Philip Gossett

Gossett—Verdi and censorship--1
CENSORSHIP AND THE DEFINITION
1
OF A NATIONAL IDIOM
Philip Gossett
(CHICAGO)
For a few years, now, I have been talking about Giuseppe Verdi and the
Italian Risorgimento, insisting that one cannot make light of the composer’s
commitment to the yet-to-be-established Italian state. I have drawn evidence from
his letters, his biography, his operas themselves. I do not accept in any way the
argument that he worked closely with the Milanese aristocracy, despite the
arguments of Roger Parker and his student, Mary Ann Smart, hence could not be a
patriot, since I believe fundamentally that he was a realist, who recognized that it
was only by currying favor with those who had access to power that he could realize
his principal goal of being a composer of note2. The key text by Roger PARKER is his
«Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati»: The Verdian Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s, published in
1997 by the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani). See also the article by Mary Ann
SMART, ‘Magical thinking: reason and emotion in some recent literature on Verdi and
politics’ in the Journal of Modern Italian Studies for 2012. For a view much more in
keeping with my own, see Anselm GERHARD, ‘«Cortigiani, vil razza dannata!»: Reti
aristocratiche e fervori risogimentali nella biografia del giovane Verdi’ in: Acta
musicologica for 2012.
Nor am I surprised that operas that had already been heavily scrutinized by
the Austrian censors would be performed in the aftermath of the Cinque Giornate of
1
This is related to a paper I intended originally to give in Pistoia in the summer of 2011, but a
computer disaster in the weeks preceding the conference meant that I needed to substitute a text I
have since published, on ‘Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento’ (see, for example, in: Studia
Musicologica, LII/1-4 [March 2011], pp. 241-257). I had an opportunity to prepare this paper for a
conference on National Idioms in Music in the Autumn of 2012 at the University of Amsterdam, and so
I can now publish the paper in this collection in the form I would have given it in Pistoia, had I not had
this computer disaster. Some of the text is related to what I had to say in my paper on ‘Giuseppe
Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento’.
2
The key text by PARKER, Roger is his «Arpa d’or dei fatidici vati»: The Verdian Patriotic Chorus in the
1840s (Parma, Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1997). See also the article by S MART, Mary Ann.
‘Magical thinking: reason and emotion in some recent literature on Verdi and politics’ in: Journal of
Modern Italian Studies, XVII/4 (2012), pp. 437-447. See also GERHARD, Anselm. ‘«Cortigiani, vil razza
dannata!»: Reti aristocratiche e fervori risogimentali nella biografia del giovane Verdi’ in: Acta
musicologica, LXXXIV/1-2 [2012]), pp. 37-63 and 199-233.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--2
March 1848, when the Austrians returned to power over the Milanese 3. I have
discussed this history at length in an essay first published in Italian, then printed in
English as: «Edizioni distrutte» and the Significance of Operatic Choruses during the
Risorgimento’, in: Opera and Society from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, edited by Victoria
Johnson, Jane F. Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman, and published by Cambridge
University Press in 2007. The Austrians knew that these works could be performed
in Milan and had already been examined for possibly subversive sentiments. I am
more interested in the fact that in other cities in the Italian peninsula, such as Naples
and Rome, many of Verdi’s older and newer operas were being performed for the
very first time, when it was possible to loosen the bonds that the censors had tried
tightly to apply.
Now, it is essential to recognize that ‘censorship’ was not a single thing: every
section of Italy, every independent political unit has its own censors and its own
concerns. In certain units of the country, political matters were uppermost in the
minds of those who sought to control what could be seen at opera house; in other
areas, the Church determined what was appropriate and what was not, so that ideas
and phrases that might have passed muster in one place, could not be heard in
another. We know, for example, thanks to the studies of Andreas Giger 4, in particular
his essay ‘Social control and the censorship of Giuseppe Verdi’s operas in Rome
(1844-1859)’ published in the Cambridge Opera Journal in 1999 that the Papal
censors were particularly ferocious in Rome. We know who these people were and
we can identify their hand in their efforts to keep Verdi’s operas pure. In some cases
the composer himself knew that certain phrases could not be used. In Rome, for
example, when Ulrica in the second scene of act 1 in Un ballo in maschera raises
Satan, she could not say that he had «le chiavi del futuro» (the keys of the future) in
his right hand. In Rome, only Saint Peter could have «le chiavi del futuro» and so
Satan was reduced to having «la face del futuro» (the torch of the future) in his right
hand5. I know the original because the Carrara-Verdi family kindly made available to
me Verdi’s sketches for the opera, which are located in the archives of Casa Verdi at
Sant’Agata.
3
This history has been discussed at length in G OSSETT, Philip. ‘Le «edizioni distrutte» e il significato
dei cori operistici nel Risorgimento’, in: Il saggiatore musicale, XII/2 (2005), pp. 339-388; an English
version, ‘«Edizioni distrutte» and the Signifiance of Operatic Choruses during the Risorgimento’, is
found in: Opera and Society from Monteverdi to Bourdieu, edited by Victoria Johnson, Jane F.
Fulcher, and Thomas Ertman, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 181-242.
4
See GIGER, Andreas. ‘Social control and the censorship of Giuseppe Verdi’s operas in Rome (18441859)’ in: Cambridge Opera Journal, XI/3 (1999), pp. 233-265.
