Viva Verdi and Va, pensiero

We began with Puccini and have looked at his major operas. From there, we looked at his contemporaries in the verismo school and some of the 19th century Italian operas on the edge of the repertoire. The mid to late 19th century Italian opera is, though, dominated by one name: Verdi.

Giuseppe Verdi (or Joe Green if we're going to translate his name) wrote his early operas according to established tradition, but over 28 operas changed the form and structure of Italian opera. He was born in 1813 and died in 1901. The vast majority of his operas form the backbone to the repertoire. One blog entry can't really encompass everything that Verdi achieved, so let's try and concentrate on a few things.

Verdi's first two operas, Oberto (1839) and Un giorno di regno/ King for a day (1840, a comic opera) received mixed reviews: the first was a success, the second a flop. Around this time he lost both his children and his wife died, aged 26. Unsurprisingly, he was very tempted to give up composition altogether. However, he continued and his third opera Nabucco (1842), based on the story of Nebuchadnezzar, was a triumph. Its centre piece is a chorus, Va pensiero/ Fly my thoughts, commonly known as The chorus of the Hebrew slaves as those are the people who sing it.

Nabucco is in some ways very traditional of its time. Most Italian operas had a set structure: an opening chorus, often with a minor character talking to them, would set the scene and present us with the basics of the plot. Then we would be introduced to the major characters. Most arias would then be followed by a cabaletta, a faster section, usually following a dramatic piece of news. So far, so Nabucco. But there are some differences.

The Italian states before re-unification

The eponymous role is not a tenor, or a soprano, but a baritone. He is also the first of Verdi's major baritone fathers, a role we will see again and again in Verdi's operas. The leading soprano is not a lover, nor is she sweetness and light, but a power hungry villain who will incarcerate her sister. The tenor is reduced to a minor role. (The great father figure, that of King Lear, escaped him: Verdi adored Shakespeare and several times planned to write a King Lear opera but, for various reasons, none of the attempts came to fruition.)


The opera, in telling of the plight of the Hebrews under the Babylonian invader Nabucco, is political. Although Nabucco is portrayed sympathetically, struck by a divine thunderbolt with madness for blasphemy, Verdi portrays the suffering Hebrews even more powerfully in their famous chorus. Politics loom large in Verdi's operas and he was often drawn to stories of an oppressed or outcast people, or themes that explored the conflict between church and state. 

Italy in Verdi's time was a fractured country, broken into states and ruled in large part by Austrian forces after Napoleon's death. The movement to establish one country, one state, was known as the Risorgimento, literally Resurgence. It was not until 1861 that Italy would be unified into one country. 

Vittorio Emmanuele monument in Rome

Verdi's name became synonymous with the Risorgimento. The slogan Viva Verdi! was itself an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emmanuele Re d'Italia / Long live Vittorio Emmanuele, King of Italy (Vittorio Emmanuele was the King of Sardinia, and would, after the re-unification, become the first king of Italy since the 6th century. An enormous equestrian statue of him, nicknamed "the wedding cake" or "the typewriter", dominates the main highway in Rome. Fun facts: the moustache on the statue is 3m long, and apparently a dozen people once had dinner in the horse's belly.) Verdi's opera Macbeth (1847) has a similar chorus of outcast people; Don Carlos (1867) deals with the tyranny of an oppressive Catholic church; Aida (1871) contains exile, a lost home, and some extreme priests. In each of these major works, it is clear that Verdi is often on the side of the oppressed, even if the major characters in his story are the oppressors. In other words, he could ignore the oppressed: they are peripheral to his story and may paint his heroes in an unflattering light. But Verdi is empathetic: he feels the need to deal with this ugly side, and is often more sympathetic towards them than his story requires.


Verdi moved away from the bel canto (beautiful singing) style of earlier operas, giving more emphasis to the drama and theatrical effect of his operas. There are many letters from Verdi to his librettists asking them to reduce the number of lines, making things briefer to increase the drama, or adding scenes and stage pictures to increase the tension or dramatic irony. He was insistent on singers using a range of dynamics (ie volume, from a soft quiet piano (pronounced pee-ar-no) to a loud forte (pronounced for-tay)) to heighten the theatrical effect and even asked that his original Lady Macbeth should have a voice that was not necessarily beautiful. 


So the Verdi voice became more dramatic; the Verdi singer became more of an actor. The orchestra too, became more prominent: where it had formerly been used merely to accompany singers, now it often became a character itself in the drama. He referred to his first operas as his "years in the galleys" as he slowly learnt his craft. With Rigoletto though in 1851, his training period was over, and he followed that with two more masterpieces in quick succession, Il Trovatore and La Traviata (both 1853). In Rigoletto, he created a baritone father who is both repellent and sympathetic, who sings sweetly and softly and declaims violently and passionately. He is a hunchback, and creating this deformity imposes additional constraints on the singer as he bends his back and neck to play the part. It is probably the dramatic baritone role in all Italian opera. 

He was commissioned to write operas for St Petersburg, Cairo and Paris (in French). After Aida, he stopped writing new operas, choosing instead to revise earlier works. In this he had the help of Arrigo Boito, himself a composer, who sketched new scenes for Simon Boccangera and eventually wrote the librettos for Verdi's final operas. Sixteen years came between Aida and Otello in 1887, regarded by many as the tragic Italian opera, and the title role as the dramatic Italian tenor role. Following its premier at La Scala in Milan, Verdi took 20 curtain calls and his carriage was stripped of its horses as his admirers pulled his carriage through the streets of Milan. His final opera, Falstaff (1893), is a breezy ensemble comedy, its finale being an ensemble where everyone remarks that "Life is but a joke, and he who laughs last, laughs hardest".

Verdi's state funeral

After Falstaff, Verdi retired once more, founding a rest home for retired musicians where he was himself, eventually buried. He died following a stroke. The celebrated Italian conductor, Arturo Toscanini, conducted at the state funeral where thousands of mourners lined the streets and joined in with the chorus singing Va pensiero. To date, it remains the largest public gathering at any event in the history of Italy. 


For many Italians, Va pensiero has the status of a second national anthem. Like many early Verdi melodies, the tune itself floats over an orchestra that simply repeats the same musical phrase over and over again. The chorus sing in unison (the same notes) breaking out into harmony later, as though at this point their feelings overwhelm them. 

Here is a performance from the Rome Opera last year, the 150th year of Italian unification.  After the chorus, the audience demands a bis, an encore, and somebody calls out "Viva Italia!"  Riccardo Muti, conducting, turns to the audience and tells them that he is saddened by what Italy may become under its current politics and political cuts. He adds, quoting the chorus, that if the cuts to Italy's culture continue, then his country really will be "si bella, perduta": "beautiful, and lost."

You can read more about Va pensiero, including a translation, on Wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Va,_pensiero You can watch Antonio Pappano's documentary about Verdi in 7 parts, beginning here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBTDDD7AzDU