the pursuit of national independence. Both the famous chorus
of the Jews, ‘Va pensiero’ in Nabucco, and the chorus ‘O signore dal tetto natio’ in I Lombardi
1
La battaglia di Legnano, Giuseppe Verdi sito ufficiale,
http://www.giuseppeverdi.it/page.asp?IDCategoria=162&IDSezione=581&ID=19847, last accessed on 26 January 2012.
2
My own translation
3
C., Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi, London: Victor Gollancz LTD 1969, p. 190.
4
P., Robinson, Operas & Ideas, from Mozart to Strauss, Ithaca/New York: Cornell University Press 1985, p. 155.
4
became a kind of national anthem in the Risorgimento, and Verdi was regarded an iconic figure of
Italian unity. ‘Viva Verdi’ was the battle cry of the revolutionaries and Verdi’s name grew to be an
acronym for ‘Vittorio Emmanuelle Re d’Italia!’, who later became the first king of united Italy.5
OPERA IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
This thesis aims to analyze three operas of Verdi, which reflect different historical (Italian
nationalistic) practices during the Risorgimento, as a cultural practice with special emphasis on the
role of nationalism and patriotic feelings. When approaching music as a cultural practice, the aim is to
demonstrate how musical forms and processes reinterpret and contribute to the complex dynamics of
culture.6 This means that the idea of opera as an autonomous sphere of activity is rejected. Instead,
opera will be interpreted as a practice and activity, which address issues around power, nationalism
and subjectivity.7 Both the influence of politics on opera and the influence of opera on politics will be
examined: therefore opera is not only seen as a product of the political sphere, but also as an active
agent.
The focus will thus be on the relation between Verdi’s operas as cultural practices and the
development of notions of Italian nationalism and patriotism. The research question of the paper will
be: ‘In what ways are stages of Italian nationalism reflected in Verdi’s work during the
Risorgimento?’
The fact that music was never written in cultural or political isolation is the reason to study
opera in this context. It has always been created in interaction with an intellectual and political
environment. Another important aspect is that in the nineteenth century, opera enjoyed an immense
popularity in Europe. It became more available for the public than in earlier centuries, where opera
was considered as the entertainment of the nobility and was funded and financed either by royal courts
or by wealthy aristocrats. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century, public opera houses were built,
which became also inhabited by ‘common people’. As we learn from contemporary newspaper
accounts, in every lane, square and coffeehouse, people talked about the opera being staged at the
local theater.8 The influence of opera in Europe was so strong that the French insurgents during the
French Revolutions felt the need to block its conservative message and replace it with performances
that advanced their revolutionary program.9 It is thus clear that opera can attribute to unravel the
different stages of Italian nationalism, because it is primarily responsible for creating a mood of
passionate participation in which patriots looked to use for their own cause. As Anthony Arblaster
puts it: (…) ‘ ‘pure’ music is actually ‘about’ something beyond music itself.’10
5
K., Lajosi, Opera and nineteenth-century nation-building; the (re)sounding voice of nationalism, University of Amsterdam
2008, p. 43.
6
L., Kramer, Music as Cultural Practice 1800-1900, Berkeley: University of California Press 1990, p. xii
7
R., Young, ed., Critical Studies: Music, Popular Culture, Identities, Amsterdam/New York: Ropodi 2002, p. 13
8
C., Sorba, ‘Ernani Hats: Italian opera as a repertoire of political symbols during the risorgimento’, in The Oxford Handbook
of the New Cultural History of Music, ed. by J., F., Fulcher, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2011, p. 430.
9
Lajosi (2008), p. 16.
10
A., Arblaster, Viva la Libertà, Politics in Opera, London/New York: Verso 1992, p. 5
5
In spite of music’s overwhelming presence and influence in nineteenth-century Europe,
neither historians dealing with this period, nor scholars of nationhood have given any attention to
musical culture. Nowadays they do, and there are more and more books and articles on this topic. Yet,
music seems to be more resistant to interpretation than literary texts or visual images. Besides some
obvious genres, such as national anthems or military marches, music seemed to adhere to the realm of
pure aesthetics appearing completely independent from politics. However, recently, new research has
been done on nationalism in Verdi’s work in relation to nineteenth-century politics in the context of a
more general effort to deconstruct the myth of the Risorgimento. It is therefore interesting to examine
next to the well known analyses of Julian Budden, Charles Osborne, and other Verdi scholars, the
recent documentary research and new approaches to musical interpretation that have prompted
revisions to the persistent popular image of Verdi as a political composer. According to Mary Ann
Smart, ‘new evidence suggest that Verdi’s forward patriotic commitment was somewhat opportunistic
and intermittent, and that popular reception of this operas as patriotic symbols was less widespread
than has often been thought.’11 I see these new biographical complications as opportunity for new
interpretation to seek the political content of Verdi’s operas in more nuanced images. Yet, equally
interesting studies have been done on opera music and nationalism, for example the innovative
dissertation Opera and nineteenth-century nation-building; the (re)sounding voice of nationalism by
Krisztina Lajosi and on Verdi Liberty On (and Off) the Baricades: Verdi’s Risorgimento Fantasies by
Mary Ann Smart.
With these studies, I adopt a literary critical analysis which looks at opera as ‘text’, meaning
primarily the libretto, but also the music and reception, contrary to the typical musicologist way.
Traditional opera critics seem to concentrate especially on the musical meaning and as music is a very
specific topic to deal with, I will therefore focus on the opera’s plot and the characters in the libretto to
interrogate nationalism in operas of Verdi. However, this does not mean that music will be ignored.
METHOD
As to reconsider the importance of nationalistic opera music in the nineteenth century, I adopt
the methodology of New Historicism, a school of literary theory, which gained widespread influence
in the 1990s. Unlike previous historical criticism, which limited itself to simply demonstrating how a
work was reflective of its time, New Historicism evaluates how the work is influenced by the time in
which it was produced. It also examines the social sphere in which the author moved, the
psychological background of the author, the books and theories that may have influenced the author,
and any other factors, which influenced the work of art. Thus New Historicism’s advantage of
describing culture in action is that it has given scholars new opportunities to cross boundaries
11
M., A., Smart, ‘Liberty On (and Off) the Barricades: Verdi’s Risorgimento Fantasies’, in Making and Remaking Italy,
edited by Ascoli, A., R., and von Henneberg, K., Oxford/New York: Berg 2001, p. 103.
6
separating history, anthropology, arts, politics, literature and economics.12 As Jean Howard puts it: ‘A
major feature of a new historical criticism (...) must be a suspicion about an unproblematic binarism
between literature and history and a willingness to explore the ways in which literature does more than
reflect a context outside itself and instead constitutes one of the creative forces of history.’13 New
Historicism therefore regards society as a site where antagonistic forces are active and where the
multiplicity of discourses, customs and codes define the intellectual and political map of a historical
period: instead of categorizing different cultural, political or social areas, it stresses their interaction
and connection.
According to Philip Gossett, in opera this interaction takes place in both literary and musical
terms. In New Historicism, the judgment of operatic meanings solely by a work's libretto is not
appreciated and forms therefore a recurring problem. However, the words should not be undervalued,
as they are in many technical studies by musicologists. Both literary and musical terms need to be
considered, because opera communicates primarily through the way its text is set to music.14
Thus instead of regarding national operas as reflections of the nationalistic ideologies of their
age – as both musicologists and social scientists often claim – this thesis is going to discuss national
operas also as mediators of history and ideology rather than simply reflections of something ‘out
there’. Therefore the accent of the research will fall on the mediation between the socio-political
reality and art, rather than on the influence of ‘underlying’ social practices.15
THE ANALYSIS
As I mentioned earlier, the research question will be: ‘in what ways are stages of Italian
nationalism reflected in Verdi’s work during the Risorgimento?’ The term nationalism can be used in
a broad and in a narrow sense. In the broad sense I take the definition of the Oxford dictionary as
starting point:
‘na·tion·al·ism 1: the desire by a group of people who share the same race, culture,
language, etc. to form an independent country (…) 2 (sometimes disapproving) a feeling
of love for and pride in your country; a feeling that your country is better than any
other.’16
Concerning the Risorgimento, where the different states of the Italian peninsula were
12
H., A., Veeser, ed., The New Historicism, London: Routledge 1989.
J., E., Howard, 'The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies', in Renaissance Historicism, edited by Kinney, A., F., and
Collins, D., S., Amherst 1987, p. 16
14
P., Gossett, ‘Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in "Risorgimento" Opera’, in Cambridge Opera Journal, no. 1 (1990), pp.
42-43.
15
K., Lajosi, Opera and nineteenth-century nation-building; the (re)sounding voice of nationalism, University of Amsterdam
2008, pp. 10-11.
16
S., Wehmeier, Oxford advanced learner’s dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000
13
7
agglomerated into one single state of Italy and where the focus lay on a sense of community, I
concentrate on the first part of the definition of the Oxford dictionary. Within this definition, the
concept ranges from a privately experienced feeling to a political program actuating important
geopolitical policies and conflicts. In this wide sense, nationalism can be seen as a global phenomenon
manifesting itself in many societies and centuries and is often conflated with patriotism.17 It should be
understood that the discourse of patriotism is older than that of nationalism and means, at least in the
seventeenth and eighteenth century, something quite different. While nationalism rests on the
underlying assumption that shared ‘national characters’ determine the strongest political bonds and
loyalties in society, patriotism sees society purely as an economic and political system of wealth and
power distribution. In Enlightenment the patriotic ‘love of the fatherland’ invokes a political virtue,
which will defend the prerogatives of law, custom and parliament.18
Nationalism, in the narrower sense of the word, denotes an ideology, which tends towards a
congruent overlap between political and cultural areas, between political borders and cultural frontiers.
Here the term invokes a nation and national tradition.19 To which extent the ‘nation’ in fact exhibits
the historical presence and permanence, which nationalists claim, is open to strenuous debate that I
will take further in the next chapter.
This thesis will mainly focus on the different stages of Italian nationalism reflected in Verdi’s
work. That is why I have consciously chosen three operas of different stages of Verdi’s work, which
(partly) concern Italian nationalism, so they can be compared more equally. For getting a better and
more complete understanding, the operas will be analyzed in chronological order. In this way it is
possible to reflect the operas to the different stages of nationalism. This means that the first opera
Nabucco (1842) will reflect the early work of Verdi, which is seen less ideological as his later work.
The second opera La battaglia di Legnano (1849) is conceived in the revolutionary decade of the
1840s, Verdi’s most ideological period of his career. I have chosen this opera in particular because
many opera scholars perceived it as the most patriotic opera in Verdi’s oeuvre. The failure of the
revolutions of 1848, and with it the hopes for a united Italy, led to a sudden withdrawal of Verdi’s
interest from politics. However, as the cause of Italian nationalism gradually revived, Verdi led the
ideals of liberty and nationhood come back in his work. The third opera Don Carlo (1867) reflects this
period of repolitization.
The three operas will be analyzed looking at two dimensions of opera that are touched by Italian
nationalism: the libretto and the music. Furthermore, in these two dimensions of opera, nationalism
will be approached from different angles. On the one hand the influence of politics on Italian
nationalism in opera will be examined. On the other hand influence of Italian nationalism in opera on
politics will also be examined. Since I take a New Historicist approach I shall reject monologic and
17
J., Leersen, ‘Nationalism’, in: M. Beller, J., Leersen ed., Imagology, the cultural construction and literary representation
of national characters, Amsterdam: Ropodi 2007, pp. 383-384.
18
J., Leersen, ‘Patriotism’, in: M. Beller, J., Leersen ed., Imagology, the cultural construction and literary representation of
national characters, Amsterdam: Ropodi 2007, pp. 393-395.
19
J., Leersen, (2007) p. 384.
8
myopic historiography, which put the analysis of opera in a clearly defined ‘dimension of study’
without taking into account angles outside this ‘dimension’. I will therefore not separate the various
angles, as I am convinced that the influences on opera are not separable, but interdependent.
THE STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS
After this introduction the thesis contains five more chapters. These chapters are organized
chronologically around issues concerning nationalism in Verdi’s operas.
Chapter one Political Background focuses on the Risorgimento and the diverse theories on
nationalism. First we examine the Risorgimento and the different theories concerning the path of
Italian unification. Thereby the tension between tradition and invention, conservatism and radicalism,
that underlay Italian nationalist ideals are taken into account. Then the different theories on
nationalism such as those provided by Ernest Gellner, Ernst Haas and others will be analyzed. Within
this analysis the theories of ‘invention of tradition’ by Eric Hobsbawn and ‘imagined communities’ by
Benedict Anderson will be examined to place ‘nationalism’ in a cultural historical perspective. These
two focus points of the Risorgimento and nationalism will bring us to position of Giuseppe Verdi
during the Risorgimento.
Chapter two Nabucco concentrates on the success of Nabucco. This work, which reflects the
early period of Verdi’s work, was the opera has made him famous after the flop of Un giorno di
Regno. Special emphasis will be laid on the chorus ‘Va pensiero sull’ali dorate’, which by some
scholars is regarded as the anthem for Italian patriots.
Chapter three La battaglia di Legnano presents Verdi’s patriotism in one of his most patriotic
operas. Written in the revolutionary spirit of the 1848-9 revolutions, La battaglia di Legnano can be
seen as a good example of the imbued liberal spirit of the age. Equally the social-political context of
the revolutionary years will be analyzed.
Chapter four Don Carlo(s), makes a leap to the period after Verdi’s withdrawal of interest in
politics, due to the failure of the revolutions of 1848. After three largely domestic and romantic operas
Don Carlo(s) illustrate the period in which politics came again into force. The spirit of the Realpolitik
that played a critical role in the history of Europe will be analyzed as potential factor for the less
sanguine vision of politics in Don Carlo(s).
Chapter five Verdi’s work in comparison – a conclusion, will compare the three operas
Nabucco, La battaglia di Legnano and Don Carlo(s) in relation to the social-political background of
the nineteenth century to answer the research question ‘in what ways are stages of Italian nationalism
reflected in Verdi’s work during the Risorgimento?’
9
CHAPTER 1
POLTICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 ‘IL RISORGIMENTO’
The Italian term ‘Il Risorgimento’, meaning the resurgence what relates to the Christian term
‘rebirth’, refers to the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian
peninsula into the single state of Italy in the nineteenth century. According to Umberto Levra the
Risorgimento was the period when Italian politics reached unity, but also the time when the invention
of a common tradition, which embodies the idea of Italy as a nation, was realized.20 Alberto Banti and
Roberto Bizzocchi state that the nation of the Risorgimento was born when a discursive formation was
build that defined and structured the nation as a symbolic system. According to them a work of
invention or of creative processing undermines the sensitivity of the potential speakers it had
addressed. Without this build effort, the national-patriotic movement, in its various facets, would not
have taken shape: without the determination of those myths, symbols and emotions, there would have
been a lack of political objectives with the intent to build a state for the nation Italy.21 Thus the term
Risorgimento also refers back to a common Italian past, which came to be idealized by those who
believed that Italy could be liberated from its present subjection through resistance. Therefore we can
speak of a Risorgimento mythology made up of a series of interrelated myths; often build upon or
include certain significant historical individuals, particular texts, or important historical events. This
narration that has led to the unity of Italy, started according to most scholars such as Alberto Banti and
Maria Urban, after the Congress of Vienna.
In Italy, the Congress restored the power of the Church and the pre-Napoleonic patchwork of
independent governments. The settlement brought Austrian sovereignty into the richest area of Italy
(Lombardo-Venetia) and Austrian influence into much of the rest of the Italian peninsula. Therefore
the struggle for Italian unification was perceived to be waged primarily against the Austrian Empire
and the Habsburgs, since they directly controlled the predominantly Italian-speaking northeastern part
of present-day Italy and they were the most powerful force against unification. The Austrian Empire
vigorously repressed nationalist sentiment growing on the Italian peninsula, as well as in the other
parts of Habsburg domains.22 One very influential group that played an important part in Italian
nationalism was the Carbonari, a secret Italian organization formed in southern Italy. However, the
Carbonari were not a tightly knit group with a single program. Although the little documentary
evidence available is too contradictory to enable historians to make definitive judgments, it tends to
20
M., B., Urban, Lecture ‘Nazione e narrazione: il Risorgimento’, of the course Italian Culture UvA, slide 3 and 5.
A., M., Banti, R., Bizzocchi, Immagini della nazione nell’Italia del Risorgimento, Roma: Carocci editore 2002, p. 11.