5
I know the original because the Carrara-Verdi family kindly made available to me Verdi’s sketches
for the opera, which are located in the archives of Casa Verdi at Sant’Agata.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--3
This know-nothingism continued in the autumn of 2012, when a new
production of the opera was staged at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, and the
stage director, David Alden, with whom I had worked on other occasions, urged me
to write to the conductor, Fabio Luisi, about the problems. Needless to say, Luisi —
surely more concerned that singers could come in and out of the show knowing
exactly the words in advance — did not trouble himself to reply to me, as I had
assumed he would not. And so the King (Riccardo, a governor-general in Boston),
now Gustave III, presumably continued to send Ankastrom (Renato in Boston) and
Amelia across the «immenso oceano» between Sweden and Finland, as the Met had
left Verdi’s words in its previous staging of Un ballo in maschera, with Luciano
Pavarotti as the ruler. That we still hear this phrase today in opera houses rather
than Verdi’s own phrase is simply indicative of just how successful the Papal censors
were in substituting their own vision for Verdi’s. And here I am talking only about a
phrase that has a rather minimal impact on the work as a whole, whether a modern
stage director chooses to set it in Boston (as it was in Rome) or in Stockholm (as
Verdi originally planned it). What makes no sense at all, however, is to perform this
opera with a text worked out for Boston, when a stage director wishes to return it to
its original home in Stockholm. I am not saying that one version is acceptable and
the other not, but I am saying that it makes no sense whatsoever to set this opera in
Sweden and to use a text worked out to place it in Boston. If you want to set it in
Boston, fine, then use the Boston text, the text as it is generally known and as Verdi
worked it out for the performances in Rome; if you want to set it in Sweden, you
cannot use inappropriate words and you should not improvise the words for Sweden,
as an infamous Italian director did when he presented the opera in Sweden at the
Metropolitan Opera in New York, when we know precisely what Verdi originally
intended6. Perhaps more significant is that for Boston, the Sybil, Ulrica, was made
black and we still hear her describred by Oscar, the ruler’s page, in his/her aria “volta
la terrea faccia alle stele.” But, of course, in Boston there was nothing about Ulrica
that was ‘the color of the earth”—she was “pallida, pallida,” and we’ll now hear the
piece sung with the correct text:
First musical example sung
6
This know-nothingism continued in the autumn of 2012, when a new production of the opera was
staged at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, and the stage director, David Alden, with whom I had
worked on other occasions, urged me to write to the conductor, Fabio Luisi, about the problems.
Needless to say, Luisi — surely more concerned that singers could come in and out of the show
knowing exactly the words in advance — did not trouble himself to reply to me, as I had assumed he
would not. And so the King (Riccardo, a governor-general in Boston), now Gustave III, presumably
continued to send Ankastrom (Renato in Boston) and Amelia across the «immenso oceano» between
Sweden and Finland, as the Met had left Verdi’s words in its previous staging of Un ballo in
maschera, with Luciano Pavarotti as the ruler.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--4
But what I want to do here is not to complain about the lack of a rational
approach to the Verdi operas, but instead to concentrate on what we have learned in
our work thus far with critical editions of Verdi’s works. They will take us from city to
city, from one set of censors’ objections to another, in an effort to show that it is
possible through a study of these places to understand how many operas can be
thought to incorporate specific approaches to the censors and hence to presenting
operas in a nationalistic light. One of the ways we can certainly learn a great deal
about what is most characteristic of operas written in Italy is by studying what
political or religious censorship would not allow on the stage. With all his previous
knowledge of and experience with these matters, a composer such as Verdi could
say unequivocally in the early 1850s that he would not write an opera until its libretto
had been approved by the censors7. He did not want to apply his best efforts to
setting an operatic text only to have those efforts turned upside down by those who
sought to guide the morals of a people. I would argue, though, that we learn most
about Italy’s operatic culture and its relationship to national sentiments by studying
operas as a composer and a librettist conceived them, not as they were quite literally
destroyed by those with a very different viewpoint.
Nor was it exclusively Verdi who suffered this fate. When Donizetti presented
his Maria Stuarda in Milan in 1835-1836 for Maria Malibran, the Austrian censors
insisted (as had the Neapolitan censors before them in September 1834) that the
famous «lite delle due Regine» (quarrel of the two Queens) be modified so that
Maria would not call Elisabeth, Queen of England, «vil bastarda» (vile bastard).
When la Malibran (either consciously or unconsciously, we shall never know)
continued to say «vil bastarda», they simply banned the opera from the stage of La
Scala, and it was not heard again until after the death of Donizetti in 1848 8. For
almost 200 years Rossini’s last opera, Guillaume Tell of 1829, written originally for a
non-Italian theater, the Académie Royale de Musique of Paris, the so-called Opéra,
was performed with a heavily censored text. As Jane Fulcher has shown, in her
wonderful book on censorship in the French opera, composers and librettists were
permitted considerably more freedom in France than their counterparts in Italy,
largely because there was a tradition of artistic freedom in France that could not
7
See, for example, his letter to his Venetian friend, Antonio Gallo, assigned to «Busseto» in
«Settembre 1851» by I Copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, edited by Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro
Luzio, with a Preface by Michele Scherillo, Milan, Commissione Esecutiva per le Onoranze a
Giuspepe Verdi nel primo centenario della nascita, 1913, item CXXI, p. 124.
