Blogs using the British Newspaper Archive
Blog #9
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The
operas of Verdi
The year 2013 is the
bi-centenary of Verdi’s birth in 1813. He wrote a great number of operas.
The celebrations this year reminds me of an early memory in operatic appreciation, when I attended
a performance of Verdi’s Luisa Miller
performed at Chelsea Town Hall, in the mid-1960s. I was struck by the power and
inventiveness of Verdi,
in his varied use of composition to supplement the drama. I have remained
appreciative ever since, now preferring the later operas to the works of his
early and middle years.
In searching the British Newspaper Archive, it is
revealing that the British newspapers of the time were as keen as any other
country to include reports of first performances. This is true from the very
start of Verdi’s career. For example, Oberto,
conte di San Bonifacio was first performed at La Scala on 17 November
1839. Less
than two weeks later, The Champion
cites the opera, as it was to have involved a British singer, a Mrs. Shaw.
The
Champion - Sunday 01 December 1839 page 7
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Fourteen of Verdi’s
operas received their first performances between 1840-1849; and ten operas
between 1850-1859. It is instructive to reflect on those which have endured in
the repertory. For example, of those performed in the 1840s, Nabucco
has retained its popularity, and Attila,and La battaglia di Legnano have not. Nabucco was
first performed at La Scala on 9 March 1842. The Era printed a brief review on the 20th March,
saying: “It was received with enthusiasm
throughout, and is indeed a piece of extraordinary interest, from the
commencement to the end.”
The Era -
Sunday 20 March 1842 page 5 col. 4
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In the 1840s, the next opera composed by
Verdi’s was being looked for. The Morning
Post reported, on the 16 June 1845, that Verdi was composing both Macbeth and Attila. Attila was
performed at Teatro
La Fenice, Venice, March 17, 1846.
Morning
Post - Monday 16 June 1845 page 6 col. 6.
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Attila was performed
at Teatro La Fenice,
Venice, March 17, 1846. On the 20th March, the Morning Post enthused: “…the journals of Italy assure us that
Attila is superior to all those other works of Verdi, which… had already
succeeded on the operatic stages of all the capitals of the Continent…” In
quoting a letter of Verdi in the same
article, we have the composer equivocating about its future : “Attila has just
been produced here, and with surpassing good fortune. Last night the encores
and recalls before the curtain were endless. My friends will have it that it is
the best of all operas I have produced. The public appear to second their
opinion; but time alone will decide.”
Morning
Post - Monday 30 March 1846 page 5 col. 3.
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Forty-five years later,
the article in the Aberdeen Journal reviewed
Verdi’s achievements and it is Nabucco
which is named, rather than any other of his early works. The article stated: “The
popularity [he] acquired with a rapidity almost unexampled has been maintained
with a constancy truly extraordinary.”
Aberdeen
Journal - Monday 07 February 1887 Page 6 col. 4
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Verdi was viewed as the Italian composer
of his time, bound up with the events in his home country, in particular with
the movement for Italian independence. However, in his middle years, he
received two commissions from the Paris
Opera to compose and stage Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) and Don Carlos (1867). Less than a
week after Les vêpres siciliennes was first performed on the 13 June 1855 in
Paris, the correspondent of the Morning Post reported on third party
opinions, as their correspondent had been unable to get a seat to view the
opera: “The French journals pretty nearly all agree that the libretto is a bad
one, …As regards the music, everyone agrees on one point – it is not equal to
the ‘Trovatore’, which had so much success in Paris last winter.”
Morning
Post - Thursday 21 June 1855 p.5 col.3.