22
A., Thompson, George Eliot and Italy, Literary, Cultural and Political influences from Dante to the Risorgimento,
London: MacMillan Press 1998, pp. 8-9. 21
10
support the supposition that, apart from their strong nationalism, the Carbonari had varying political
views ranging from those generally held by early nineteenth-century moderate liberals to those of the
ultra-radicals of the French Revolution.23 After the Congress of Vienna, the Carbonari’s activity
spread itself over the Italian peninsula. Despite the fact that the origins, nature, teachings, and
activities of the Carbonari are still shrouded in mystery and obscurity, the society is often seen as the
root of many political disturbances in Italy during the 1820’s. These insurrections were soon to be
suppressed with the aid of the Austrian army.24
Ten years later risings emerged in central Italy in the duchies of Modena and Parma, in
Bologna, and the towns of the Papal Legations, which were all crushed by the Austrian and the French
armies. One of the Carbonari members involved in the 1831 insurrections, for which he was briefly
imprisoned, was the young Giuseppe Mazzini. After his release he founded, in replacement of the
unsuccessful Carbonari, a secret political society La Giovine Italia (Young Italy) from exile in
Marseille (1831). The new secret society, whose motto was ‘God and the People’, sought the
association of the intellect and the establishment of a free, independent, and republican nation with
Rome as its capital.25 Mazzini believed that a revolution of ideas would create a unified Italy, and
would touch off a European-wide revolutionary movement.26 Just like previous uprisings, a series of
Mazzinian uprisings were also doomed to failure in 1832 and 1834, while the infiltration of Young
Italy by police spies and its subsequent repression forced Mazzini to seek refugee in London.
Nevertheless, the growing support for Young Italy during the 1830s and the 1840s show the immense
importance of Mazzini as an educator of the young, mainly middle class Italians towards a national
consciousness.27
Alongside the anti-clerical Mazzinian nationalism, there arose in the 1840s a more moderate
nationalist movement. Among its main figures were Cesare Balbo and Massimo d’Azeglio whose
works were highly successful in Italy. While Balbo advocated a federal solution to the organization of
Italy, d’Azeglio emphasized the need for a continued non-violent agitation for reform. Both, however,
recognized that force would be necessary to drive the Austrians out of Italy.28 Others looked at the
Pope to lead the regeneration of Italy. Foremost among the figures of the neo-Guelph movement
(named after the pro-papal party in the Italy of the Middle Ages) was Vincenzo Gioberti. In his treatise
Del primato morale e civile degli italiani, he arrived at the conclusion that the church is the axis on
which the wellbeing of human life revolves. He affirmed the idea of the supremacy of Italy, brought
about by the restoration of the papacy as a moral dominion, and founded on religion and public
opinion. In his opinion monarchy and the aristocracy should lead the Risorgimento.29
23
R., J., Rath, ‘The Carbonari: Their Origins, Initiation Rites, and Aims’, The American Historical Review, no. 2 (1964), p.
369.
24
Thompson, (1998), p. 9.
25
G., Mazzini, ‘Autobiographical and Political Writings’ in Histoire génénerale de la civilisation en Europe (1820-22),
Paris. First published in England (1848) as The History of Civilization in Europe, trans. W., Hazlin, G., Bell & Sons, London.
26
M., B., Urban, Lecture ‘Il pensiero politico del Risorgimento’, of the course Italian Culture UvA, slides 4 to 10.
27
Thompson, (1998), p. 10.
28
M., B., Urban, Lecture ‘Il pensiero politico del Risorgimento’, of the course Italian Culture UvA, slide 15.
29
Ibid., slides 12 to 14.
11
The year 1848 saw a series of revolutionary actions. The January revolution in Sicily and the
liberal movement in Naples forced Ferdinand II to grand a constitution. Agitation in Milan culminated
in the cinque giornate (Five Days) with a civilian revolutionary army forcing the Austrians to
withdrawal to the defensive fortresses at the border of Austria. Piedmont declared war on Austria, but
the failure of Pope Pius IX to lend his support, the re-establishment of Ferdinand II in Naples, and a
crushing defeat at Custozza obliged Piedmont to withdrawal its claim to the Austrian provinces.
Meanwhile, Pius IX had fled to from Rome to Gaeta in January 1849. Soon, a democratic Roman
Republic was established, and within the six months it lasted, carried out a genuine number of
reforms. Though, defended by Giuseppe Garibaldi, an Italian general, the new Roman Republic was
defeated in July 1849 by Louis-Napoleon who was determined to restore the pope.30
The failures of 1848-9 did not signify a wholesale return to the past. Garibaldi’s epic exploits
had fueled the growing nationalist mythology and the short-lived republics had provided a taste for a
return to the past glory of the medieval communes. Under the guidance of Camillo Benso di Cavour,
Prime Minister of Piedmont-Sardinia, a series of domestic reforms were introduced to reduce the
influence of the Church and strengthening the economy. His strategic move to let Piedmont play a part
in the Crimea war and his presence at the Congress of Paris (1856) ensured that the ‘Italian Question’
was debated by the European powers and confirmed Piedmont as an important player in European
diplomacy.31
In January 1858, the Italian Felice Orsini’s attempted assassination on
Napoleon III
paradoxically opened an avenue of diplomacy between France and Piedmont. While in jail awaiting
trial, Orsini wrote a public letter to Napoleon III, ending with, ‘Remember that, so long as Italy is not
independent, the peace of Europe and Your Majesty is but an empty dream […] Set my country free,
and the blessings of twenty-five million people will follow you everywhere and forever.’32 Orsini was
still executed, but Napoleon III began to explore the possibility of a joint operation with Piedmont
against Austria. Cavour and Napoleon met in July 1859 at Plombières, and the two agreed that
Piedmont would attempt to provoke war with the Duchy of Modena, obliging Austria to enter, and
France would then help Piedmont. In return, Cavour reluctantly agreed to cede Savoy and Nice to
France.33 After the bloody battles of Magenta and Solferino, Victor Emmanuel II gained Lombardy,
but not Venice. Cavour resigned himself in protest at Napoleons failure to continue the war. During
this ‘Second war of Independence’ of 1859, risings peacefully removed the rulers of Tuscany, Parma
and Modena.34
In April 1960 the famous Spedizione dei Mille (Expedition of the Thousand), led by Garibaldi,
took place. The ‘Thousand’ landed at Marsala and by the end of May Garibaldi was in control of
whole Sicily. In moving northwards, they effectively defeated the Kingdom of Naples. Garibaldi’s
30
Thompson, (1998), pp. 10-11.
Ibid., p. 11-12. 32
J., J., Norwich, The Middle Sea: A History of the Mediterranean, New York: Doubleday 2006, p. 523.
33
Ibid. p. 524.
34
Thompson, (1998), p. 11.
31
12
men then marched of to Rome, a move in which Cavour’s opinion would provoke the intervention of
the French Emperor as Catholic defender of the Pope. To forestall Garibaldi, Cavour organized a
Piedmontese invasion of Rome. When Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II met at Teano on October
26th, Garibaldi handed him the conquered territories with as result that the new kingdom of Italy was
proclaimed in March 1861 under Victor Emmanuel II with Turin as capital. However, in the south a
five year long guerilla war was waged against the new rulers of the Kingdom of Italy, and in any case
the unification was incomplete: Rome was still occupied under French troops and Venice remained in
the hands of the Austrians.35
After the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, in which Italy sided with Prussia, the annexation of
Venice was finally gained: the alliance with Bismarck, diplomatic negotiations with Napoleon and the
Prussian victory over the Austrians at Sadowa proved enough to ensure the Austrian withdrawal from
Venice. When Italy agreed to protect Rome and to move its capital from Turin to Florence, the French
did withdraw their garrison in 1864. However, Garibaldi’s attempts upon Rome provoked the return of
the French. They were to hold the city until 1870 when the troops were withdrawn to fight in the
Franco-Prussian War. Soon after that, an Italian army defeated the papal forces and took possession of
Rome, leaving the Pope in possession of the Vatican. With the restoration of Rome to its status as the
country’s capital, the unification of Italy was complete.36
1.2 THE THEORY OF NATIONALISM
Like most concepts we use in social science, the terms ‘nation’ and ‘nationalism’ are cognitive
artifacts we invent to mark of an intellectual universe. Well-known authors on this subject do not seem
to agree on one clear definition. For Dudley Seers nationalism refers to certain types of economic
policy, while for Benedict Anderson the term connotes manufactured linguistic identity. Anthony
Smith considers nationalism to be a particular ideology that involves a strong identification of a group
individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, that is the nation. In the 'modernist' image
of the nation, it is according to him that nationalism creates national identity.37 Ernest Gellner treats
the phenomenon as a distinctively industrial principle of social evolution and social organization. As
he puts it: ‘Nationalism is primarily a political principle, which holds that the political and the national
unit should be congruent. Nationalism as a sentiment or as movement, can be best defined in terms of
this principle.’38 And at last, for Ernst Haas nationalism is ‘the convergence of territorial and political
loyalty irrespective of competing foci of affiliation, such as kinship, profession, religion, economic
interest, race or even language’. Haas argues that nationalism is ‘modern’ because it stresses the
individual search for identity with strangers in an impersonal world that in no longer ‘animated by
35
Ibid., p. 12.
Ibid., pp. 12-13.
37
A., D., Smith, National Identity, Reno: University of Nevada Press 1993, pp. 71, 91.
38
E., Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1983, p. 11.
36
13
corporate identities’.39 This individual search to connect with strangers can be related to Andersons
‘imagined communities’, where nationalism is portrayed as collective identities. Anderson defines a
nation as ‘an imagined political community’, imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. An
imagined community is different from an actual community because it is not (and cannot be) based on
everyday face-to-face interaction between its members. Instead, members hold in their mind a mental
image of their affinity.40 This means that, according to Anderson, nations are socially constructed.
In my thesis, nationalism in opera will be analyzed according to these interpretations. Here
nationalism is seen as both an ideology and political principle that emphasis the desire by a group of
people who share the same race, culture, language, etc. to form a nation, which is socially constructed,
and have political self-determination. From a nationalist perspective political self-determination is
very straightforward when those who think of themselves as forming a national community also think
of themselves as self-determining. However, it can also be the case that one group of people might
want to subjugate another group, regarding them as naturally inferior on racial or other grounds. Like
David Miller, we must ask whether people justifiably conceive their nationality as carrying with it a
claim for political self-determination.41 The reason for this claim concerns social justice, the idea of
creating a society or institution that is based on the principles of equality and solidarity, that
understands and values human rights, and that recognizes the dignity of every human being.42 And
therefore, nations are communities of obligation, in the sense that their members recognize duties to
meet the basic needs and protect the basic interest of other members. Where a national state exists, it
can develop and regulate a set of institutions, what John Rawls has called ‘the basic structure of
society’, which allocates rights and responsibilities to people. It requires that the state should be
responsive to people’s views about what they can justly demand of one another, and that it should be
effective in regulating the basic structure. Obligations of citizenship based on reciprocity are
superimposed on what would otherwise be somewhat loose and indeterminate obligations of
nationality. In this way, social justice can become an effective force governing relationships within a
national society.43
In the case of Italy, prior to the unification, the nation could never been achieved a regime of
overall justice, unless the resource base of each state is approximately the same. A system of voluntary
transfers from better endowed to worse endowed state would be needed.44 We all know that this was a
problem in Italy, because Italy was handicapped by a lack of unifying political institutions in the past.
There was no national tradition of sacred monarchy. Only ancient Rome was a possible point of
reference. But the Roman tradition was both too local and too universal to serve as a satisfactory
foundation for national identity. The European Romantic Movement posed a new problem for Italian
39
E., B., Haas, ‘What is nationalism and why should we study it?’, International Organisation, no. 3 (1986), pp. 707-709.
B., Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and Spread of Nationalism, New York: Verso 1991, pp. 57, 37-46.
41
D., Miller, On Nationality, Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995, p. 83.
42
J., Zajda, S., Majhanovich, V., Rust, Education and Social Justice, Dordrecht: Springer 2006, pp. 6-8.
43
Miller, (1995), p. 83.
44
Ibid., pp. 83-84.
40
14
culture and for patriotic self-determination. Mme de Staël called up to look to the north, to Germany
and Britain, to revive a sterile tradition with new colors and alien beauties. Yet, the decline was only
relative: the years leading up to the 1848 revolutions marked a new upsurge of historical interest.
Therefore Umberto Levra suggests that the Risorgimento is a period that should not only be looked at
as the story from the perspective of the achievements of political independence and unifications, but
from the perspective of the invention of a common tradition, of the aggregation of images in order to
represent the identity of Italy as a nation.45 After all, it was in this period in which the common
tradition enhanced the Italian states to unite. We can thus conclude that whatever solidarity and
collective identity the Italian states have felt for one another was overwhelmed as far as policymaking
was concerned by political rivalry and jealousy between the rulers of these states.
To maintain and nurture the emphasis of nationalism on collective identity, a lot of traditions
and elements of the nation are being portrayed as longstanding and natural. This is because any form
of identity requires memory. In a case of a new nation, it is therefore necessary to create a national
identity out of the materials furnished by the records of the past. Most of this new national identity,
that is being upheld by ‘common traditions’ and ‘common history’ are invented or used for this
purpose. As Eric Hobsbawm argueD ‘many ‘traditions’ which appear or claim to be old are often quite
recent in origin and sometimes invented’.46
Some theorists of nationalism have suggested that it does not matter what kind of history
nations use. In Nations and Nationalism Gellner admits that nationalism uses ‘the pre-existing,
historically inherited proliferation of cultures or cultural wealth, though it uses them very selectively,
and it most often transforms them radically’. He goes on to add that ‘the cultural shreds and patches
used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions. Any old shred and patch would have
served as well’.47
However, I think that it does matter what ‘shreds and patches’ are available and how they are
used to ‘stitch together the national cloth’. As Adrian Lyttelton argues, two aspects of Gellner’s
argument need consideration. In the first place he admits that nationalist writers must choose from a
repertoire, which has already been shaped by tradition. This tradition, however, has already a certain
shape to it. Nationalists have to respect this, even if they try to transform its significance. For example:
the historic conflict between imperial Rome and the barbarians could not be viewed in the same way
in Italy and Germany. I agree with Lyttelton, when he argues that the ‘invention of tradition’ is a
process of filling gaps in the record, and meeting the already existing expectations as audiences often
prefer to hear what they already know or suspect. To be specific: in Italy during the Risorgimento, the
critical public for national propagandists was that of the educated middle class. Due to the fact that
conscious attempts to produce a national history for the masses only became important after the
45
A., Lyttelton, ‘Creating a National Past: History, Myth and Image in the Risorgimento’, in Making and Remaking Italy,
edited by Ascoli, A., R., and von Henneberg, K., Oxford/New York: Berg 2001, pp. 31-33.
46
E., J., Hobsbawm, T., O., Ranger, The invention of Tradition, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983,
p. 1.
47
Gellner, (1983), p. 55-56.
15
unification, during the Risorgimento, national mythmakers were not addressing a passive or uncritical
audience. This imposed some limits on invention of any tradition. Gellner thus asserts here too radical
a division between modern nationalism and previous national development.48
The second consideration of Gellner’s argument is the way in which the national past is
reconstructed. It is not a matter of political or cultural indifference: it is the terrain of a contest
between rival groups. The outcome of this contest is important for the direction taken by national
culture. It matters whether parliament, the monarchy, the city or the folk community is cast as
protagonist of the story. If it is allowed that there is no single objective valid perspective from which
national history can be viewed, then the plurality of interpretations and their ideological significance
does not imply that they are arbitrary. They are rather important. The attention which historians
attached to ‘knowing the facts’ is a sign that establishing the truth of the historical record was typically
seen at least as a necessary prelude to expressing the desired national message. We must keep in mind
that successful narratives do not spring from nothing, and unsuccessful narratives do not simply
disappear. If we keep the national past of Italy in mind, there is the existence of many separate
regional or municipal histories. As in all national histories, however, the struggle against the foreign
invader inevitably held a central place. Episodes in which Italians had successfully rebelled against
foreign domination provide the focus for national history and mythology.49
1.3 VERDI AND THE RISORGIMENTO
His letters and recorded opinions are the testimony that Verdi had strong political convictions,
that he took a constant interest in political events and even allowed himself at one period to drawn into
active politics. Verdi had lived through the entire period of the Risorgimento and had identified
himself wholeheartedly with its heroic spirit. He was in Paris in early 1848 when the revolution broke
out in Milan. As soon as he heard about it he hurried home:50
‘You can imagine whether I wanted to remain in Paris, after hearing there was a
revolution in Milan. I left the moment I heard the news, but I could see nothing but these
stupendous barricades. Honor to these heroes! Honor to all Italy, which in this moment is
truly great! The hour of her liberation has sounded.’51
At the start of the ‘Second war of Independence’ of 1859 Verdi was also very enthusiastic. As he
wrote to his long-standing friend Clarina Maffei, he would have liked to follow the example of the
patriot Montanelli, his part-collaborator on Simon Boccanegra, and take up the arms himself even at
48
A., Lyttelton, ‘Creating a National Past: History, Myth and Image in the Risorgimento’, in Making and Remaking Italy,
edited by Ascoli, A., R., and von Henneberg, K., Oxford/New York: Berg 2001, p. 28.