8
I have discussed this incident in my essay, ‘Scrivere per la Malibran: il sogno e la realtà, ’ in:
Malibran: Storia e leggenda, canto e belcanto nel primo Ottocento italiano, edited by Piero Mioli
(Bologna, Patron, Editore for the R. Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna, 2010), pp. 37-51: 46-50.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--5
easily be ignored9. And so, in Guillaume Tell the most important single word is surely
«Liberté», one of the three elements of the French motto, «Liberté, Égalité,
Fraternité». Even if Charles X was anything but an enlightened monarch, he could
not easily refuse to pay at least formal homage to French history.
But there was no such tradition in Italy, so that the censorship in Milan could
easily say that an inappropriate word for an opera would be the Italian translation of
the key word of Guillaume Tell, that is «Libertà». To understand just how far an
Italian translator would go to avoid the awful word, one just has to examine the very
end of the opera, its final moments, when the Swiss people are finally freed from
their Austrian oppressors. In the original, Rossini wrote one of his most inspired
melodies, based as so many other melodies in the opera on the so-called «ranz des
vaches», traditional Swiss melodies, but used in a highly innovative fashion, with the
melody proceeding through a series of tonalities by thirds, from C major to A minor to
F major etc.10
I improvise this example on the piano
In a famous conversation with Rossini from 1860, no less a personage than
Richard Wagner commented that in Guillaume Tell Rossini wrote neither music of
the past nor music of the future, but music for all time, which was the best 11. And
what were the words that inspired Rossini? «Liberté, redescends des cieux, et que
ton règne recommence! Liberté, redescends des cieux» (Liberty, descend again
from the heavens, and may your reign begin again! Liberty, descend again from the
heavens). It is not difficult to imagine why the Austrians, who were struggling to keep
the lid on native movements for independence, would object to such sentiments, but
the translator of the text went further, denying completely the original text, and
writing instead: «Quel contento che in me sento non può l’anima spiegar» (I cannot
9
See FULCHER, Jane.The Nation’s Image: French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987. The case of Guillaume Tell is studied by M. Elizabeth
C. Bartlet in her preface to the critical edition: ROSSINI, Gioachino. Guillaume Tell, edited by M.
Elizabeth C. Bartlet, in Edizione criitica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini, 4 vols., Pesaro, Fondazione
Rossini, 1992, serie I, vol. XXXIX.
10
The classic study of this phenomenon is VANDERSTRAETEN, Edmond. La Mélodie popolaire dans
l’opéra Guillaume Tell de Rossini, Paris, Baur, 1859.
11
This is the conversation Rossini had with Wagner in 1860, on the occasion of Wagner’s being in
Paris for the production of his Tannhäuser at the Opéra in March 1861. A report on the conversation
was issued in 1906 by Edmond Michotte, a friend of both men, who was actually present, in
Souvenirs personnels: La visite de R. Wagner à Rossini (Paris 1860), Paris, Fischbacher, 1906. An
English translation and edition was prepared by W EINSTOCK, Herbert. Richard Wagner’s Visit to
Rossini (Paris 1860) and An Evening at Rossini’s in Beau-Séjour (Passy) 1858, Chicago-London, The
University of Chicago Press, 1968. For Wagner’s remark, see ibidem p. 69.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--6
tell you how happy I am). If there was any textual reason for Rossini’s stirring
conclusion, it was completely lost.
Rather than proceed with Verdi opera by opera, as one could easily do, I
prefer to look at the issues with which the censors were concerned, because I think
this offers us a better way to get a handle on what mattered to an artist in the 1840s
and 1850s, the period leading up to the first Italian parliament, of which Verdi was a
member, at the specific invitation of Cavour.
Clearly, political issues were fundamental. One of the most obvious examples
was found in a letter that Verdi’s librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, wrote to a famous
Roman librettist, Jacopo Ferretti, the person responsible for the libretto of Rossini’s
1817 opera, La Cenerentola. Piave sent Ferretti an early version of the text of the
chorus that the conspirators sing in the tomb of Charlemagne while advancing their
plans to overthrow the King of Spain, Don Carlos, who is about to be proclaimed the
Holy Roman Emperor, as Carlo Quinto. In his letter of 13 November to Ferretti, Piave
gives the entire text he has written for this chorus, but adds «I do not know whether
the Police will approve it». This letter was first published in an article by Bruno Cagli,
but it was then used again in the critical edition of the opera by the Italian scholar
Claudio Gallifo.12
Si ridesti il leon di Castiglia
The lion of Castille rises again,
d’Iberia ogni monte, ogni lito
every mountain, every shore of Iberia
eco formi al tremendo rugito
will echo the tremendous roar
come un dì contro i Mori oppressor.
as one day against the oppressive
Moors.
Siamo tutti una sola famiglia:
We are all a single family:
pugnerem colle braccia, co’ petti
we will fight with our arms, our breasts
schiavi inulti più a lungo e negletti
we will no longer be useless slaves
non sarem finché vita abbia il cor.
as long as our hearts have life in them.
Morte colga, o n’arrida vittoria
We will be victorious or we will die,
pugneremo, e col sangue de’ spenti
we will fight, and with the blood of the
dead
12
«non so se la Polizia vorrà passarmi». This letter to Ferretti was brought to the attention of Claudio
Gallico, the editor of the critical edition of Ernani, by Bruno Cagli, who later published this letter and
others from Piave to Ferretti in CAGLI, Bruno. ‘«…Questo povero poeta esordiente»: Piave a Roma,
un carteggio con Ferretti, la genesi di «Ernani»’ in: Ernani ieri e oggi. Atti del convegno internazionale
di studi (Modena, Teatro San Carlo, 9-10 dicembre 1984), Parma, Istituto di Studi Verdiani, 1987
(Verdi: Bollettino quadrimestrale dell’Istituto di studi verdiani Parma-Busseto, 10 [1987]), pp. 1-18: 15.