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|
Two days after
the first performance of Don Carlos,
in 1867, the Dundee Courier (and
several other papers) informed its reader that Napoleon III and Eugenie, the
Empress, had attended it. |
Dundee
Courier - Wednesday 13 March 1867 p.3 col.6
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On the 14 March, the London Daily News
printed a more extensive article, discussing the plot of Don Carlos at length. The theme of the lead male, Prince Don
Carlos, struggling for the independence of the Spanish Netherlands, still
resonated with many, as Italy had only been recently unified in 1860. The
author of this article remains critical of Verdi: “At the same time, we find in
Don Carlos the characteristic merit and defects of its author – force, energy,
the love of the sombre, the violent and the disorderly.”
London
Daily News - Thursday 14 March 1867 p.3 col.4
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More presciently, at the end of the same
article, the critic of the French newspaper, Liberté is quoted: “I think it an important work, which will
certainly live, notwithstanding its weak points.”
London
Daily News - Thursday 14 March 1867 p.3 col.4
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However, the Pall Mall Gazette was more dismissive of the opera: “…but as a
whole it will not rank with half a dozen of his previous works.”
Pall
Mall Gazette - Wednesday 13 March 1867 p.5 col.2
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The Morning
Post was more generous about Don
Carlos, and, with the benefit of hindsight, more mature in its assessment:
“The first impression left upon the mind after hearing this latest effort of
the great master is that it displays great dramatic power; melodious
declamation interprets human passion with an earnest vigour seldom met with in
the lyrical drama.”
Morning
Post - Wednesday 13 March 1867 p.5 col.2
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There was a considerable gap between the first
performance of Aida, in Cairo, in
December 1871 and the first performance of Otello
on 5 February 1887. It is well known that Verdi was reluctant to compose
any more operas after Aida. However,
he was tempted back into composition by the excellence of Arigo Boito’s
libretto for Otello. Three days
later, the Bury and Norwich Post
printed a review of this first performance. The author gave a full account of
the praise given to Verdi on the opening night the previous Saturday. As to the
performance, he was more critical: “…Signor Tamagno has a powerful tenor voice,
and declaims with abundant vigour, but is not equal to the intellectual demands
of his role (Otella), and Signora Pantaleoni, although a soprano of no slight
merit, fails to realise the beau ideal
of ‘the gentle lady wedded to the Moor.’ The choral singing was not first-rate;
the band was excellent, and a better conductor than Signor Faccio would be
difficult, if not impossible to find.”
Bury
and Norwich Post - Tuesday 08 February 1887 p.2 col.7.
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After the great success of Otello, in 1887, Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff, was eagerly awaited. The day after its first performance,
on the 9 February 1893, the Manchester Evening News reported on the mood in La Scala: “…when the curtain
fell the applause was simply deafening. Signor Verdi again appeared and was
recalled five times. … The general opinion of the work is that it must be
regarded as a masterpiece from the point of view of an original interpretation
of Shakespeare’s comedy. It is also remarked that the instrumentation is of a
totally different type from that of the Italian and French comic operas.”
Manchester
Evening News - Friday 10 February 1893 page 3 col. 2
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Time lends perspective, and Falstaff remains continuously in the operatic repertory today. It
is difficult to better the judgement about Falstaff,
written by the Earl of Harewood in Kobbe’s
Opera Book:
“There is a sparkle, a rapidity of utterance, a
speed of movement, an economy of means in the ensemble writing that has no
equal in music written since Mozart, and every bar is endowed with a refinement
of expression and a restraint that it would be difficult to imagine in the
composer of operas written before Macbeth.
… It is all as light as air, and yet out of it has been fashioned Shakespeare’s
Falstaff drawn appropriately in the round, speaking Italian, but more English
at heart than in any musical re-creation of him. “
In the bicentenary year of Verdi’s birth, having
extensive archives available such as the British
Newspaper Archive reminds us of the immediate impact that Verdi made when
his operas were performed, all over Europe and beyond, giving him during his
lifetime enormous reputation and fame that was fully deserved.
Ed King
February 2013
Further reading:
Wiki article on Verdi : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Verdi
The
Earl of Harewood (Editor).
Kobbe's Complete Opera Book.
1987. Chapter
8. Giuseppe Verdi.
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