49
Ibid., pp. 29-31.
50
A., Arblaster, Viva la Libertà, Politics in Opera, London/New York: Verso 1992, pp. 91-95.
51
Ibid., p. 95.
16
the age of forty-five:
‘But what could I do, who couldn’t even undertake a march of three miles? My head
won’t stand five minutes in the sun, and a breath of wind or a touch of damp sends me to
bed for weeks on end.’52
These recordings show that Verdi was a nationalist liberal of a classic nineteenth-century kind. He was
a fervent patriot who identified himself unhesitatingly with the Italian struggle for independence and
unity, and he was well known to do so. So much, indeed, that in 1859 the apparently innocent slogan
VIVA VERDI was used as acronym for the much subversive Viva Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d’Italia.
However, the fact was that Verdi had been a republican. Only in the 1850s he came round the idea for
practical reasons that the most realistic prospects for Italian unification lay in supporting the King of
Piedmont.53
Verdi was also strongly anti-clerical and liberal. Although he was not a pacifist, being
prepared to be actively involved in the armed struggle against Austria and the Bourbons, he viewed
war with horror and detested those who glorified it. He claimed the right to live his personal life as he
pleased, free from the pressure or censure of conventional opinion. And that is how he describe
himself, according to Giuseppina Strepponi, his second wife:
‘I am a Liberal to the utmost degree, without being a Red, I respect the liberty of others
and I demand respect for my own. The town [Busseto] is anything but Liberal. It makes a
show of being so, perhaps out of fear, but is of clerical tendencies.’54
In 1861, in response to pressure from Cavour, Verdi agreed to stand for election to the new
national parliament, and was elected. He attended dutifully, but after Cavour’s death in June of that
year Verdi’s commitment declined. He did not stand for re-election when his term expired in 1865. He
continued to follow political events closely, but the heroic events of the Risorgimento were over.
Verdi became disillusioned with the politics of maneuverings and compromises that had replaced it.
At the beginning of the Risorgimento and during the uprisings, he had high hopes for a united and
independent Italy, but by 1870 it was already apparent that these hopes were not being realized.55
52
J., Budden., Verdi, New York: Vintage Books 1987, pp. 82-83.
Arblaster, (1992), p. 93.
54
Ibid., p. 93.
55
Budden., (1987) , p. 96.
53
17
CHAPTER 2
NABUCCO
Nabucco (1842), based on Old Testament references to the Babylonian emperor
Nebuchadnezzar and his subjugation of Jerusalem was one of Verdi’s first successes. Though the
character of Nebuchadnezzar (in Italian Nabucodonosor) is historical, the other characters in the drama
were invented.56 Its first performance took place on 9 March 1842 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan,
under the original name of Nabucodonosor. The definitive name of Nabucco for the opera and its
protagonist was first used at a performance at the San Giacomo Theatre of Corfu in September 1844.
In order to understand this opera in the context of the Risorgimento, we have to look at the
reception of the opera during the 1840s. Therefore, political allusions in Nabucco will be analyzed.
First I like to focus on the characters as representation of social types and national stereotypes, then on
the plot in historical context. At last the myth of ‘Va, pensiero’ will be analyzed.
2.1 POLITICS AND STEREOTYPES IN NABUCCO
As Anderson described the nation as mental construct, he emphasized the role of community
images and stereotypes that played a vital role in nationalism. National imagination made both use of
self-imagination and images of others, usually contrasting the two in favor of the self-representation.
These images are culturally defined, never isolated, and never sterile.57 We see this being portrayed in
the characters in Nabucco.
The two most flamboyantly wicked characters that I like to point out are Nabucco and
Abigaille.58 Both are the most fully drawn individuals and have the largest individual parts. The
arrogant Nabucco who profanes the Temple of Solomon, is represented by a baritone, according to
Robinson, the political voice par excellence; the baritone is often associated with political aspiration
by its naturally masculine sound.59 Nabucco, the arrogant strong leader, however, learns wisdom and
humility at the end. Instead of only a strong powerful leader, his tenderness is also displayed when he
appeals to his daughter for help immediately after the thunderbolt, and the deep feeling with which he
pleads with Abigaille for her sister’s life.
When Abigaille’s discovers that she is actually a daughter of slaves its fuels her anger and
ambition; in the long duet with Nabucco in Act III she emphasizes the fact that she, a slave, now
reigns as queen over her royal sister and father.
56
When the opera was staged in Paris, it was discovered that Solera had taken his plot, or some part of it, from a French play
by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue of 1836.
57
Anderson (1991), p. 37
58
For the whole plot see appendix 1
59
Robinson (1985), p. 174.
18
Invano! Oh vedran se a questa schiava mal s'addice il regio manto! Oh vedran s'io
deturpava dell'Assiria lo splendor!60
[It will be seen now, if the royal mantle ill becomes this slave! It will be seen now, if I besmirch
the grandeur of Assyria!61]
Here is becomes evident that Abigail exemplifies the malevolent passions nourished by a society, in
which birth and rank are the absolute arbiters of power and success.62 The music contributes to this
power-display by repetition and loudness (to arouse the passion of the audience). Abigaille puts
special emphasis on the word ‘schiava’ (slave) by repeating it a couple of times to display the
difference between her and her father. However, as powerful she is portrayed here, in the end
Abigaille expresses her remorse and asks God to forgive her.
Both Nabucco and Abigaille are in a large part of the opera displayed as a stereotypical
enemy: cruel, revengeful and egoistic rulers. This is in stark contrast with the patient, oppressed
Israelites, who keep their faith alive even in the darkest moments of their lives. These power relations
are also very well represented through the clothing: where the Jewish people, as slaves, wear mainly
rags (except for Zaccaria as spiritual figure and Ismaele as royal officer), the Babylonians all wear the
most splendid cloths from the King Nabucco himself to the lowest officers. Thereby, Zaccaria as
Jewish dedicated spiritual figure represents the voice of God and is depicted in stark contrast with the
High Priest of Baal. Two basses, suggesting gravity, wisdom and also old age, represent these two
spiritual characters. But where the High Priest of Baal is depicted as a bloodthirsty, vengeful and
clerical character, who encourages Abigaille in her ambitions, Zaccaria is the wise old man who fight
for his nation’s freedom.63 As, all the major Babylonian characters are portrayed as powerful, cruel,
egoistic, bloodthirsty and resentful, it is then quite convenient - as in all national histories the struggle
against the foreign invader is the focus for national mythology - to see the resemblance between the
‘cruel and egoistic rulers’ of Babylon suppressing the Jews and the ‘cruel and egoistic’ rulers of
Austria suppressing the Italians. Two nations are positioned in opposition of each other: the Jews
against the Babylonians (or the Italians against the Austrians).64
In the context of the nineteenth century, from an imagological point of view, nationalism
appears to be the political instrumentalization of a national auto-image, set apart against the image of
the ‘outsider’.65 It seems fairly logical that a powerful country is portrayed in art (and thus also opera)
in negative images: as cruel, despotic, ruthless, no morals etc. This was not only confined to Italy.
During the sixteenth and seventeenth century, when Spain ruled a vast region in Europe, in
60
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucodonosor’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libvernab_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June, 2012.
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libvernab_e.htm, last accessed on 14 June, 2012.
62
Arblaster, (1992), pp. 97-98.
63
Ibid., p. 98.
64
Banti, Bizzocchi, (2002), p. 139.
65
Leersen, (2007), p.386.
61
19
particularly the northern countries there grew a style of historical writing that demonized the Spanish
Empire, ‘This Black Legend’ (La Leyenda Negra) was a politically motivated attempt to morally
disqualify Spain and its people.66 As Joep Leersen recommends the study of ethnotypes, which are
stereotypes of how we identify or view the others as opposed to ourselves67, the opposition of the
nations becomes clearer. Italians perceived their own nation to be liberal, oppressed and anything nonAustrian, and the Austrians as conservative, cruel, without morals; the oppressor. It is therefore no
wonder that the Italian audience saw its equitation with the suffering Jews and interpreted the cruel
rulers of Babylon as the oppressive Austrian who ruled over the Northern part of Italy and had great
influence on the rest of the peninsula.
A step further in this interpretation of the similarity between Nabucco and the Italian context
of the Risorgimento would be to scrutinize the story and take a closer look at the details of the story.
Here I do not so much focus on the characters as representations of social (stereo)types, but more on
the characters in the historical (political) context. When in Act I Nabucco and his soldiers profane the
temple by entering it, Nabucco exclaims:
Pròstrati, o schiava, al tuo signor! O vinti, il capo a terra! Il vincitor son io. Ben l'ho chiamato in
guerra, ma venne il vostro Dio? Tema ha di me: resistermi, stolti, chi mai potrà?68
[Down on your knees, defeated slaves! I am the conqueror. I challenged him in battle, but did
your God come? He is afraid of me; who in the whole wide world, you fools, will be able to
withstand me?69]
Here he is not only profaning the temple but also subjugating the Jews by conquering them.
This can be interpreted as the Austrians ‘penetrating’ the Italian soil and ruling its citizens. Because of
the fact that in opera general political and social trends of the day were represented in nineteenthcentury opera through the life of common people, this interpretation is very plausible. Just like the
change of the characters Nabucco and Abigaille (both recognize in the end the God of the Jews as true
God and ask him for mercy) could be interpreted as the hope of the Italians that the Austrians would
change too and grand them ‘freedom’. As Leersen has shown in his National Thought in Europe
stereotypes are more likely to occur in minor ‘flat’ characters (they do not develop personality in the
course of the narrative) if only because they allow authors to use a sort of semiotic shorthand.70
Following this line of reasoning, the characters of Nabucco and Abigaille are then not portrayed in a
crude stereotypical way, but in way in which the Italians could recognize their Austrian oppressor and
66
J., Yohalem, ‘La Leyenda Negra’, Opera News, no. 7 (2001), p. 16.
J., Leersen, National Thought in Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press 2006, p. 17.
68
Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucodonosor’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libvernab_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June, 2012.
69
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucco’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libvernab_e.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
70
A., Rigney, ‘Character (narrative)’, in M., Beller, J., Leersen, ed., Imagology, the cultural construction and literary
representation of national characters, Amsterdam: Ropodi 2007, p. 289.
67
20
realize that the situation was not static. As the characters like Nabucco and Abigaille could change so
could the Austrians. In this way we can interpret the opera as a moral narrative that should give the
Italians people hope for their cause and support for their fight for freedom and unity.
This unity is embodied in the chorus of ‘Va, pensiero’, that in my opinion sonically and
textually reflect the political solidarity of a nation. Not quite specific, but definitely making allusions,
the text arouse feelings of belonging to one nation and the love for a lost country:
Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate. va, ti posa sui clivi, sui colli, ove olezzano tepide e molli l'aure
dolci del suolo natal! Del Giordano le rive saluta, di Sïonne le torri atterrate. O mia Patria, sì
bella e perduta! O membranza sì cara e fatal! Arpa d'or dei fatidici vati, perché muta dal salice
pendi? Le memorie del petto raccendi, ci favella del tempo che fu!71
[Fly, thought, on wings of gold, go, settle on the slopes and the hills, where the sweet breezes,
free and gentle, of our native land smell fragrantly. Greet the banks of the Jordan and Zion’s
toppled towers. Oh, my country, so lovely and lost! Oh, memory so dear and despairing! Golden
harp of the prophetic bards, why hang mute on the willow? Rekindle the memories in our
breasts, tell us of times gone by!72]
As the Italians, like the Hebrews, lost their country to a foreign invader, one can assume that the banks
of the Jordan can substitute the banks of the Tiber, just like Zion’s toppled towers substitute Rome’s
medieval ‘torre delle milizie’ and ‘torre dei conti’. Therefore I think that it is likely that the Italian
audience of the nineteenth century could easily identify with the phrase ‘Oh, my county, so lovely and
lost!’ In the end, we know the Italians felt some form of similarity as ‘Va, pensiero’ is now part of the
national history and mythology.
However, it is possible that these interpretations might not have been those of the
contemporary Italian audience of Nabucco. New research suggests that Verdi’s forward patriotic
commitment was somewhat opportunistic and intermittent, and that popular reception of this opera as
patriotic symbols was less widespread than has often been thought. Even if the words of the chorus
‘Va, pensiero’ were to substitute the Tiber and ‘Rome’s toppled towers’ for the geographical markers
of the Promised Land, the words would still lack urgency, evoking only a remote pain. In a sense, the
words of ‘Va, pensiero’ enact the exile’s imagined recovery of the homeland. In backing up this poetic
desire, Verdi’s music sets up a kind of static music paradise that starts with a rocking rhythm and
melodic outline, which both hardly alter throughout the piece.73 The incongruent atmosphere of calm
and repose of both words and music are striking and create musical symmetry and closure, but does
not illustrate individual words or ideas from the text. The nostalgic invocation of the (Italian/Jewish)
71
Giuseppe Verdi: Nabucodonosor’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libvernab_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June, 2012.
Translation based on those of Mary Ann Smart and Charles Osborne.
73
Smart, (2001), p. 106.
72
21
nation is exemplary, but it carries no impulse towards action, change or movement that might inspire
supposed patriotic outbursts.74
It is sometimes suggested that Verdi was unaware of the political significance that would be
read into this story of national resistance and this chorus of ‘patriotic yearning’. To me, this seems a
bit perverse. Why would Verdi, be the one person not to see the significance, which is perceived by
everyone else? But whether or not he was fully aware of what he had done in Nabucco, it is
implausible to suppose, as Charles Osborne does, that he could have continued to compose operas on
themes of national struggle, exile and patriotism without realizing what he was doing or how his music
would be perceived.75 I think it is more likely that, after having discovered that he was able to voice
the patriotic feelings of his fellow Italians, he tried to go on in doing so.76
2.2 THE MYTH OF ‘VA, PENSIERO’
The singing chorus was maybe the most important factor in transforming the operas into a
virtual public sphere. ‘The chorus was a group of actors who could represent ‘the people’ as a mass –
exactly what the drama of the liberalism required – their voices organized, as only music could
organize them, into sustained, unified, and commanding utterance that expressed their identity,
independence, unity, and importance.’77 The chorus was opera’s great advantage over the spoken
theatre, which could only represent the dramatic conflicts as the struggle of individuals, while the
opera could bring crowds on the stage, where they could let their voice heard as an organized mass of
people. The voice of ‘the people’ was gradually dominating both the political scene and the operatic
stages.78
In Nabucco the voice of ‘the people’ is extensively portrayed, in particular in ‘Va, pensiero’.
Despite the popularity of ‘Va, pensiero’ of today, not everyone agrees on it’s interpretation when the
piece became popular and it’s influence on the Italian people and politics. Roughly speaking, there are
two views: the traditional and the revisionist. The traditional view has its root in Verdi’s earliest
biographers of the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. According to this view, the
sentiment at the premiere of Nabucco was greeted with wild cheers, weeping and demands for an
encore for ‘Va, pensiero’, which amounted to a protest against the Austrians. This scene was
reportedly repeated many times as the opera traveled through Italy the next eight years. According to
the ‘traditionalists’ it was this opera that made Verdi a prophet, bard or at least a ‘symbol of national
consciousness’ for the people of Italy.79
74
M., A., Smart, ‘Verdi, Italian Romanticism, and the Risorgimento’, in The Cambridge Companion to Verdi, edited by S.,
L., Balthazar, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2004, p. 34.
75
Osborne, (1969), p. 50.
76
Arblaster, (1992), p. 99.
77
J., Parakilas, ‘Political Representation and the Chorus in Nineteenth-Century Opera’, 19th-Century Music, No. 2 (1992), p.
184.
78
Lajosi (2008), p. 223.