See also VERDI, Giuseppe. Ernani, edited by Claudio Gallico, Chicago-London, The University of
Chicago Press - Milan, Ricordi, 1985 (The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, series I, vol. V), pp. xvii and xli.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--7
scriveranno i figliuoli viventi
the living sons will write
qui regnare sol dee libertà.
here liberty alone must reign.
Qui s’assida in suo trono e di gloria
Here we sit on a throne of glory
s’incoroni d’ulivo la chioma,
with our brow crowned by olive
branches,
e se Grachi, se Bruti ebbe Roma,
and if Rome had its Grachi, its
Brutuses,
Grachi e Bruti anco Iberia darà.
Iberia will also have its Grachi, and
Brutuses.
The censors did not object to the first two stanzas, but the last two were
simply not possible. This text could easily have been sung to the music Verdi
ultimately wrote, as in the following hypothetical setting of the third stanza:
I play this example on the piano Ex. 2
But Verdi knew this text, with its emphasis on the forbidden «libertà», was
impossible, and so he and Piave substituted less volatile words:
Morte colga, o n’arrida vittoria
We will be victorious or we will die
pugnermo, e col sangue de’ spenti
we will fight, and with the blood of the
dead
nuovo ardire ai figliuoli viventi,
the living sons will be given new ardor,
forze nuove al pugnare darà.
new strength in battle.
Sorgi alfine radiante di gloria,
Iberia will rise again, radiant with glory,
sorga un giorno a brillare su noi…
it will arise to shine among us…
Sarà Iberia feconda d’eroi,
Iberia will be fertile with heroes,
dal servaggio redenta sarà.
it will be redeemed from slavery.
There is no evidence that Verdi even made an effort to set the earlier
verses . Clearly any changes were either insisted upon by the police before Verdi
began composing or he knew that specific reference to «libertà» would be banned
13
and so exercised a kind of self-censorship. And, in fact, on 27 October 1843, even
before Piave had sent his text to Ferrretti, the police had been absolutely clear about
13
The autograph manuscript of Ernani is to be found in the Ricordi Archives, currently on deposit at
the Brera Library in Milan. The Coro concludes the scene of the Congiura (mm. 103-140 of N. 11) and
fills ff. 236v-240 of the manuscript.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--8
this scene. They told him: «…when the conspirators appear, the action must be as
short as possible, and the swords must not be unsheathed. In addition, the
Emperor’s act of mercy toward the conspirators when he appears among them in
Scene III must be made to appear liberal and great»14. Verdi, in short, was already
under orders.
There are places where the composer did indeed try to set text that was only
later banned. A key example occurs in his first great success, Nabucco of 1842. As
the editor of that volume quite correctly pointed out, despite later propaganda, there
was no effort to repeat the famous chorus «Va pensiero» at the first performance of
the opera15, although we only know about reactions that were permissible to be
written about in a censored press. Still, a chorus was repeated, according to the
newspaper reports, the chorus that comes near the end of the opera, «Immenso
Jehovah». It is a lovely chorus, to be sure, but it has nothing of the poignancy of the
setting closely related to the Biblical text, «By the waters of Babylon». While working
on the critical edition we were able to verify that Verdi had altered important text in
this chorus. He had originally set to music the verses16:
14
«…ove compariscono i Congiurati sia breve quanto mai possibile l’azione, non venghino denudati i
brandi, e liberale, e grande sia alla Scena III l’atto di clemenza del Imperatore che comparisce fra
essi». Cited in VERDI, Giuseppe. Ernani, op. cit. (see note 12), pp. xvi and xl.
15
See PARKER, Roger. Op. cit. (see note 2), pp. 23-24, including notes 12 and 13.
16
Parker wrote about his experience doing this edition, published as VERDI, Giuseppe.
Nabucodonosor, edited by Roger Parker, Chicago-London, The University of Chicago Press, - Milan,
Ricordi, 1987 (The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, series 1, vol. III), in what I consider to be one of the most
dishonest articles I ever read, ‘«Manon Lescaut»: La Scala 1930’ in: The Opera Quarterly, XXIV/1-2
(2008), pp. 93-106. A few details: 1) no one, least of all the general editor of The Works of Giuseppe
Verdi, expects a Critical Commentary to be read from cover to cover: it is intended to assist
performers and scholars who want to understand the history of a work; 2) to cite the Commentary of
Macbeth as evidence for the useless accumulation of material is unfair in the extreme. Macbeth is two
operas in one (1847 and 1865), whereas works published since, such as V ERDI, Giuseppe. Giovanna
d’Arco, published in the critical edition, edited by Alberto Rizzuti, in 2005, and VERDI, Giuseppe. Attila,
published in the critical edition, edited by Helen Greenwald, in 2013, are fully comparable to the 132
pp. of the Commentary of Nabucco; 3) Parker nowhere in his article even cites the significant change
made in ‘Immenso Jehovah’, although he would not even have realized it had happened were it not
for my constantly hectoring him about it. Also, his use of Manon Lescaut as a foil for the publication of
Verdi’s work is nothing but a ruse: we have nothing like the kind of information for Verdi that we have
about Puccini and the attitudes of these two composers towards their autograph manuscripts was
very different indeed. See GOSSETT, Philip. ‘Some Thoughts on the Use of Autograph Manuscripts in
the Editing of the Works of Verdi and Puccini,’ which Mr. Parker heard when I first delivered it in an
earlier version in Milan in 2008. It is about to be published in: Journal of the American Musicological
Society, LXVI/1 (2013). He would have been wiser to consult Suzanne Scherr’s work on the history of
Manon Lescaut rather than carry on about a recording from 1930 (see SCHERR, Suzanne. Puccini’s
«Manon Lescaut»: Compositional Process, Stylistic Revision and Editorial Problems, Ph.D. Diss.,
University of Chicago, 2013). To be honest, Mr. Parker, in his note 8, does refer to an article Ms.
Scherr wrote in 1990. In the same note he refers to his forthcoming critical edition of the opera, but,
although the article was published in 2008, no such edition has been published, and we are now at
the end of 2012.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--9
Spesso al tuo popolo
Often you gave tears
donasti il pianto,
to your people,
ma i ceppi hai franto
but you broke their chains
se in te fidò.
if they believed in you.
It comes as no surprise that the Austrian rulers of Milan would object to
verses that talked about God breaking the chains of captive people. But they must
have waited a long time before banning these verses, and Verdi was clearly
compelled to modify them. He changed them to:
Tu spandi l’iride,
You spread the rainbow,
tutto è contento,
everyone is happy,
tu vibri il fulmine
you launch a lightning bolt
l’uom più non è.
man is no more.
Ex. 3. I play this example on the piano
But Verdi certainly did not go along with this change happily. His substitution,
perhaps worked out together with his librettist, Temistocle Solera, was entered with a
vehemence that otherwise is nowhere to be seen in Verdi’s autograph manuscripts;
it was, after all, his first serious run-in with the censors17. Furthermore, that he did
this reluctantly is clear from the musical setting of the word «ridente»: the music,
originally written for the word «pianto» is completely unchanged and causes a
disjunction between text and music that the composer would never have allowed if
he were composing the scene afresh. I have often wondered whether the repetition
of this particular chorus at the first performance had anything to do with audience
knowledge of this problem, but there is no way for us to know this. Yet, it is perhaps
enough to recognize that the problem existed.
And Verdi was to live with similar problems throughout the 1840s and 1850s.
He actually composed the first act of his 1851 opera, Rigoletto, using the names of
the characters of Victor Hugo’s Le roi s’amuse, that is, François I of France, Bianca,
and Triboletto. And he was horrified when the Venetian censors insisted that he
could not show a King in this degraded condition on the stage of La Fenice. There
was much he could do to modify the place and time. Some of the suggestions of the
censors, he simply rejected. He would not make do without Maddalena’s invitation
(what would the Duke be doing in this inn without an assignation?), nor would he do
17
The autograph manuscript of Nabucco is to be found in the Ricordi Archives, currently on deposit at
the Brera Library in Milan. The Coro occurs within the Finale Ultimo (mm. 123-149 of no. 13) and fills
ff. 229v-231v of the manuscript.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--10
without the sack (what did the censors know about what would be effective or not?).
But he did understand their objection to showing François I as a libertine on stage.
He would change the location, but the ruler had to be absolute and had to be a
libertine, and so we have the Duke and Mantua18. It wasn’t where Verdi had planned
to place his opera at first, but as long as the essential relationships among the
characters were not altered, he could accept the modification. For Act I there were
few real changes in the text he had included in his continuity draft. «Il Re si diverte»
became «Il Duca si diverte»19 and the characters became Gilda and Rigoletto, with
no change needed in the rhythm, which was unchanged. It would, of course, be
possible to do the opposite operation and modify Acts II and III the way that Verdi
modified Act I, but that would be a directorial decision, not a scholarly one. So, when
the Duke enters Sparafucile’s inn in Act III, the assassin asks him what he wants,
and he is supposed to respond “Two things and right away. Your sister and some
wine.” But the censors, concerned for morality, changed “tua sorella” to “una stanza””
(a room) and that is how the piece was known for 130 years. This is Verdis own text,
leading up to the wonderful Aria, “La donna è mobile.”
This is the way the scene begins as Verdi wrote it:
I have already discussed briefly the problems about Un ballo in maschera. In
fact, they were much more serious than what I have indicated. Again, the problem
was political. Remember that after the Cinque Giornate in 1848, the Austrians
returned to power. It took longer in Rome, which had to wait until 1849 and the
presence of French troops in support of the Pope before hopes for a Roman
Republic were completely quashed. Before that happened, though, Verdi had written
for Rome an opera that could only have been presented in an independent Italian
city, La battaglia di Legnano, whose last act was entitled «Morire per la patria» (To
die for one’s homeland), an incendiary title to say the least. It comes as no surprise
that Verdi’s publisher, Ricordi, was unable to print this score in Milan, but had to print
it in another city that he used for censorially questionable texts. Even so, La battaglia
di Legnano is the only opera that figures among the «edizioni distrutte», the name
that Ricordi applied in an 1857 catalogue to publications that the Austrians, after
their return to power, would not allow, hence required that the plates be destroyed 20.
18
A draft of his letter to the president of the Venetian theaters, Carlo Marzari, about these
manipulations, dated 14 December 1850, is given as I Copialettere […], op. cit. (see note 7), item
CVIII, pp. 109-111.