79
G., Martin, ‘Verdi, Politics, and “Va Pensiero”’, The Opera Quarterly, no. 1 (2005), pp. 113-114.
22
The revisionist view first appeared with the great English scholar Frank Walter, a nonacademic musicologist. In his book The Man Verdi (1962) he wonders whether the biographers have
not exaggerated the effect of the patriotic choruses and thus wondered whether the portrait of Verdi as
Bard of the Risorgimento has not been overemphasized. Only twenty years later, the English scholar
Roger Parker pursued these thoughts. He began to read the contemporary newspaper accounts afresh
and found a mistake in Franco Abbiati’s four-volume life of Verdi (1959) in recounting the reception
of ‘Va, pensiero’.80 Abbiati had quoted the review of the Gazetta musical di Milano to the effect that
the chorus of the Hebrew slaves had produced demands for an encore that was granted. However,
Parker discovered that Abiatti had more or less invented the passage, gathering together bits from two
different reviews to attribute to ‘Va, pensiero’ an encore that had actually been demanded for another
chorus in Nabucco, the Hebrew prayer ‘Immenso Jeovah’. Unlike ‘Va, pensiero’, the routine Biblical
sentiments of ‘Immenso Jeovah’ lack the allegorical potential of ‘Va, pensiero’s’ pastoral nostalgia.
As Mary Ann Smart puts it: ‘one only needs to listen to the first few phrase of each chorus to
understand why Abbiati might have wanted to manufacture the ‘Va, pensiero’ encore.’81
Parker continued his research by examining more contemporary journals and found that in
Nabucco’s first twenty-five months of existence, no individual number in Nabucco was especially
popular and that there was no specific comment on ‘Va, pensiero’ to be found. Parkers suggest that it
was only in the hindsight of future years that the Italians imagined they remembered the chorus as
exceptionally stirring: a case of nostalgia revising the past.82
By the spring of 1847 demonstrations in Italian theatres were increasing in number as severity.
In Milan, one of these caused the city’s police commissioner to rebuke and threaten with arrest the
conductor of a performance of Nabucco at the Teatro Carcano. The conductors offense was ‘having
given to Verdi’s music an expression too evidently rebellious and hostile to the Imperial Government.’
However, Parker diminishes this directly by saying that ‘by the beginning of 1848, any event seemed
capable of generating a riot.’83
In his biography The Life of Verdi John Rosselli, an English academic, poses like other
revisionists the question of Verdi’s position in the Risorgimento in the 1840s. As Parker had shown
that in 1842 and 1843 the chorus ‘Va, pensiero’ roused no special enthusiasm, only from the
revolutions of 1848 onwards, Rosselli claims: ‘Only after Italian unification did ‘Va, pensiero’
become an unofficial national anthem; reading back was so persuasive that Verdi himself came to
believe the words of the chorus had led him to undertake Nabucco in the first place.’84 By his
dismissal of the influence of Va, pensiero’ on the contemporary politics, Rosselli ignores Verdi’s early
readings and works. We know, for example, that in the 1820s Verdi has read Manzoni’s85 odes, plays
80
Ibid. p. 114.
Smart, (2001), p. 107.
82
Martin, (2005), p. 115.
83
R., Parker, Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati: the Verdian patriotic chorus in the 1840s, Parma: Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani
1997, p. 27.
84
J., Rosselli, The life of verdi, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2000, p. 74.
85
Alessandro Manzoni was famous for his novel I promessi sposi, which holds a patriotic message.
81
23
and novels, and had set them to music for the ode on Napoleon’s death. We also know that in the
1830s he named his two children Virginia and Icilio, names known but not common at the time, and
not in use in either his or his first wife’s families. Both names are associated with the history of
ancient Rome and are symbols of its republic virtue. These examples, in varying degrees, express
Verdi’s patriotic sentiments.86
Anyone who tries to establish when ‘Va, pensiero’ achieved a special place in the Italian
hearts and minds, whether arguing from the traditionalist or revisionist view, soon meets an obstacle:
the impossibility of entering into those hearts and minds and uncovering a day, a month, a year.
Traditionalists can cite demonstrations in the theaters, which were ubiquitous in that time. Revisionists
can rebut with other performances of the same opera, the same chorus, where there was no
demonstration. Traditionalists can claim with truth that Garibaldi’s thousand men, setting out in May
1860 to win Sicily for the new Kingdom of Italy, sang Verdi’s choruses; and the revisionists can
counters with equal truth that the thousand, ‘I Mille’, were in no way typical of the Italian people.87
2.2.1 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF ‘VA, PENSIERO’
The fact that Nabucco did not alarm the Austrian regime and that it was neither the focus of
popular patriotic feelings, was due to the implicit nationalism. Despite debate of the traditionalist or
revisionist view on the popularity of ‘Va, pensiero’, in the twentieth century ‘Va, pensiero’ became of
great significance for Italian national feelings. This (later) popularity of the opera and in particular
‘Va, pensiero’ can be explained by that fact that in the nineteenth century national opera produced a
sort of virtual lieu de memoire for Italy. The term lieu de memoire owes much to Pierre Nora’s Les
Lieux de Memoire. Nora drew a severe distinction between ‘memory’, which exists in almost a once
upon-a-time past through folklore and the lived and often unspoken experience of common people,
and ‘history’, which exists as created by historians in a professionalized and self-legitimizing present.
Memory, having been torn from daily life by history, exists today only in lieux or ‘sites’, cultural
constructions of the past that serve to define present national identity.88 ‘Va, pensiero’, is thus a lieu de
memoire that was picked up from the past to establish and enhance Italy’s present national identity.
The revisionist view on the popularity of ‘Va, pensiero’ fits perfectly in the concept of
‘invention of tradition’. As I have stated before in this dissertation, ‘invention of tradition’ is a process
of filling gaps in the record, and meeting the already existing expectations, as audiences often prefer to
hear what they already know or suspect. As it is difficult to prove that ‘Va, pensiero’ was popular
during the 1840’s, it is clear that ‘Va, pensiero’ was used later to serve for the national cause; it filled
in the gaps of the Italian common history. ‘Va, pensiero’ was the ideal lieu de memoire in mobilizing
the historical awareness of the Italians; a mass of people singing together, that represented the most
86
Martin (2005), p. 123.
Ibid., p. 127.
88
L., V., Smith, ‘Paul Fussell's The Great War and Modern Memory: Twenty-Five Years Later’, History and Theory, no. 2
(2001), p. 244.
87
24
obvious liaison between life and drama, audience and stage. Thereby I like to emphasize the fact that
opera, especially the chorus, had the rousing sentiment of music and singing in its favor, more than
traditional theatre.89 As Julian Budden has written about ‘Va, pensiero’: ‘The great swing, the sense of
a thousand voices is something inherent in the melody even if it is sung as a solo or played on an
instrument.’90 The main melody is sung in unison, that in itself is indicative that Verdi was trying to
express a feeling in which all were united. According to David Kimbell ‘the choral texture becomes a
musical metaphor of the democratic ideal’.91 Therefore the chorus served as a perfect lieu de memoire
to memorize and emphasizing this national heritage of common resistance for Italian unity, which was
demonstrated in the singing of ‘Va, pensiero’ by mourners at Verdi’s funeral in 1901.92 This last
‘spontaneous’ outburst, led by Arturo Toscanini, and supported by the chorus and orchestra of La
Scala, seems the perfect symbol for this progress or retrospective mythologization, in which the
significance of Verdi’s music for the Risorgimento is pushed further back in time, to the nostalgic
hymn ‘Va, pensiero’ playing an ever more central role.93
89
Lajosi, (2008), p. 54. J., Budden, The Operas of Verdi, Volume one – from Oberto to Rigoletto, London: Cassell 1973, p. 107.
91
D., Kimbell, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981, pp. 456-457.
92
Martin, (2005), pp. 109-111.
93
Smart, (2004), pp. 37-38.
90
25
CHAPTER 3
LA BATTAGLIA DI LEGNANO
I will start my analysis of La Battaglia di Legnano (1849) by presenting the political
background in which the opera is conceived and the opera’s influence on the audience and ‘political’
clothing. Hereby, I will analyze Act II ‘Barbarossa’ to which extend the politics of the 1840’s are
reflected. At last I will take a look at patriotism in La battaglia di Legnano, focusing on the libretto,
mise-en-scène and the myth of the battle of Legnano.
3.1 POLITICAL RECEPTION OF LA BATTAGLIA DI LEGNANO
In the revolutionary year of 1848, libretto writer Salvatore Cammarano had proposed to Verdi a
propaganda piece urging Italy to unite in expelling the invader. The libretto, conceived in the
springtime of Italian hopes, took as its subject the defeat of Barbarossa, the German King and Holy
Roman Emperor in 1176, by the Italian cities which had combined to form the Lombard League at the
battle of Legnano. Cammarano knew his audiences would understand that his libretto was really about
the situation of 1848, though for censorship reasons he had to write about a war in medieval times.
The opera’s first performance took place on 27 January 1849 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, where
the entire fourth act op the opera was encored.94
As La battaglia di Legnano was conceived among the imbued liberal spirit of the Revolutions
of 1848-9, it is interesting to analyze also the impact of the opera on contemporary politics at the
moment of the premiere in Rome, were political life was just as violent as in the north. By then, the
Pope, Pius IX, had escaped from Rome, after his minister Rossi had been murdered by fanatical
Republicans, due to the refusal of Pius IX and Rossi to join with Lombardy against Austria or to send
any help to the north.95 For two days an armed crowd of several thousand Republicans had besieged
the Pope in the Quirinal Palace. On November 24th he escaped with the aid of the French and Bavarian
ambassadors to Gaeta, a seaside town south of the Papal State. In his absence from Rome, the
Republicans controlled the government, who called an election at which all citizens were entitled to
vote. The pope, from Gaeta, condemned the election and forbade Catholics to vote. Consequently the
Republicans won by an overwhelming majority. The newly elected Assembly was to meet for the first
time in February (1849) and expected to declare the Papal State a republic.96 This was the situation
when Verdi came to Rome in January to conduct the premiere. Set in the context of this tumultuous
political background, it is therefore no wonder that the opera was a riotous success. However, as Peter
94
Budden (1973) pp. 389-391.
Ibid., p. 393.
96
Osborne (1969), p. 192.
95
26
Stamatov rightly observes in his article ‘Interpretive activism and the political uses of Verdi’s operas
in the 1840s’, interpretive activists, a group of individuals who occupy a central position in opinionmaking, sometimes fail to gain the support of others in the audience.97 Where newspapers only
emphasized the positive accounts that when the first words of the opera’s opening chorus were heard
(‘Viva Italia!’) there were hysterical and delirious cries of ‘Viva Verdi’ and ‘Viva Italia’98, in reality
the audience was that night divided into two: those who wanted an encore of a symbolically charged
mass scene of the opera and those who opposed it. After the burst of cheering had subsided with defeat
of the encore party, a drunken soldier from the boxes demanded an encore nevertheless. As those in
the orchestra seats shouted back at him, he started throwing weapons and chairs onto the stage.99 The
behavior of the soldier is in other accounts explained that at the end of Act III, when the Arrigo leaps
off the balcony with a cry of ‘Viva Italia’100, a soldier in the fourth tier was so overcome that he flung
his sword, his coat and his epaulettes on to the stage, followed by all the chairs in his box.101 Because
of the limited recordings we are bound by the accounts of contemporary interpretative activists.
However, analyzing the different sources, thereby taking into account the many encores and positive
paper reporting’s, we know that La battaglia di Legnano was nonetheless a riotous success.
This success is also illustrated when the usage of costumes is analyzed. Here is becomes clear
that opera in the years 1846-49 was very influential on the ‘political’ clothing of the national-patriotic
movement. In this period there was a widespread need to affirm one’s identity as a patriot by the usage
of stage costumes as an unmistakable mark of recognition and as part of a system of signs endowed
with a very strong allusive power. Characterized by a high degree of secrecy since its inception, it can
be stated that the Italian national-patriotic movement drew heavily on symbolic language and ritual
practices, as most early nineteenth-century opposition movements did.102 The visualization of the
conflict through costumes was spurred by the influence of the performances in the theaters. The
theater’s strong presence in the urban landscapes of the period, as well as the widespread custom in
European towns to attend theatrical performances, the theater audience became a collective political
actor in many European countries, including Italy. Therefore, the theater became an arena for social
and political conflicts, where the stage turned into a unique place where the political discourse could
emerge. In this context the theater ends up turning into a fast growing and often controversial
repository of practices, gestures, plots and roles for the political culture of the time, in particular for its
more radical elements. Especially in Italy, the theater served not only as key instrument of political
awakening but also as a benchmark for the creation of new communicative practices, where the role of
visual and gestural tools were very important.103
121
P., Stamatov, ‘Interpretive activism and the political uses of Verdi’s operas in the 1840s’, American Sociological Review,
no. 3 (2002), pp. 347-348, 355.
98
Osborne (1969), p. 192.
99
Stamatov (2002), p. 355.
100
For the whole plot, see appendix 2
101
Osborne (1969), p. 192.
102
Sorba, (2011), pp. 438-439.
103
Ibid., pp. 432-433
27
Thus an opera like La battaglia di Legnano was not only inspired by the context of time, but
also influenced local Italian patriotic movements through its costumes and gestures. The costumes
sketches of the mise-en-scène of the opera (see Images 1 and 2) show us that La battaglia di Legnano
in its visual aspect was in accordance to the explosive proliferation of patriotic ritual selfrepresentation of that time. In Image I, the figure of the armed knight (Rolando) is dressed in a typical
‘patriotic’ costume complete with cloak, boots, feathered hat, and blouse fitting tight at the waist. This
was apparently taken up by the political audience and contemporary papers, which devoted their
attention to the historic-patriotic disguises. The papers confirm that the costumes that were worn by
patriots evoked the figure of the armed knight or more generally of the combatant: the image of the
‘knight-conspirator’ whose figurini (costume sketches) resorted to elements of historic fashion, among
which were the cloak, feathered hat and the blouse that fit tightly at the waist.104
Image 2 shows a figure all dressed in a medieval knights costume. Just as the previous costume,
this one was also very popular at the time and both were worn during the uprisings. The memoir of the
Milanese Giovanni Visconti Venosta confirms this when he talks about the moment after the liberation
of Milan (March, 23, 1848), when theatrical costume houses were stormed by even the most moderate
characters, who grabbed jerkins, helmets, boots, skullcaps and broadswords.105 Another account by the
patriot Giuseppe Torelli, makes clear that certain clothing styles were very important and very much
present. In his memoirs he admits to have visited five or six armories, where he randomly grabbed a
number of sharp weapons that made him move awkwardly, but making him look like the proud
character of Chiara di Rosemberg, an opera by Luigi Ricci quite popular at the time.106 These traces of
theatricalities can also be found in Austrian accounts, for example in Count Hubner’s memoir: ‘Those
gentlemen like all their fellow combatants, were wearing very picturesque, fantastic costumes, which
had apparently been borrowed from the theater wardrobe.’107
Such tendency really came to the fore only in the period between 1846 and 1849, when both
censorship and police control became weaker or even nonexistent. This gave rise to the brief but
explosive proliferation of practices of patriotic ritual self-representation. This process of visualization
of the conflict was as short lived as it was extensive, and was not just through clothes and hats but also
by means of more usual symbolic array, typical of revolutionary celebrations, of flags, rosettes,
handkerchiefs and numerous kinds of sashes.108 The communicative and imitative potential of such
practices was both known and feared by the Austrian authorities, which, as early as February 1848,
had banned them altogether.109
We must note however, that the success of La battaglia di Legnano and its influences were only
a brief intense moment of high politicization, which would be followed by the failure of the
104
Ibid., p. 436.
G., V., Veosta, Ricordi do gioventù: Cose vedute o sapute 1847-1860, pp. 112-114, quoted in Sorba, (2011), p. 343.
106
Sorba (2011), p. 343.
107
Le compte de Hubner, Une année de ma vie 1848-49, quoted in Sorba, (2011), pp. 434-435.
108
Sorba (2011), pp. 439-440.
109
Ibid, p 441-442.