19
The continuity draft of the opera, L’abbozzo del Rigoletto di Giuseppe Verdi, was published in 1941,
as part of the «onoranze ordinate dal Duce, antico e illuminato ammiratore di Verdi, nel quarantesimo
anniversario dalla morte», «a cura del Ministero della cultura popolare». For this phrase, «Il Re si
diverte», where the original text is still visible, see f. 3v, second system, second measure (m. 240 of
the Introduzione, no. 2).
20
See GOSSETT, Philip. ‘Le «edizioni distrutte» […],’ op. cit. (see note 3), for further information.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--11
But in all the cities where the forces of reaction again gained the upper hand
the censors returned emboldened by their victories to ensure that the public theatre
and opera would not be spreading sedition. Verdi wrote in 1857 an opera entitled
Gustavo III, based on the assassination at a masked ball of the King of Sweden in
1793, derived from a libretto by Eugène Scribe that had already been set to music in
1833 by the French composer, Daniel-François-Esprit Auber. Verdi had completed
the work, even prepared what we refer to as a skeleton score of the entire opera in
this form. The Neapolitan censors had refused certain aspects of the story, but Verdi
was prepared to make some modifications, as he had for Rigoletto. And so, as Una
vendetta in domino the new opera passed from Stockholm to the smaller provincial
capital of Stettin in Pomerania. He then brought his revised score to Naples, where
he was committed to present his new opera, planning to orchestrate it during
rehearsals. But luck would have it that as he arrived in Naples, news reached the
Partenopean capital that an Italian anarchist, Felice Orsini, had thrown bombs under
the carriage of the King of France, Louis Napoleon (or Napoleon III), who was going
to the Opéra to see Gustave III by Auber and Scribe. Although the King and his wife
escaped injury, eight members of his party were killed. And so the Neapolitans
refused any presentation that suggested the murder of a king at a masked ball. But
Verdi was adamant: he would not turn the assassination at a masked ball into a final
banquet scene. It made no dramatic sense at all to him. And an agreement was
ultimately reached by which his opera was to be presented elsewhere, but the
composer himself would return the next Autumn to stage a recent opera by him that
had not yet been heard in Naples, his Simon Boccanegra of 185721.
In searching for a place to stage his newest opera, Verdi thought first of
Rome, where apparently a stage play based on the assassination of Gustave III had
been given the previous year. But in fact the Roman censors were no less adamant
about refusing this text than the Neapolitan ones had been. Convinced, though, that
his newest opera would never be performed anywhere because of its subject matter,
Verdi (but not his librettist, Antonio Somma, who refused permission to use his
name) agreed to bring the action to the new world and to replace Gustave III by a
Riccardo, the governor-general of the Boston colonies, where, as we know, they
loved their masked balls. The censors were all powerful, and we still hear the opera
in this version, even when stage directors set the story in Sweden. The new critical
edition of Un ballo in maschera will present the score both in its Boston and in a
Swedish version, recommended to Rome by the composer, so that opera companies
21
I relate the entire story in ID. ‘La composizione di «Un ballo in maschera»’, pp. 31-58, in the
program book for the Teatro Regio of Parma in 2001, where we first presented the critical edition,
edited by Ilaria Narici.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--12
can choose what they wish to do22. After this opera Verdi refused all efforts to have
new works by him performed for the first time in Italy, until his Otello of 1887.
Instead, the first performances of La forza del destino, the revised Macbeth, Don
Carlos, and Aida all took place far from Italian soil23. Verdi had no objections to doing
later performances or revisions in Italy, but he did not trust Italian theaters to do
justice to first performances.
Would that the issues were strictly political, though. They were not. In Rome,
the Pope and his censors objected to all uses of the words «virgine» or «Iddio» on
the operatic stage as being sacreligious, and so all of Verdi’s uses of these words
were changed to «giovane» or «il cielo» or something similar to these more neutral
concepts24. But by and large these did not affect operas performed for the first time
in Rome, where composers could avoid all such references. Nonetheless,
ecclesiastical censors were important throughout the peninsula. One of Verdi’s first
experiences with the censors on religious grounds took place in I Lombardi alla
prima crociata of 1843, where a character in Act I, Giselda, portrayed by a soprano,
was supposed to sing a prayer taken from the Christian liturgy, an Ave Maria. But the
censors would not allow such a use of a Christian text, and one sees very well in the
autograph that the word «Ave» was altered by a foreign hand to «Salve». The
composer must have agreed to this change for Italy, because the piece was
published in this form by Ricordi and performed in this fashion everywhere in Italy.
But when he modified his opera into French for his first French opera, Jérusalem of
1847, he returned this text to its original form, as an «Ave Maria»25.
But this was only his first run-in with ecclesiastical censors. He would continue
having similar problems as long as the censorship system was in operation. At the
very end of his next opera, Ernani, written for Venice, where it was first performed in
1844, Ernani must commit suicide, as he had promised old Silva at the end of Act II,
just as he was assured the happiness of marriage to his beloved Elvira. Verdi set to
music for both the characters and wrote into his autograph manuscript the original
text: «È questa, per noi miseri, dal cielo la pietà» (This is the pity that heaven has for
us miserable ones). Here is the music and words Verdi originally wrote:
22
Publication of the critical edition has been postponed. The editors now will be Andreas Giger, who
has kindly agreed to do the necessary additional work on this edition, and Ilaria Narici.