105
28
revolutionary experience and the beginning of a new political phase in which the divisions within the
national-patriotic front would greatly deepen. An 1850 production in Genoa was a failure. Nor did a
concert performance of the overture to the opera please the audience in post-revolutionary Milan of
the 1850’s.110 Thereby, not long after its premiere, the opera inevitably succumbed to the Austrian
censorship and therefore changed into L’assedio di Haarlem, with the Germans and Italians turned
into Spaniards and Dutchmen in a story of the Dutch Revolt against Spanish occupation in the
sixteenth century.111
3.2 THE POLITICS IN ACT II ‘BARBAROSSA’
One of the great achievements of this opera is the short but powerful act II, entitled
‘Barbarossa’. It is interesting that this scene is entirely political and demonstrates the capacity of opera
to deal with public issues even when they are not personified in individuals. When Arrigo and
Rolando as emissaries of the Lombard League come to Como to appeal to the magistrates and leaders
to forget their ancient feud with Milan and join forces against Barbarossa, they plead ‘We have only
one enemy and one fatherland’. When the Major replies that they are bound by a pact with Barbarossa,
Rolando denounces it as shameful calling the citizens of Como barbarians: ‘Dell’italico linguaggio,
ma nell’opre, nei pensieri siete barbari stranieri!112 (Your language may be Italian, but in deeds and
thoughts you are foreign barbarians!). Arrigo adds his voice, calling the assembled leading citizens of
Como traitors and parricides and continues to proclaim that the time will come that when their
grandchildren will be ashamed to bear their name. May history never have to call them the murderers
of their brothers, nor their race be cursed by posterity.113 When the two protagonists are confronted by
the enemy himself, they are ready to defy him, for only with the sword can the oppressed argue with
the oppressor.114 They are confident that a mercenary army cannot conquer a people that rise up for its
liberty. Italy will be great and free (‘Grande e liberta Italia sara!’).115
Reading the libretto, the scene openly confronts the theme of Italian disunity. Just like in 1176,
the Italian states were in 1848 far from being united. The Papal States would, just like Como in the
middle ages, not fight for the Italian cause. Thereby, after the Milanese drove out the Austrian
overlords in the famous cinque giornati, the different states began to quarrel among themselves over
allegiances and pledges.116 Thereby the insurgents could not agree among themselves on the type of
government to be set up that greatly deepened the divisions within the national-patriotic front.117
110
Stamatov (2002), p. 352.
Budden (1973), p. 393.
112
‘Atto secondo Barbarossa’, http://www.giuseppeverdi.it/page.asp?IDCategoria=162&IDSezione=581&ID=19847, last
accessed on 14 June 2012.
113
Budden (1973), p. 404.
114
Act II, scene 4, http://www.giuseppeverdi.it/page.asp?IDCategoria=162&IDSezione=581&ID=19847#AT2, last accessed
on 4 June, 2012.
115
Arblaster (1992), p. 110.
116
Osborne (1969), p. 190.
117
Budden (1973), p. 390.
111
29
3.3 PATRIOTISM: LIBRETTO AND GESTURES
Salvatore Cammarano has grafted the story of the Lombard League onto an existing play about
a French/English conflict, Joseph Méry’s La battaille de Toulouse (1828). The intimate dimension of
the plot remained much the same; both are centered around a conventional love triangle. However, in
the opera not love and honor are the central theme (as it is in the play), but patriotism. This becomes
evident when the tenderest moment in La battaglia di Legnano comes not in a love duet, but in a duet
for Lida and her husband just before he goes into battle. Rolando charges his wife with the moral
education of their son. The slow movement that follows, creating a dramatic effect, offers yet another
Risorgimento archetype and alternative to the melancholy of the melody of ‘Va, pensiero’. In their
duet, Rolando’s words are all about heritage; Lida has to teach their son to be proud of his homeland:
Digli ch'è sangue italico, digli ch'è sangue mio, che dei mortali è giudice la terra no, ma Dio! E
dopo Dio la Patria gli apprendi a rispettar
[Tell him he is of Italian blood, tell him he is of my blood, that the judge of men is not the earth,
but God! And after God, teach him to respect the homeland.]118
As ideally blank and passive herself, Lida is here positioned as vessel or intermediary medium: she
conveys Rolando’s heroic message to their son. One can assume that Lida here perpetuates the Nation
that also serves as transmitter of its own heritage. This deception is enhanced by the reinforcement by
Verdi’s music of the traditional gender opposition. According to Smart this becomes apparent in the
choice of the accompanying instrument: below the sole statement of Rolando, French horns
(conventionally associated with the battle and the hunt) are being played, while Lida’s reply is
supported by the more introspective timbres of oboe and clarinet, playing the sobbing figures that she
herself takes up toward the end of the passage.119 Thereby is Rolando’s character presented by the high
baritone, the voice of authority and political figure. The depiction of Lida as virtuous mother to the
Nation is part if the widespread archetype linking Woman and Nation, one not specific to Italy.120
An even stronger example of patriotism is Verdi’s treatment of the opera’s principal chorus,
‘Viva Italia’, which I started this thesis with (see page 4). As Mazzini, in his Filosofia della musica
(1836) calls out for a ‘new’ Italian opera to elevate the chorus that would interpret the voice of the
people, Verdi applied in this chorus an eminently singable and marchable style, instead of a nostalgic
style like in ‘Va, pensieo’.121 Sung by male voices in unison with the sparse accompaniment of an onstage brass band, in my opinion this chorus is portrayed as political as it convincingly creates the
118
My own translation
Smart (2001), p. 113.
120
L., Bialasiewicz, ‘The Death of the West’: Samuel Huntington, Oriana Fallaci and a New ‘Moral’ Geopolitics of Births
and Bodies’, Geopolitics, nr. 11 (2006).
121
Smart (2001), p. 114.
119
30
impression of performance by exclamations of unschooled singers eagerly striding into battle.
However, this patriotic eagerness to strive for one’s country in ‘Viva Italia’ is felt most strongly
in its reprise at the opera’s melodramatic climax in Act III. When Arrigo is locked up by Rolando for
his assumed affair with Lida, ‘Viva Italia’ is played again, but backstage, announcing the Squadron’s
departure for the battlefield. As if driven mad by the sound of this marching music, Arrigo rushes to
the window and throws himself over the balcony, desperately wanting to join his fellow soldiers. Here
the chorus ‘Viva Italia’ works as a dramatic agent and in Arrigo’s case works spurring in his action.
When compared with aesthetic musical beauty of ‘Va, pensiero’, the music used here, aimed to create
a kind of sound that could be integrated directly into action and that could inspire wild heroic deeds.122
This is inter alia due to the brass music used that represents a more explicit distillation of the political
impulse than other instruments. It is therefore no wonder that the contemporary newspapers accounted
its premiere as a succès de scandale.123
3.3.1 PATRIOTIC GESTURES
La battaglia’s success was enhanced by the usage of highly symbolic gestures, very common in
the 1840’s. In this symbolic communication process, gestures were exaggerated, aiming at a repeated
expression of emotions. Johann Jacob Engel’s epistolary treatise published in Germany in 1785 was
one of the main works that theorized and spread the idea of gesture as a fundamental element in the
communication process both on stage and in everyday life. It is hard to define the ways in which his
theory of gesture slowly and imperceptibly permeate social practices, but it is easy to notice in La
battaglia di Legnano the explosion of emotional gesturing that characterized the Italian quarantotto.124
In the first place, the ‘plastic’ expression of ‘fraternity’ among the patriots is omniscient. One of
the most frequent sequences in the 1840’s was the act of tearfully embracing and kissing, not a
spontaneous reaction but rather a kind of mutual recognition performed through collective
excitement.125 We see the patriotic embracing in La battaglia di Legnano already right at the
beginning in the first Act, when Rolando recognized his old friend Arrigo126 and further in Act III
when Rolando ask Arrigo to take care of his family if he (Rolando) dies in the fight.127
Another ritual that acquired an almost codified structure both before and during the war was that
of the collective oaths to the national cause. Patriots would drawn swords were possible as a public
dramatization of the birth of a new political community. Many episodes of this kind are reported in the
press and recorded in memoirs, as when the patriots, in unison, swore to devote their lives to the ‘holy
122
Ibid., pp. 114-115.
Budden (1973), p. 393.
124
Sorba (2011), p. 446.
125
Ibid., p. 446.
126
Dvd ‘La Battaglia di Legnano’ (2001), min. 20.00 (first part) – Because both actors are on a horse, it is difficult to
embrace each other, so in this dvd they embrace their hands. In the text the embracement is more clear when Rolando asks
Arrigo to embrace him (Ah! m'abbraccia... d'esultanza!).
127
Dvd ‘La Battaglia di Legnano’ (2001), min. 24. 30 (second part).
123
31
Italian cause’, solemnly cursing those who dared to betray it. The fist scene of Act III of La Battaglia
di Legnano is a good example of these collective oaths, where in a subterranean vault of the basilica of
St. Ambrose the Knight of Death come together. Each of them wears a black sash and gorget
imprinted with a human skull.128 Here the knights have come to renew their solemn oath. Arrigo
appears and announces that he has come to join them. Deeply moved, the eldest of them takes of his
sash and places it on the shoulders of Arrigo and then the oath follows:
Giuriam d'Italia por fine ai danni, cacciando oltr'Alpe i suoi tiranni. Pria che ritrarci, pria
ch'esser vinti, cader giuriamo nel campo estinti. Se alcun fra noi, codardo in guerra, mostrarsi al
voto potrà rubello, al mancatore nieghi la terra vivo un asilo, spento un avello: Siccome gli
uomini Dio l'abbandon quando l'estremo suo dì verrà: il vil suo nome infamia suoni ad ogni
gente, ad ogni età.
[Let us swear to Italy to put an end to Italy’s agony by chasing her tyrants beyond the Alps. As
soon as we withdraw, as soon as we are conquered, let us fall dead into the fields. If any among
us, show cowardness in war, or show at the vote he might rebel, as failure you deny the earth
and live in asylum, off a tomb: just like the men who abandoned God, when his last day will
come: let his vile name sound like infamy to every people in every age.]129
3.3.2 THE MYTH OF THE BATTLE OF LEGNANO
Just like Nabucco, La battaglia di Legnano glorifies the struggle for independence through
historical analogy. Typical for the period of 1848 processions and pilgrimages recalling a particular
episode in Italian history, usually taken from the Middle Ages, are added to the patriotic mise-enscène. The best-known and most recurrent example within the national patriotic cult regards the fight
put up by the Lombard communes against Emperor Barbarossa. It is obvious that by its theme, La
battaglia di Legnano fits well into this.
The formation of the Lombard League and its successful resistance to Barbarossa at Legnano
was the most successful foundational tale for Risorgimento artists and historians. Sismondi, author of
History of the Italian Republics, represented the League as the high point of his drama, a heroic
alliance to defend the liberty of Italy. As an establishment of a legal liberty, the Lombard League was
‘the first and most noble struggle which the nations of modern Europe have ever maintained against
despotism.’130 It is easy here to catch the contemporary reference in his judgment that ‘power founded
on terror cannot be stable, until the nation is completely demoralized’.131
The impact of Sismoni’s narrative on intellectuals was immediate, preceding even the
128
Budden (1973), p. 407.
My own translation
130
J., C., L., De Sismondi, A History of the Italian Republics, Maryland: Wildside Press 2008, p. 48.
131
Lyttelton (2001), p. 47.
129
32
translation of the History into Italian in sixteen volumes between 1817 and 1819. Cesare Balbo wrote
(but never published) a 400-page historical novel on the Lega Lombarda in 1816, but the real
popularity of the theme dates from the publication in 1829 of the poet Giovanni Berchet. His verse
romance acknowledged the inspiration of Sismondi contrasting the virtues of ‘the most glorious epoch
of Italian history’, with ‘our supine tolerance of servitude’.132 What particularly caught the imagination
was his depiction of the critical moment of the oath taken by the confederates in the abbey of Pontida,
what a couple years later would be the subjects of Giuseppe Diotti’s famous painting The Oath of
Pontida.133
In the depiction of the subsequent victory of the League over Barbarossa, the central image was
that of the carroccio, a four-wheeled war chariot mounting a large vexillum standard, drawn by three
oxen, which served both as the symbol for liberty of the commune of Milan and as a military rallyingpoint, used by medieval Italian republics.134 During the Risorgimento the carroccio first appeared
during the festival for the celebration of the concession of the Piedmontese Statute, grating
constitutional government, on 27 February 1848. The deeper meaning behind the carroccio was that it
was a symbol of the agreement of religion and liberty and the testimony that an untrained volunteer
army could defeat the greatest of German emperors.135 This important symbol is also portrayed at the
end of the opera La battaglia di Legnano. When Arrigo is dying, the carroccio enters the stage with
the wounded and death soldiers on it136, emphasizing the once again the historical analogy of the
defeat of Barbarossa.
132
P., Brunello, ‘Pontida’, in M., Isnenghi, ed., I luoghi della memoria: simboli e mitti dell’Italia unita, Bari: Laterza 1996,
pp. 15-28.
133
Lyttelton (2001), p. 48.
134
C., Ferrari, ‘Quando la musica crea un’identità nazionale. Le opere di Giuseppe Verdi alle soglie dell unità d’Italiana: un
laboratorio di ideali’, http://www.mastercomunicazionestorica.it/doc/saggio-quandolamusicacrea.pdf, last accessed on 22
May 2012.
135
Lyttelton (2001), p. 49.
136
Dvd ‘La Battaglia di Legnano’ (2001), min. 49.50 (second part).
33
CHAPTER 4
DON CARLO(S)
I will start my analysis of Don Carlo(s) by presenting the political context of the Realpolitik.
The character of Philip II will be used to lay emphasis on the contemporary political context by
analyzing two dialogues: the dialogue between Philip and Rodrigo that ends Act II and the dialogue
between Philip and the Grand Inquisitor in Act IV. Then the political motivation in the character of
Elisabeth will be taken into account. At last I will discuss the audience’s reception of ‘Spuntato ecco il
dì d’esultanza’ in the auto-da-fé scene.
4.1 THE POLITICS OF REALPOLITIK
In the background of the Austro-Prussian war, which resulted in the Venetian annexation to
Italy, Camille du Locle and Joseph Méry wrote the French libretto for the opera Don Carlos. Based
on Schiller’s Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien, a play of abstract ideas, determinism and free will, the
libretto is set in late sixteenth century Spain. Simultaneously Achille de Lauzières translated the
libretto into Italian. Shortly after its French premiere on March 11, 1867 at the Académie Impériale de
Musique in Paris, Don Carlo, the Italian equivalent, was performed at the Royal Italian Opera House,
Covent Garden in London on April 4, 1867 under Michele Costa.137 As Don Carlo(s) is revised many
times thereafter, I will base my analysis on the 1886 Italian version138, the one that is increasingly
adopted today.139
After the failure of the revolutions of 1848, Verdi’s interests saw a sudden withdrawal from
politics. However, as the cause of the Italian nationalism gradually revived, Verdi wrote music for
Don Carlo(s) in which politics again come into force. In this opera ideal of liberty and nationhood still
remains a significant theme, just as in Nabucco and La battaglia di Legnano. However, Don Carlo(s)
is overshadowed by a new sobriety, a darker vision of the political process. Therefore this opera can
be seen as the mirror of the new realism, in which the spirit of Realpolitik played a critical role in the
history of Europe, especially in Italy during the 1850’s and 1860’s.140 Realpolitik means that politics
are guided by considerations of power rather that ideology and was used as a tool to strengthen states
and tighten social order after the revolutionary period. Characteristically, the proponents of nineteenthcentury Realpolitik were ‘disabused liberals’, men who had embraced the ideological politics of the
137
J., Budden, The Operas of Verdi, Volume three – from Don Carlos to Falstaff, London: Cassell 1981, pp. 26-27.
Five basic versions can be recognized: (1) the original full-length conception of 1866 preceding the cuts made before the
first performance; (2) Don Carlos as published in 1867 with five acts and ballet; (3) the Naples version of 1872, identical to
the second version except for the alterations in the Posa-Philip and final Carlo-Elisabeth duets; (4) the new four-act version
without balled of 1884; (5) the Modena amalgam of 1886, published by Ricordi as ‘new edition in five acts without ballet’.
For more detailed information about the different versions, see Budden (1981) pp. 39-157.
139
Osborne (1969), p. 352.
140
Robinson (1985), p. 156.
138
34
1840’s but found themselves disappointed by the revolutions of 1848. Although their ideas may differ
in a number of aspects, a common and important feature is that they all distanced themselves from the
world of political idealism. The true hero of political realism, a the leader who sacrificed his private
beliefs and peace of mind for the sake of the common good, is voiced in Don Carlo by the figure of
King Philip II.141
In my view, Philip is the richest and most interesting character in Don Carlo and the one who
embodies the spirit of Realpolitik of the 1860’s. His character understands power, but at the same time
also suffers greatly from the exercise of that power. When we put his character into context it becomes
evident that Verdi’s treatment of Philip is different to that of Schiller. In the era of the Enlightenment,
Schiller’s drama naturally focuses on the conflict between liberty and tyranny, where Philip is
portrayed as the intolerant autocrat. Verdi’s opera, composed in the era of Realpolitik, takes a ruler’s
point of view of the proceedings, as Philip emerges less tyrannical. He is portrayed as a hero of
sublimation, who conscious sacrifices his private happiness to the preservation of the state.
Philip’s realism emerges in the two powerful scenes, which Verdi himself suggested they would
be included in the scenario; the dialogue between Philip and Rodrigo that ends Act II and the dialogue
between Philip and the Grand Inquisitor in Act IV142. Both scenes are of heated political argument,
where the first one is about the value of freedom and the latter a direct confrontation between the
power of the State and the power of the Church.143
4.1.1 THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN PHILLIP AND RODRIGO
Rodrigo, as different to Philip, is a character that believes undismayed in idealistic politics. All
of his actions are guided by one single consideration: winning political autonomy and religious
freedom for the people of Flanders, who are suffering under the yoke of Spanish tyranny and Roman
Catholic intolerance.144 Thereby, Rodrigo is represented by the voice of a high baritone. As high
baritones are in Verdi’s early opera’s associated with figures of authority, here this voice is associated
with political aspirations. In Act II, scene one Rodrigo’s devotion to the cause of Flanders becomes
already evident at his first appearance in the opera. Here, he is able to drag Carlo out of his selfabsorption for his romantic predicament, into the world of political idealism: ‘Taccia il tuo cor; degna
di te opra farai, apprendi omai in mezzo a gente oppressa, a divenir un Re!’145 (Silence your heart;
yours will be work worthy of you, now among an oppressed people learn to become a king!)146 Here,
Rodrigo urges Carlo to sublimate his romantic frustrations in an idealistic political cause, so that the
cause of Flanders will be pursued, no matter what. In opposition to the other characters, Rodrigo’s
141
Ibid., pp. 159-162.
See appendix 4 for the synopsis of Don Carlo
143
Arblaster (1992), p. 137.
144
Robinson (1985), p. 180.
145
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
146
My own translation.
142
35
character is made to seem much simpler. He does not share their complicated emotionality.
Psychologically speaking his character seems one-dimensional, just as his liberalism is onedimensional when measures against the Realpolitker’s richly nuanced understanding of human
psychology and the intricacies of power.147
In encountering Philip, Rodrigo’s liberal philosophy is best articulated, just as Philips realism.
When Philip calls Rodrigo back to ask him why he has never sought advancement at Court and wishes
to reward Rodrigo for his achievements and his loyalty, Rodrigo replies that he requires nothing.
Empowered by brass instruments, Rodrigo begs the King to adopt a more liberal attitude towards
Flanders, as the people there are in need of Philip’s help:
O Signor, di Fiandra arrivo; Quel paese un di sì bel, d'ogni luce or fatto privo ispira orror, par
muto avel! L'orfanel che non ha loco per le vie piangendo va; la riviera che rosseggia scorrer
sangue al guardo par; della madre il grido echeggia pei figlioli che spirar. Ah! Sia benedetto
iddio, che narrar lascia a me questa cruda agonia perchè sia nota al Re.148
[O King! I have come from Flanders: that country which was once so lovely, it is now but an
ashen desert, a place of horror, a tomb! There the orphan, begging and weeping on the streets,
falls, as he flees the flames, on human remains! Blood reddens the water in the rivers, they roll
on, full of dead bodies … The air is filled with the cries of widows over their butchered
husbands! … Ah! Blessed be the hand of God, which through me brings the passing-bell of this
agony to the notice of the righteous King!]149
By describing the horrors in Flanders Rodrigo hopes he can persuade Philip. I think it is worth noting
that this description of Spanish cruelty in Flanders was very common during the sixteenth century (the
setting of the opera) due to La Leyenda Negra (The Black Legend), to which I already referred to in
the second chapter. This was due to the fact that Spain ruled a vast region in Europe, in particularly the
northern countries and therefore there grew a style of historical writing that demonized the Spanish
Empire. La Leyenda Negra was a politically motivated attempt to morally disqualify Spain and its
people.150 From an imagological point of view, this appears to be the political instrumentalization of a
national auto-image, set apart against the image of the ‘outsider’.151 Surprisingly, in Don Carlo an
insider (Rodrigo) takes on a fairly negative image about his own country, depicting the Spanish
Empire as despotic and tyrannical. Therefore in my opinion Rodrigo’s character personifies not Spain
but Flanders by fighting for its cause. This is also underpinned by the fact that Rodrigo is the only
147
Robinson (1985), p. 183.
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
149
‘Giuseppe Verdi; Don Carlos’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_e.htm, the translation is not precise at all
times, however, it does convey the proper dramatical aspects.
150
Yohalem, (2001), p. 16.
151
Leersen, (2007), p.386.
148
36
character that is performed by a baritone, referring to his political allegations. It is worth noting that in
Nabucco, in which also the ‘outsider’ is extensively portrayed, the perspective is given of the suffering
people (the Jews) alluding to the Italian nation suffering under the oppressive Austrian rule. As
Realpolitik is at the background in Don Carlo, as this is not the case in Nabucco, the standpoint from
the oppressor is also very much displayed through the character of Philip. We see this in his response
to Rodrigo’s dramatic words:
Col sangue sol potei la pace aver del mondo, il brando mio calcò l'orgoglio ai novator che
illudono le genti con sogni mentitor... La morte in questa man ha un avvenir fecondo.152
[With so much blood I have paid for the peace of the world; my thunder stroke has felled the
pride of the reformers who wish, by filling the people's minds with false dreams … Death, in
my hands, can reap a harvest.]153
For Philip leadership is not a burden to be nobly assumed but a weary reality: for him the ruling of
Flanders with harsh hand is the only option to maintain peace. He is not idealistic to assume that with
a liberal attitude one can rule an Empire. From his realistic point of view some sacrifices (certain
deaths) must be made to strengthen the Spanish Empire and tighten its social order.
4.1.2 THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN PHILLIP AND THE INQUISITOR
Act IV begins with the monologue of Philip where he laments his loneliness and his
sleeplessness, two themes one might say covers the full spectrum of deprivations that the monarch
must endure when he abdicates his private existence. He sacrifices both significant human
relationships (love and friendship) and physical gratifications (undisturbed sleep) that the ordinary
citizen takes for granted.154 As the monologue begins, Philip is ‘lost in thought’ expressing himself in
broken phrases: ‘ella giammai m’amò! No, quell cor chiuso è a me, amor per me non ha!’ (She never
loved me! No, her heart is closed to me, she feels no love for me!). About his sleeplessness he says:
‘passar veggo i miei giorni lenti! Il sonn, o Dio, sparì, da’miei occhi languenti’ (I see my days passing
slowly! Sleep, oh God, has vanished from my weary eyelids).155 By these quotations we see that he
suffers greatly from the conflict between his personal feelings and needs versus his responsibilities.
Shortly after his monologue the Grand Inquisitor enters. His principles, unlike those of
Rodrigo’s, reflect the supposed ideals of Roman Catholic orthodoxy. In the dialogue that the Inquisitor
has with Philip it becomes evident that his principles mask a deeper concern for power. He may speak
152
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
‘Giuseppe Vedri: Don Carlos’,http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_e.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
154
Robinson (1985), p. 198.
155
Ibid, pp. 198-199.
153
37
the language of religion; his true interest is in ruler ship.156 His disingenuous self-accusation, which is
in reality a grand celebration of his own importance, begins with a shamelessly reiterated personal
pronoun:
Ed io, l’Inquisitor, io che levai sovente sopra orde vil’ di rei la mano mia possente, pei grandi di
quaggiù, scordando la mia fè tranquilli lascio andar un gran ribelle…e il Re!157
[And I, the Inquisitor, I who have often raised against the vile hordes of miscreants my powerful
hand, for the great men here below, forgetful of my faith allow to go uncurbed a dangerous
rebel…and the King!]158
By these words, and the rest of the scene, in which the complacency of the Grand Inquisitor is
portrayed, Don Carlo is the most unqualified, frontal attack on the Catholic Church. One might say
that a play set at the time of the Inquisition was a gift, but it is worthy to not that it was at Verdi’s
request that this encounter between the king and the Inquisitor was included in the opera. Just like the
contemporary conflict between the Italian nation and the power of the papacy over Rome (which was
not yet part of unified Italy) the opera sought to dramatize the conflict of the Church and State in the
most vivid way.159 The Church is portrayed as more powerful and more ruthless: Philip wishes to
shelter both his son and Rodrigo from the Inquisition, while the Inquisitor lead on to the death of both
Carlo and Rodrigo, noting that ‘La pace dell'impero i di val d'un ribelle’ (The peace of the world is
worth the blood of a son). Philip reacts critical to this by asking the Inquisitor how he can justify all
cases with such harsh faith. His confrontation with the Inquisition brings about sympathy for his
character and is given an exceptionally full realization throughout the whole opera. Therefore his
personal sadness places him under the tag of the burdened, unhappy ruler.160
The opera was certainly perceived as being anti-catholic. The Empress Eugénie, who attended
the 1867 premiere, turned her back on the stage during the previous scene, reportedly at the moment
when the king tells the Inquisitor to be quiet: ‘Tais-toi, prêtre’ (‘Non più frate’). As Arblaster argues,
even as late as 1950 the opera was picketed in New York by protesters who objected to its antiCatholicism.161 It is unlikely that these protesters were mistaken. Verdi had no love for the organized
power of the Roman Church, as we have seen in the dialogue between Philip and the Inquisitor.
Verdi’s hostility to the secular power of the papacy, which remained the final obstacle to Italian
unification in the late 1860’s, was probably increased by the publication in 1864 of the notorious
Syllabus of Errors, in which Pope Pius IX denounced all basic liberal principles as among ‘the
156
Ibid., p. 201.
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
158
Translation by Robinson, Robinson (1985), p. 205.
159
Arblaster (1992), p. 139.
160
Ibid., pp. 139-140.
161
Ibid., p. 138.
157
38
principal errors of our times’. These included freedom of conscience, religious toleration, freedom of
discussion and the idea that the Papacy should reach an accommodation with progress, liberalism and
recent civilization. As Don Carlo is conceived only shortly after the Syllabus, one can assume that the
opera was a response to it and a reaffirmation of Verdi’s belief in the very ideas that Pius IX had
denounced as ‘errors’.162
4.2 ELIZABETH’S POLITICAL ACTIONS
Even before the first performance of Don Carlo, cuts were already made to reduce its length.
In my view these cuts impaired the political meaning of the work and diminished its integrity and
comprehensibility. The most damaging of these cuts comes at the very opening of the opera, referring
to the five-act version (not the shortened version, which entirely omits Act I). Originally, in the 1866
version, the work opened with a somber prelude, followed by a chorus sung by the foresters and their
families, in which they lament their poverty and hunger. Winter in the forest of Fontainebleau
compounds the miseries of wartime, and they want to know when the war with Spain will end. When
Elisabeth de Valois appears she responds with sympathy, promising that the war will soon be over.163
Then follows the scene when Don Carlo enters, with which the opera normally opens.
The original opening scene has the advantage to directly establish the European political
context within which the principal characters have to live and make their decisions. Also, more
important, the scene explains the particular hard decision that Elisabeth takes later in act. After she has
met and fallen in love with Don Carlo, they both learn that, after all, she is not destined to marry him,
but his father, King Philip II. The renewed entreaties of the impoverished forest women persuade her
to agree to the proposal, even though she is thereby sacrificing her hope of happiness. As count Lerma
reminds her (version of 1866) ‘Une guerre cruelle est finie à ce prix’ (this is the price for ending a
cruel war).164
This omitted original opening gives the essential dimension to the faithful decision of
Elisabeth to marry a man she does not love and does not come to love. Here it becomes evident that
she is inspired by political considerations and that she shares to some extent the same political attitude
as Rodrigo. From her political decision flows much of what follows after in the opera: Carlo’s
reluctance to leave Spain and the court, Philip’s unhappiness and his adultery with Eboli and Philip’s
mistrust of his son.165
Elisabeth’s political attitude is once more noticed in the last Act, when she is about to say
farewell to Carlo. This scene may easily be seen as a simply goodbye to the man she loves and to her
162
Ibid., p. 138-139.
Williams, ‘Brandon Jovanovich Triumphant in Historic “Don Carlos” Production – Houston Grand Opera, April 13,
2012’, Opera War Horses, April 17, 2012, http://www.operawarhorses.com/2012/04/17/brandon-jovanovich-triumphant-inhistoric-don-carlos-production-houston-grand-opera-april-13-2012/, last accessed on 5 June, 2012.
164
Arblaster (1992), p. 135.
165
Ibid., p. 135.
163
39
hopes of happiness. However, I think in this scene portrays the brave decision that Elisabeth chose to
make: to send Carlo off to Flanders to continue the work begun by Rodrigo. While Carlo recalls the
happiness of their brief meeting at Fontainebleau, Elisabeth is the one who reminds him of his promise
to Rodrigo that he would lead Flanders to peace and happiness.166 So there is besides grief, also
bravery and commitment to a noble cause.
4.3 THE RECEPTION OF ‘SPUNTATO ECCO IL DÌ D’ESULTANZA’
As contemporary newspaper reviews of the stage production of Don Carlo made clear the
ultimate ‘tour de force’ scenically was the auto-da-fé, just as it had been at the Paris Opéra with Don
Carlos,167 there are no recordings of any outburst of the audience at the premiere of Don Carlos in
France or Don Carlo in England or Italy during the nineteenth century. Verdi even wrote after the
premiere in Paris to Count Opprandino Arrivabene: ‘Last night Don Carlos. It was not a success. I
don’t know what the future may hold, but I shouldn’t be surprised if things were to change’. The work
was definitely not a failure as it was performed forty-three times in Paris during the season. Since
Empress Eugénie found it offensive, many people had their cue. Additionally there was, too, a certain
amount of resentment that so important commission had honored a foreign composer.168
However, a century later, at a Don Carlo performance at Verona in 1969, according to James
Parakilas the audience quietly joined the chorus ‘Spuntato ecco il dì d’esultanza’, sung by the people
of Valladolid assembling to witness the auto-da-fé.169 As opera audiences today do not often sing
along with performances it is interesting to analyze the political significance behind it.
To make the audience feel to be integral to the drama by taking part in ‘Spuntato ecco il dì
d’esultanza’ it takes a combination of qualities in the score and at stage. On the one hand, the audience
seated in the darkness feels at one with the illuminated chorus on stage because it sees in them another
mixed crowd of ordinary people ready to participate in a ritual of spectating (in this case to witness the
public trial and punishment of the heretics). Additionally, the audience feels at one with the chorus
because the choral music is suited to a mass of untrained voices that sing a memorable, swaying and
much-repeated tune. On the other hand the audience feel integral to the drama because of political
allusions in the scene. In the moment that the Spanish intruders make their appearance, holding the
stage briefly by themselves, the audience identifies with the chorus as it is demonstrated in Verona by
singing along at precisely that moment:170
Spuntato ecco il di d'esultanza Onore al più grande de' Re! In esso hanno i popol fidanza, il
mondo è prostrato ai suo pie'! Il nostro amor ovunque l'accompagna, Il nome suo è orgoglio
166
Osborne (1969), p. 358.
R., Parker, ‘Giuseppe Verdi’s Don Carlo(s): “Live” on DVD’ (Review), The Opera Quarterly, no. 4 (2010), p. 609.
168
Osborne (1969), p. 352.
169
Parakilas (1992), p. 181.
170
Ibid., p. 182.