23
La forza del destino was first performed in St. Petersbug in 1862; Macbeth and Don Carlos in Paris
(1865 and 1867), and Aida in Cairo (1871). Verdi had no objections to doing later performances or
revisions in Italy, but he did not trust Italian theaters to do justice to first performances.
24
The phenonmenon is discussed by Linda Fairtile in her article, ‘Censorship in Verdi’s «Attila»: Two
Case Studies,’ in: Verdi Newsletter, no. 24 (1997), pp. 5-7.
25
Both of these passages are plainly visible in the autograph manuscripts of these operas. The Scena
e Preghiera for Giselda is found within the autograph manuscript of I Lombardi in the Ricordi
Archives, currently on deposit at the Brera Library in Milan. The offending «Ave» (m. 44 of N. 3)
occurs on f. 64 of the manuscript. The autograph of Jérusalem is at the Bibliothèque nationale de
France, Département de la musique, Ms. 1070. The «Ave Maria» begins on p. 35.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--13
I play this piece with the rigtht words.
This incendiary text, which ironizes the role of heaven in the plot, was modified (and
Verdi himself entered also this altered text into his autograph manuscript), «Non
ebbe per noi miseri, non ebbe il ciel pietà» (Heaven had no pity for us miserable
ones). We have no evidence that this modification was owing to the censors, but it
does seem very likely indeed.
Similarly, in Giovanna d’Arco, as Francesco Izzo has brilliantly shown in an
article in the Journal of the American Musicological Society26, the original text
speaks of the Virgin Maria as a heroic figure, fighting for liberty, but the Austrians
preferred the mournful Virgin, the «Pia» [pious one], praying at the foot of the cross.
And so every time in the opera that the original text spoke of «Maria», they
substituted the words «la Pia», so that the name could be avoided. Thus, when King
Carlo invokes her in the first-Act Finale, the original words were «Ecco mi prostro a
te, madre di Dio» (I prostrate myself before you, mother of God); they became under
censorial pressure (and were entered by a foreign hand in Verdi’s manuscript),
«Ecco mi prostro, riverente e pio» (I prostrate myself, reverent and pious)27. Worst of
all is the finale of Act III, in which Maria’s father, Giacomo, accuses his daughter of
consorting with witches. He asks his daughter three questions, which she cannot
answer because she knows that, by falling in love with the King of France, she has
not lived up to her pact with Maria. The original verses, as set by Verdi, involved
three queries: «In nome della Francia, pura e vergine sei tu?», then «In nome della
fede, pura e vergine sei tu?», and the final, devastating query «In nome di Maria,
pura e vergine sei tu?» (in the name of France are you pure and virginal? In the
name of your faith, are you pure and virginal? In the name of Maria are you pure and
virginal?). The censors were having none of it, and so they modified the text to: «In
nome del Dio vindice, non sacrilega sei tu?», «Per l’alme dei parenti, non sacrilega
sei tu?», and finally «Per l’alma di tua madre, non sacrilega sei tu?» (In the name of
a vengeful God, are you not sacreligious? By the souls of your parents, are you not
sacreligious? By the soul of your mother, are you not sacreligious?] 28 Avoided
altogether are the image of Maria being «pura e vergine» (an image that Verdi
26
I refer to his article, ‘Verdi, the Virgin, and the Censor: The Politics of the Cult of Mary in «I
Lombardi alla prima crociata» and «Giovanna d’Arco»’, in: Journal of the American Musicological
Society, LX/3 (2007), pp. 557-597. See also the critical edition of Giovanna d’Arco, edited by Rizzuti,
op. cit. (see note 16).
27
The Finale Primo is found within the autograph manuscript of Giovanna d’Arco in the Ricordi
Archives, currently on deposit at the Brera Library in Milan. The passage here invoked (mm. 17-20 of
no. 6) occurs on ff. 86v-87 of the manuscript.
28
In the autograph manuscript of Finale Terzo in Giovanna d’Arco, see mm. 207-29 of no. 13 (ff.
226v-228v).
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--14
nonetheless used elsewhere in the opera, although in a less stressful environment)
for references to Maria. But the censors had a greater impact than they could have
imagined. For until very recently the words of the scene had always been the
censored version, not what Verdi actually wrote.
It is not hard to imagine that the image of Maria, a warrior fighting for the
cause of Italian independence, was not beloved by the Austrians, and so they
refused all reference to this image of the biblical person, even though the image of
the sorrowful virgin was not what Verdi had set to music. And, of course, while
Giovanna was still — strictly speaking — a virgin, her feelings for King Carlo were
strong enough that she could no longer be considered «pura».
Verdi’s worst run-ins with religious censorship involved his opera, Stiffelio,
written in 1850 and produced for the first time in Trieste. This opera had been so
manhandled by the censors that Verdi in 1856 recast it to a completely different story
as Aroldo, and the original was believed to be forever lost, until work on the critical
edition brought to light the fact that many pages in the autograph manuscript of
Aroldo are simply the original pages from Stiffelio with changes introduced for the
later work. Much of the rest could be reconstructed thanks to manuscripts in the
hands of the Carrara-Verdi family at Sant’Agata, which made possible our studies of
Stiffelio29.