167
40
della Spagna. E viver deve nell'eternità!171
[This happy day is filled with gaiety! Honor to the most powerful of Kings! The whole world
makes obeisance to him. The world is controlled by his laws! Our love goes with him
everywhere, never was love more deserved: his name is the pride of Spain, he will live in
eternity!172 ]
One can here easily assume that this loyalty to the king can be seen as an allusion to the loyalty
towards Victor Emmanuel II, the fist king of Italy often seen as the father of Italy. However the autoda-fé can also be interpreted as a display of royal and ecclesiastical power to keep the people
intimidated. The audience at this moment identifies with the chorus by recognizing, paradoxically,
what power the common people have in this story. That power is not the power to control their own
destiny but that their power is the mere fact that their destiny is central to apolitical drama of
interlocking destinies, as evident in the previous discussed first Act (where the forest people persuade
Elisabeth to accept a political marriage). Within this plot the function of the grand entrance of the
Spanish people singing ‘Spuntato ecco il di d'esultanza’ is simply and precisely to bring King Philip's
subjects onto the stage, to let the audience hear and see and identify with them. Thereby their central
role, which otherwise can only be inferred from the conversation of their rulers, is realized in the
experience of the audience.173
Other choral actions in the scene are enhancing the identification of the audience with the
chorus. The interlude in ‘Spuntato ecco il di d'esultanza’ in which a smaller chorus of monks sing
while leading the condemned heretics to the stake, is dramatic in that it divides a small group off from
the main body of the chorus. This division of the chorus maps the division in the Italian society. The
divisive force is the hostile and controlling relationship of the Church to the people, represented here
not only by the punitive, threatening action of the monks but also by the contrasts one choral group
makes with the other: the abrupt musical changes and the sinister effect of a small, uniformly dressed,
all-male group appearing in the midst of the large mixed chorus, right after another small, uniformed,
all-male group, the halberdiers, has already been seen, if not heard, keeping the people under
control.174 Once and again it becomes evident that in Don Carlo is an attack on the Catholic Church by
portraying the monks as threatening, controlling and sinister. Because of this political setting, the
scene and the chorus ‘Spuntato ecco il di d'esultanza’ has in such a way the effect on the audience, that
even a century later, the audience is able to identify itself with this chorus.
171
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos’, http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_i.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012.
‘Giuseppe Verdi: Don Carlos’,http://www.impresario.ch/libretto/libverdon_e.htm, last accessed on 14 June 2012
173
Parakilas (1992), p. 182.
174
Ibid., p. 183.
172
41
CHAPTER 5
VERDI’S WORK IN COMPARISON – A CONCLUSION
‘The most important meeting point of the entire society, the only entertainment, is the
theatre.’175
In these words a newspaper from Cagliari described in 1859 the role of the theatre in Italy’s
structures of municipal sociability. We have seen that a variety of elements lead to think both that
opera was closely linked to the events that characterized the Risorgimento period in different and at
times contradictory ways and that by looking at these connections it is possible to shed light on key
aspects of both the political and cultural processes involved. By the analysis of La battaglia di
Legnano is became evident that in particular during the revolutionary years the theatre became an
arena for social and political conflict, whereby the stage turned into a unique place where the political
discourse could emerge. Ultimately, one could say that the very development of the Italian nationalpatriotic movement was chiefly marked by melodramatic romantic opera, a theatrical genre that
reached extraordinary popularity at the times since it addressed a broader public than either novels or
poetry in spite of the complex and erudite language of the libretto’s.176
In this last chapter I like to compare the three opera’s Nabucco, La battaglia di Legnano and
Don Carlo in relation to the social-political background of the nineteenth century to examine the
different stages of Italian nationalism. As I have taken up the method of New Historicism in my
analysis of the three opera’s, focusing on the interaction between the influence of politics on opera and
opera as mediators of history and ideology, I will compare the three operas on the basis of different
aspects, which are both reflections of the Risorgimento ideology and active agents.
5.1 LIBRETTOS AND MISE-EN-SCÈNES IN COMPARISON
Despite the fact that all three opera’s are conceived during different stages of Italian nationalism
and their librettos are set in different periods and places (Nabucco in 586 B.C. Babylon, La battaglia
di Legnano in 1176 Italy and Don Carlo in sixteenth century Spain), they all have allusions in greater
of leaser extend to the historical and nationalistic practices of the Risorgimento.
I think in Nabucco one can find the expression of the pre-revolutionary hopes and dreams of
that time. In the background of different nationalistic movements, from the anti-clerical Mazzinian
nationalism to the more moderate nationalism of Balbo and d’Azeglio, the libretto portrays a nation
struggling for freedom. Therefore the libretto focuses on the opposition between two nations, by
175
A., Körner, ‘Music of the Future: Italian Theatres and the European Experience of Modernity between Unification and
World War One’, European History Quaterly, No. 2 (2011), p. 189.
176
Sorba (2011), p. 430.
42
portraying the Babylonians as cruel, egoistic and resentful and victimizing the Jews as being patient
and oppressed. The power relations are very well represented through the clothing. While the Jewish
people, as slaves, wear mainly rags, the Babylonians all wear the most splendid cloths from King
Nabucco himself to the lowest officers. In comparison with the other two opera’s the opposition of
two nations is here the strongest as it portrays in full color both the oppressed and the oppressors. This
is different to La battaglia di Legnano, in which the libretto portrays solely the point of view of the
oppressed by depicting the Italian struggle for freedom. In Don Carlo the opposition of two nations is
more complicated, as Rodrigo reflect the cause of Flanders. The only moment we get to see Flanders
is through the deputies in the auto-da-fé scene of Act III. However, the Spaniard Carlo represents
them. Thereby, unlike in Nabucco, the audience only gets to know their misery through other
characters but not actually get to see them on stage. I think what makes Nabucco different from the
two other opera’s is that it portrayes both ‘sides’ extensively.
As Verdi scholars see La battaglia di Legnano as his most patriotic opera, on many levels
Italian patriotism does manifest itself in this opera. For one thing the whole libretto is a historical
analogy by the cult of the fight put up by the Lombard League against Barbarossa. Act II translates
this into politics in the play when we see the Lombard League try to persuade the city of Como to join
the league. As I have stated earlier in this dissertation, this scene confronts the theme of Italian
disunity as in 1848. Italy was (just like in 1176) far from being united. This is contrast to Nabucco
where we have seen that the Jewish nation is portrayed as conjugated. Also in Don Carlo we see that
the Spanish nation is not united since Rodrigo and Carlo fight for the Flemish cause against the
Spanish rule under King Phillip. Nonetheless La battaglia di Legnano is very patriotic. We have seen
this by the usage of the patriotic gestures such as the exaggerated embracing and kissing, and the
collective oaths. But what really makes La battaglia di Legnano stand out from the other two opera’s
is its influence on ‘political’ clothing. This is the case in neither Nabucco nor Don Carlo since the
costumes of these two operas are not part of any Italian myth (it is hard to find any allusion to ancient
Babylonian clothing or sixteenth century Spanish robes). Because Italian mythmaking draws a lot on
medieval stories and folklore, the medieval cloths uses for La battaglia di Legnano became very
popular for the national-patriotic movement, even to a point when theatrical costume houses got
robbed. The reception of both Nabucco and Don Carlo were quite different, as they did not cause any
riotous action after the premier. Therefore La battaglia di Legnano has been the most influential opera
at the moment of its premier. We must keep in mind that ‘Va, pensiero’ might be much more
influential today, since it now is part if Italy’s national heritage. Also, as we have seen in the previous
chapter, ‘Spuntato ecco’ serves a perfect lieu de memoire as de audience started to sing along in the
twentieth century. Despite the fact that La battaglia di Legnano was a riotous success at its premiere,
it must me noted that the success and influence of the opera were only brief intense moment of high
politicization, which would be followed by the failure and disappointment of the revolutionary
experience.
43
Then the last opera Don Carlo is more realistic and less idealistic as the other two operas, which
are conceived in a much more idealistic period of hope and patriotism. Therefore Don Carlo is
overshadowed by a new sobriety; a darker vision of the political process. As I have discussed in the
previous chapter Realpolitik, which played a critical role in the history of Europe during the 1850’s
and the 1860’s, is very much present through the character of Phillip. He understands that leadership is
a weary reality and that by maintaining peace ruling with harsh hand is needed. However, just in
Nabucco and La battaglia di Legnano, the ideal of liberty and nationhood is very much present. The
only difference is that this ideal is portrayed in Nabucco and La battaglia di Legnano by the oppressed
themselves: by the enslaved Jews and the oppressed medieval Italians. Here, the Spanish (oppressor)
Rodrigo and Don Carlo embody the cause of the oppressed (the Flanders). While the idea of liberty
and nationhood is present, it is not that much deepened as in the other two opera’s. Therefore I think
that this theme is subordinate to another major theme: the attack on the Catholic Church. I think it in
important to note that in the nineteenth century such critique was not common. As I have stated
earlier, it was such a shock that King Phillip tells the Inquisitor to be quiet, that the Empress Eugénie
turned het back to the stage on that precise moment. This is even enhanced by the auto-da-fé scene, in
which the monks and the halberdiers are set apart by their cloths and punitive actions from the crowd
to indicate the divisions of (Italian) society. This is in contrast with Nabucco where religion is used to
unite a nation and where its spiritual leader Zaccaria is portrayed as a ‘good’ man fighting for the
national cause. Don Carlo is thus an opera that is much more realistic in its politics and even in
depicting the Catholic Church.
5.2 POLITICAL MUSIC
Despite that I mentioned only briefly the musical aspect in the analysis of the three opera’s I
think it is interesting to compare Nabucco, La battaglia di Legnano and Don Carlo not only by libretto
and the mise-en-scène, but also by ‘political’ music. It is often said that certain features of Verdi’s
music have a distinctively political flavor. These features are not so explicit that one can identify them
with precise ideological positions, but they contribute to the overall political atmosphere of his operas.
The main quality of Verdi’s music that makes it suitable for politics is what might be called
rhetoricalness. As rhetorical language is intended for public consumption, it indulges in repetition,
structural parallels, and alliterations. Rhetorical language is the characteristic manner of the political
platform where, if skillfully managed, it arouses the passions of the audience.177
In the three operas, Verdi transforms many of these rhetorical habits into musical terms. The
most obvious component of Verdi’s rhetorical style is sheer loudness and repetition. He is with
Beethoven, among the noisiest of all major composers. Especially in his early work like Nabucco,
where making as much noise as possible supported the stimulation of applause, this becomes
177
Robinson (1985), pp. 162-163.
44
evident178 such as when Abigaile displays her anger and ambition in the long duet with Nabucco in
Act III. But even in his later work Verdi is among the least reticent of composers. His operas like Il
trovatore and Don Carlo are simply louder, in comparison with operas of Mozart, Wagner and
Strauss. Thereby is becomes evident that in Verdi’s operas repetition and audible patterning figure
prominently. If Verdi has a good tune to display, he finds a textual excuse to repeat it.179 A
straightforward deployment of this repetition we have already seen in La battaglia di Legnano with
the chorus ‘Viva Italia!’
One particular use of the brass or band music in Verdi is quite explicitly political, that being his
fondness for the banda. In my opinion brass instruments represent a more explicit distillation of the
political impulse that lies beneath the surface of so many of his operas. Band music, is unambiguously
political, being associated with parades, rallies and speeches. When the stage brass of the banda strike
up a march in one of Verdi’s operas, one can be almost certain that the allusion is political. A
relatively straightforward deployment of the banda to designate a political moments is the entrance of
Arrigo and Rolando in the town hall of Como in La battaglia di Legnano. The stage band makes a
similar point when it is heard accompanying the royal cortege in the auto-da-fé scene of Don Carlo180,
or in the cavatina of Zaccaria in Nabucco.
According to Robinson, the high baritone is the political voice par excellence. The bearer of
such an instrument in a Verdi opera is more often than not an authority figure, sometimes a figure
associated with political aspirations. Appropriately, Verdi wrote some is his most extravagant and
rhetorical cabalettas just for this voice. Because of its weight and darkness, the baritone voice sounds
naturally masculine. It is in fact the normal singing voice of most adult males and therefore conveys
the ‘natural’ authority that adult men have enjoyed in our culture. The baritone can be set apart against
the higher voice of the tenor, which seems abnormally impassioned (often the voice of a young man in
love) and against the lower voice of the bass, which suggest the gravity, even the senile, of old age.
Baritones, one might say, are born leaders; mature enough not to get sidetracked by romance but not
yet so old as to be ready for retirement.181 In the early operas high baritones are almost invariably
politicians. Among the most notable of them is the Babylonian king Nabucco, his character displaying
full authority at his first entrance. Thereby, in La battaglia di Legnano, is Rolando, the leading soldier
of the Lombard League, the high baritone, just as Rodrigo, as spokesman for Flemish liberty, in Don
Carlo.
5.2.2 THE FUNCTION OF THE CHORUS
In the three operas we see that in the nineteenth century opera had a great advantage over the
spoken theatre in putting a political outlook on stage, because opera could recast for the purpose a
178
Budden (1973), p. 28.
Robinson (1985), pp. 163-165.
180
Ibid., pp. 164-165.
181
Ibid., p. 174.
179
45
dramatic resource that was already part of its tradition, one that spoken drama lacked by definition: the
singing chorus. The chorus was a group of actors who could represent ‘the people’ as a mass, exactly
what the drama of liberalism required. Their voices are organized - as only music could organize them
- into sustained, unified, and commanding utterance that expressed their identity, independence, unity,
and importance. The chorus divided into opposing groups could enact the varied political struggles of
the day. By mirroring the situations and sentiments of individual characters, it could show the political
dimensions of the most personal dilemmas. By giving the dramatic action a rhythm of public and
private scenes, it allowed the private sphere to be portrayed as itself an object of political struggle.182
It is therefore interesting to compare the different stages of nationalism in the choruses of the
three operas. In all of the three operas the choruses ‘Va, pensiero’, Viva Italia’ and ‘Spuntato ecco’,
which I have discussed in a greater or lesser extend, reflect the different historical nationalistic
practices during the Risorgimento. In Nabucco, we see that Verdi applied a more nostalgic style,
referring to the lost homeland of the Hebrew/Italians. Here, the divided chorus is used in order to
represent the dramatic conflict between two people or two nations; therefore more than one chorus
was needed. This involved more than one soloist protagonists.183 The antagonistic in Nabucco – the
Jews and the Babylonians – are represented by at least two solo protagonists (Zaccaria versus
Abigaille and Nabucco) belonging to opposite camps. As the opera reflect Verdi’s early work in which
he was not as ideological as in La battaglia di Legnano, the chorus is ‘less patriotic’. While ‘Va,
pensiero’, portrays the voice of ‘the people’ and the opposition between two nations, it did not arouse
the audience for action at its premiere. However as it is debated it might have been very well the case
during the revolutionary years. Due to its portrayed unison that memorizes and emphasizes the
national heritage of the common resistance for Italian unity, ‘Va, pensiero’ is now part of Italy’s lieu
de memoire.
As Nabucco was conceived in the pre-revolutionary years, the spur for action was more evident
in 1849 during the riotous atmosphere of revolutionary period, where the audience cried ‘Viva Italia’
and ‘Viva Verdi’ at performance of La battaglia di Legnano. Not only the words but also the music
stirred up the audience: Verdi applied an eminently singable and marchable style to ‘Viva Italia’,
accompanied by an on-stage brass band, that created the impression of a performance of unschooled
singers eagerly striding to battle. The action that the chorus evoked was even portrayed in the play
itself when Arrigo locked up in his room throws himself over the balcony by the sound of ‘Viva
Italia’.
More interesting is how Verdi handled ‘Spuntato ecco il dì d’esultanza’ in Don Carlo. As I have
discussed in the previous chapter in this chorus there is also a division, only not as with Nabucco
between two nations, but within the nation. In the context of the Realpolitik and Verdi’s hostility to the
secular power of the papacy, probably enhanced by the Syllabus of Errors, a small group of monks and
halberdiers is set apart against the ‘common people’ in the chorus. This opposition is enhanced by the
182
183
Parakilas (1992), pp. 184-185.
Lajosi (2008), p. 225.
46
abrupt musical changes that accompany the small group. ‘Spuntato ecco’ does not reflect the hope for
change and nationalism, but more a realistic view on politics by honoring the king and (his) laws. In
my opinion, the choruses in Nabucco and La battaglia di Legnano are full of hope and optimism to
fight for Italy’s freedom. But, after the failures of the revolutions of 1848-49 this changed not only in
contemporary politics but also in Verdi’s work by the realism that is portrayed not only by ‘Spuntato
ecco’, but also throughout the whole opera of Don Carlo.
47
IMAGE 1
Costume sketches of the mise-en-scène of the opera in Teatro Regio in Parma.184
184
http://www.lacasadellamusica.it/Main/ProgettoEuropeo/Ipertesto/Eng_version/Approfondimento/Img_Verdi_Europeo/legnan
o1.jpg, last accessed on 18 June, 2012.
48
IMAGE 2
Costume sketches of the mise-en-scène of the opera in Teatro Regio in Parma185
185
http://www.lacasadellamusica.it/Main/ProgettoEuropeo/Ipertesto/Eng_version/Approfondimento/Img_Verdi_Europeo/legnan
o2.jpg, last accessed on 18 June, 2012.
49
APPENDIX 1
Nabucco – synopsis of the opera
The story takes place in the year 586 B.C. in Babylon, except for the first scene, which is set
in Jerusalem. The opera is in four acts, each of which is headed by a sub-title and a brief quotation or
paraphrase from the Book of Jeremiah, by way of preface.
Act I ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Thus saith the Lord: Behold I will give this city into the hands of the king
of Babylon; he will burn it with fire’ (Jeremiah 21:10) - The Jews mourn their defeat by Nabucco at
the Temple of Solomon and call upon heaven to defend the holy temple. The High Priest Zaccaria
enters with a hostage, Fenena, daughter of Nabucco, and tells the people not to despair but to trust in
God. Zaccaria entrusts Fenena’s safety to Ismaele, a young Hebrew officer and nephew of the king.
When Zaccaria and the crowd have departed, Ismaele and Fenena confess their love for each other.
Ismaele urges her to escape rather than risk her life, because some time ago in Babylon he had been
kept hostage and had been liberated by Fenena. Then, suddenly, Nabucco's elder daughter, Abigaille,
storms into the temple with Babylonian soldiers disguised as Hebrews. She, too, loves Ismaele and
offers Ismaele his safety in return for his love, an offer he declines. Babylonian soldiers appear and
Nabucco enters the Temple on horseback. Zaccaria denounces him as a madman, warns him that he is
in the house of God, and after Nabucco’s laughter threatens to kill Fenena with a knife. Ismaele
intervenes to save her. Nabucco responds by ordering the destruction of the temple.
Act II “L’empio” (The Wicked Man): ‘Behold, the whirlwind of the Lord goeth forth with
fury; it shall fall upon the head of the wicked’ (Jeremiah 30:23) - The Jews have been taken to
Babylon as prisoners and Nabucco has appointed Fenena as Regent while he is away fighting again. In
the royal apartments Abigaille enters with a parchment that proves she is not a real daughter of
Nabucco but that of a slave. She gives voice to her jealousy of Fenena by vowing that her fury will
descend upon all. The High Priest of Baal enters to inform Abigaille that Fenena is releasing the
Jewish captives. Their response is to launch a coup to put Abigaille on the throne, while spreading a
rumor that Nabucco has died in battle.
The second scene takes place in a large hall in the palace. Here, Zaccaria, accompanied by a
Levite, enters while carrying the Tables of the Law. He believes God has appointed him to convert
Fenena to the Jewish faith. After praying for guidance, he and the Levite go to Fenena’s apartment. A
commotion is heard outside and Abdallo, an old officer of the king, warns Fenena to flee. The king’s
death has been announced and the people are calling for Abigaille. When Fenena refuses to give the
crown to Abigaille, Nabucco suddenly enters with his soldiers. He rages against the Babylonians that
their God has turned them into traitors. He denounces that from now on he, Nabucco, is the only God
and orders that the Jews are be put to death. Fenena, as she is converted to the Jewish faith, declares
that she will die with them. When Nabucco repeats he is God, a thunderbold strikes him down and
50
leaves him fallen in agony, while Abigaille puts the coveted crown onto her own head.
Act III ‘La Profezia’ (The Prophecy): ‘The wild beasts of the desert with the wild beasts of the
desert shall dwell in Babylon, together with the owls; and hoopoes shall dwell therein'. (Jeremiah
50:39) - The High Priest of Baal presents Abigaille in the hanging gardens of Babylon with the death
decree for the Jews and Fenena. Nabucco enters looking like a mad man, claiming his throne.
Abigaille persuades him to seal the decree, but he asks that Fenena be saved. When Abigaille answers
that Fenena is a traitor and therefore shall die, he tells Abigaille that she is not his true daughter but a
slave. Abigaille replies by destroying the document with the evidence of her true origins.
Understanding that he is now a prisoner, he pleads for Fenena's life.
The second scene is set on the banks of the Euphrates where the Hebrews in chains, are at
enforced labor. They sing of their homeland, of the banks of the Jordan and of the city of Jerusalem.
Zaccaria once again exhorts them to have faith: God will set them free and destroy Babylon.
Act IV ‘L’idolo infranto’ (The Broken Idol): ‘Baal is confounded: his idols are broken in
pieces.' (Jeremiah 50:2) Nabucco awakens in the palace when he hears shouting outside. Going to the
balcony, he sees Fenena in chains being led to het death. When he rushes to the door, he finds himself
locked. Falling on his knees he prays to the Hebrew God, asking for forgiveness and promising that
the Temple of Judah shall be restored. Abdallo, accompanied with other loyal soldiers enters his room
and help him escape to safe Fenena.
The second scene is in the Hanging Gardens. As Zaccaria leads Fenena and the Jews towards
death on the sacrificial altar of Baal, Nabucco rushes in with a sword in his hand. He orders the idol of
Baal to be destroyed, and the idol immediately shatters into pieces. Nabucco tells the Jews they are
free and a new Temple will be raised to their God. Abigaille, as she has poisoned herself, enters and
expresses her remorse. She asks Nabucco to bless the union of Fenena and Ismaele, and ask God to
forgive her, and then dies.
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APPENDIX 2
La battaglia di Legnano – synopsis of the opera
The story takes place in Milan and Como. The time is 1176, the year in which the Lombard
League, an alliance of northern Italian cities against emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, defeats the
enemy.
Act I ‘Egli vive!’ (He is Alive) – The soldiers of the Lombard League arrive in Milan. At the
head of the troops from Verona is Arrigo, who is recognized by his old friend Rolando, a Milanese
leader who had thought him killed in the battle. Arrigo recounts how he has been wounded, captured
for a long time and how his mother nursed him back to health. In the second scene, we get to see
Rolando’s wife Lida at their estate. She is downcast at the prospect of further war that already has
robbed her of her brothers and her parents. A German prisoner, Marcovaldo, who has been given some
degree of freedom by Rolando, declares his love for Lida, but she rejects him. Imelda, Lida’s
companion, appears and announces that her husband is returning, bringing Arrigo with him. Her joy at
hearing that Arrigo, her former lover, is alive is noticed by Marcovaldo, who correctly supposes that
she still loves Arrigo. When Arrigo enters the house, he finds it difficult to conceal his emotion when
he finds out that his friend married his former sweetheart. When Rolando is called away, Arrigo
accuses her of being faithlessness. The fact that he had been considered dead does not change his
anger, and rushes off, leaving Lida desolate.
Act II ‘Barbarossa’ - The leaders and magistrates of Como gather together in the town hall.
Arrigo and Rolando, as messengers from the League, attempt to persuade the representatives of Como
to end their old feud with Milan and join the League. The Mayor points out that Como has signed a
pact with Barbarossa, which Rolando denounces as shameful. Suddenly, Barbarossa himself appears
proclaiming himself as ‘Italy's great destiny’, his men having surrounded the city and now further
threaten Milan. He demands that Arrigo and Rolando return to Milan and seek their submission.
Act III, “L’infamia” (The Disgrace) - Arrigo is elected as member of the Campioni della Morte
(the Knights of Death). All members swear to drive the invaders out of Italy or die in the attempt. The
second scene is set in Rolando’s estate, where Lida, fearful that Arrigo will be killed in the fighting,
sends Imelda to him with a letter. Then Rolando enters to say farewell to his wife and son. After Lida
and the child have left the room, Arrigo enters and is told by Rolando that he (Rolando) has been
chosen to lead the Knight of Death. He asks Arrigo to take care of his wife and child when he is to be
killed in the fight. Arrigo swears to do so and says farewell. Marcovaldo, who has intercepted Lida’s
note, enters and shows Lida’s letter to Rolando as proof of her unfaithfulness. Wild with rage,
Rolando determined to be avenged on them both.
In the third scene we see Arrigo writing to his mother at his place, when Lida enters. After
having no reply on her note, she has called to say goodbye. She admits to Arrigo that she still loves
52
him, but that they must part, as she must take care of her son and he of his mother. When Rolando’s
voice is heard at the door, Lida hides at the balcony. By opening the door to the balcony, Rolando
discovers Lida. The two men argue, but Arrigo assures Rolando that Lida is innocent. Rolando
disowns his wife and is about to kill Arrigo when he decides that disgrace will be a worse punishment.
He rushes out to the battle and locks the door, so that Arrigo can only watch the battle from the
balcony. Determined to join his troops, Arrigo leaps over the balcony with a cry of ‘Viva Italia!’
Act VI ‘Morire per la patria’ (To Die for one’s Country) – on a square in Milan, the citizens and
Lida are awaiting for the return of the soldiers. After they have prayed for victory and the safe return
of their heroes, a Consul appears and announces that the Lombards have won. The mortally wounded
Arrigo, who killed Barbarosso in the fight, is being carried back, followed in the procession by
Rolando and other warriors. Arrigo swears that Lida is innocent and the friends are reconciled. Arrigo,
kissing the country’s flag, proclaims with his last breath that ‘Italy is saved!’
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APPENDIX 3
Don Carlo – synopsis of the opera (1886 version)
The story is set in the late sixteenth century in Spain, with exception of the first scene that is
situated in the forest of Fontainebleau, outside Paris.
Act I - Don Carlo, son of Philip II the king of Spain, and heir to his throne has come to France
secretly in order to see his future wife, Elizabeth de Valois, daughter of the French King Henry II. The
brief glimpse of her has made him fall in love with her and he steps forward to introduce himself as
Spanish gentleman and member of the retinue of the Count of Lerma, the Spanish Ambassador. When
Tebaldo, Elizabeth’s page, hastens off to procure a suitable escort, Carlo discusses her imminent
marriage to the Infante of Spain, which is to procure peace between France and Spain. When Carlo
hand Elizabeth a miniature portrait of the Infante, she is delighted to find that Carlo is the Infante and
they both declare their love for each other. Tebaldo returns and salutes Elizabeth as Queen of Spain:
her father has offered her in marriage not to Carlo, but to his father Phillip II, who hopes she will
accept. For the sake of her country Elizabeth must acquiesce, causing the crowd to rejoice and the two
lovers being left in despair.
Act II - Carlo enters the monastery of San Giusto and recognized the voice of a Friar as the one
of his dead grandfather. When the Friar withdraws, Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa, enters, whom Carlo
warmly greet. Carlo confides to Rodrigo that he is in love with Elizabeth, now the Queen and his stepmother. Rodrigo advises him to attempt to forget his passion by engaging in the worthy task of helping
the oppressed people of Flanders, who are suffering under the repressive Catholic rule imposed by
Philip. When Philip and Elizabeth enter to pay homage at the tomb of Charles V, Carlo is disturbed at
encountering Elizabeth again, but soon joins Rodrigo in their oath of undying friendship and
determination to help the cause of freedom in Flanders.
The second scene of Act II, takes place immediately afterwards outside the monastery where
Elizabeth’s ladies-in-waiting are passing time while awaiting her return. When Elizabeth returns,
Tebaldo announces the Marquis of Posa, who under cover of delivering a letter to the Queen from her
mother, hands her a note from Carlo, asking her to se him once more. Princess Eboli, one of the ladiesin-waiting, wonders if Carlo is in love with her and why he does not declare himself. When the Queen
agrees to give Carlo an audience, he asks the Queen to persuade his father to send him as Governor to
Flanders. She agrees to do so and dismisses him, but then Carlo confesses that he still loves her. When
Philip enters, Carlo rushes out. The King is furious to find out that the Queen is unattended and
banished the Countess who should have been in her attendance. When all leave, Philip calls Rodrigo
back to ask him why he has never sought advancement and his loyalty. Rodrigo replies that he
requires nothing, but that others are in need of Philips help. Rodrigo then speaks of Flanders and the
rule of violence there. Philip is impressed by Rodrigo’s idealism, but is insistent that his own harsh
54
rule is the only way to establish peace. He warns Rodrigo to be aware of the Grand Inquisitor and ask
him to keep an eye both on Elizabeth and Carlo, as he is suspicious of them. Rodrigo accepts the
commission and parts.
Act III – In the Queen’s Garden in Madrid, Carlo awaits for the Queen, from whom he thinks
he received an anonymous letter. When a veiled woman appears he embraces her and they declare
love for each other. When she removes her veil he is mortified to find out that it is Princess Eboli.
When she realizes that is was not she whom he expected to meet, she guesses it is the Queen he loves.
She threatens to reveal this to Philip when Rodrigo arrives to convince her not to do so. She still
departs determined upon vengeance. Rodrigo ask Carlo to hand over any incriminating documents he
may carry. After some moment of suspicion of his friend, who is after all an intimate of the King,
Carlo hands over the documents.
The second scene of Act III, starts with an assembled crowd to watch the auto-da-fé, the public
parade and burning of condemned heretics. As the Philip descends the cathedral steps to join the
processions, a deputation from Flanders, led by Carlo, appears. The envoy kneels before Philip,
begging him to show clemency and mercy. Philip orders them to be removed but Carlo intervenes by
asking his father to give him the Governorship of Flanders and Brabant. Philip rejects him, causing
Carlo to draw his sword. The King calls for help but the guards will not attack Don Carlo. Rodrigo
steps in, and persuades Carlo to surrender his sword. The King then promotes Rodrigo to Duke, and
the procession continues as Carlo is led off under guard.
Act IV - Philip bitterly cogitate his loveless marriage and the cares of the state in his study. The
Grand Inquisitor enters, whom Philip summoned to advice him how best to deal with Carlo’s
rebellion. The Inquisitor assures him of the Church approval if he should decide to condemn his son to
death, but also denounces Rodrigo as a dangerous heretic. Philip here protests that in Rodrigo he at
last found a loyal friend, causing the Inquisitor to say that a real King would have no need of another
man. Philip orders him to be silent. The Inquisitor accuses him of having been influenced by
dangerously ideas, which seek to overthrow the Catholic Church. When The Inquisitor leaves,
Elisabeth enters, alarmed at the apparent theft of her jewel casket. Then the King produces it and
points to the portrait of Don Carlos which it contains, and accuses her of adultery. She protests her
innocence, and, when the King threatens her, she faints. He calls for help. Eboli and Rodrigo appear,
and a quartet develops, in which each of them voices their own feelings. When Philip and Rodrigo
retire, Eboli confesses not only that is was she who has stolen the casket but also that she has been the
King’s mistress. Elizabeth dismisses Eboli, ordering her to choose between exile and a nunnery. Eboli
vows to enter a nunnery but before she has made an attempt to save Carlo from his imminent death.
The second scene takes place in the dungeon in which Carlo is confined. Rodrigo visits him to
sacrifice his life for his friend and for the sake of the liberal cause in Flanders. Rodrigo as allowed the
incriminating papers to be found on his own person, so that he, instead of Carlo, will be identified as
the leader of the Flanders revolt so that Carlo will be released and thus be able to escape to Flanders
55
and organize a rebellion. While in the dungeon, Rodrigo is being shot by an agent of the Inquisition.
Before he dies, Rodrigo tells Carlo that the Queen is waiting him in the monastery the next day to bid
him farewell. A crowd of citizens, activated by Eboli, demands the Infante to be released. Admitted to
the prison, Eboli urges Carlo to leave in the confusion.
Act IV - Carlo and Elizabeth meet in the cloister of San Giusto. She reminds him of his promise
to Rodrigo that he would lead Flanders to peace and happiness. He assures her that he has now
sublimated his love for her in his determination to liberate Flanders and says farewell, hoping to meet
again in Heaven. Then Philip enters with the Grand Inquisitor to arrest her and Carlo. Drawing his
sword, Carlo retreats towards the tomb of his grandfather, Charles V. The Friar enters and drags Carlo
into the cloister, while Philip, the Inquisitor and the guards exclaim that it is really Charles V. Then
the curtains fall, leaving the audience completely bewildered.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
Anderson, B., Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and Spread of Nationalism, New
York: Verso 1991.
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60


Eldi Veizaj - Spazio Testoni

Il programma di sala - Corale polifonica Jacopo da Bologna

Lab. 3 - Tavolo 1 - Patrimonio ambientale e

Back Cover

II^ EDIZIONE DELLA RASSEGNA “MUSICA IN

JOSÉ DE RIBERA, called “THE LITTLE SPANIARD”

Dott. Agr. Vladimiro Aldo Longoni, Assoverde

Study Guide for Nabucco

PROGETTARE IL VERDE IN CITTÀ

Istituto Sant`Orsola