Not that Verdi’s invocation of a world unknown to him, that of a Protestant
minister, was always adequate. He did not understand, to take the most flagrant
example, that in a Protestant sect there was no ‘confession’ to one’s minister, but
only to God. But he understood that Protestant ministers could marry, and he
imagined that such a wife could be tempted by earthly pleasures. And so, Stiffelio
actually divorces his wife, Lina, on stage, during a Duet near the end of the opera,
accusing her of an infidelity which she certainly could have committed, although
Verdi tries to make clear that she didn’t actually do anything wrong. The idea of a
man of the cloth marrying and then divorcing was too much for the Italians, as was
the final scene of the opera, in which Stiffelio preaches to his assembled brethren,
and reads from the Biblical story of the woman taken in sin, with the famous final
lines «Let those among you without sin cast the first stone». And the opera
29
See VERDI, Giuseppe. Stiffelio, edited by Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, Chicago-London, The
University of Chicago Press - Milan, Ricordi, 2003 (The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, series 1, vol. XVI).
Two articles discuss the sources for this opera, both published in Verdi’s Middle Period 1849-1859:
Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice, edited by Martin Chusid, Chicago-London, The
University of Chicago Press, 1997: GOSSETT, Philip. ‘New Sources for «Stiffelio»: A Preliminary
Report’ (pp. 19-43, but previously published in Cambridge Opera Journal, V/3 [1993]), pp. 199-222,
and HANSELL, Kathleen Kuzmick. ‘Compositional Techniques in «Stiffelio»: Reading the Autograph
Sources’, pp. 45-97.
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--15
concludes also with a Biblical pronouncement, «And the woman rose up,
pardoned»30.
(Play this on the piano Ex. 4.
At the first performance, the censors in Trieste did what they could with
Stiffelio, but it was simply too laden with sentiments that they could not approve, and
soon they gave a reluctant approval, with only the more radical sentiments changed.
(Instead of «Ministro, confessatemi» [Minister, confess me], for example, Lina says
«Rodolfo, ascoltatemi» [Rodolfo, the name of Stiffelio, hear me].) This was an opera
that could not circulate in the post-Cinque Giornate days in Italy, and so Verdi
decided to rewrite it to a totally new libretto in 1856. But the power of his original
Stiffelio could not be matched by Aroldo, so that the new opera failed to please, and
Verdi soon abandoned hope for it. Had he only waited a few years for the
disappearance of the rigors of the censorship system, the work would have probably
had a better fortune, but he was impatient and could not envision the postindependence world.
There are some places where Verdi actually makes a mistake, but these are
places that were printed with his errors and generations of singers have continued
singing the wrong words. Error in “Ah sì, ben mio, in Trovatore, first half of Manricos’
aria in Act III that leads to “Di quella pira.” “In quegli estremi aneliti, a te il pensier
verrà, verrà, E solo in ciel precederti la morte a me parrà.” 2md to,e omsteasd pf
1234. Verdi wrote 1434. Listen to it now with the right words:
Young pro singing it
Or there are places where Verdi wrote more than one version of a piece. Take
Macbeth, which he originally wrote for Florence in 1847, then revised for Paris in
1865, but still in Italian. We think it crucial to give both versions even in cases likethis
where it is unlikely anyone except in a special cfrcumstances would sing the original
version. Here is the revision, “La luce langue”, sung by a Glimmerglass young
professional; the original was a piece in the form of a cabaletta alone, “Trionfai.”
30
Neither most of the Duetto nor all of the Preghiera e Finale Ultimo are found within the autograph
manuscript of Aroldo (Stiffelio) in the Ricordi Archives, currently on deposit at the Brera Library in
Milan. The passages here invoked (mm. 169-189 of the Scena e Duetto, no. 9, and mm. 115-135 of
the Preghiera e Finale Ultimo, no. 10) occur respectively in the autograph of passages canceled from
Stiffelio for Aroldo, found in the Carrara-Verdi collection in Sant’Agata (fasc. XXII, pp. 8-12), and in a
manuscript of the opera’s original form in the collection of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in
Vienna, Musiksammlung, O.A. 179 (ff. 418-421).
Gossett—Verdi and censorship--16
I could go on, but I think I’ve made the point clearly. Verdi’s operas were the
subject of significant censorship, almost throughout the 1840s and 1850s,
censorship that is only now — with work on the critical edition — becoming widely
known and avoided. It is hard to know what to do with La traviata, which he wrote to
be presented in modern dress, but which he was forced to relocate in eighteenthcentury dress to avoid references to the Paris of 1853. But the words of the opera
did not have to be modified. He and Piave had done their work well and avoided any
sentiments that could be considered seditious. His experience in Venice with
Rigoletto two years earlier had taught him a great deal. If we seek to know what the
world of Italian theatre and opera was like, we had best look at what its most
prominent artists and composers envisioned as what their operas could be, not at
what was actually performed, and we can see directly in the Verdi autographs just
how he planned these works. Does this define a national idiom? I would be loathe to
say so, for it only represents one piece of the necessary definition, but it does seem
to me a crucial piece. And we cannot know the works of Verdi in any reasonable
fashion without looking hard at what the composer actually wrote, not what the
censors demanded during the period of their ascendance, from the 1830s through
the unity of Italy in 1860-1861, a unity hard won that still did not include Venice and
Rome, which were able to join the union only later that decade and in 1870,
respectively. How many Italians really knew what Verdi wrote? Fewer and fewer as
time went on, but after 1861 it was not particularly relevant to the formation of a
national idiom. Of course there are other issues that also need to be invoked in
discussing the role of censorship in the field of opera in Italy during the 1840s and
1850s, but we avoid this information at our peril.

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