Verdi - The Complete Works
Part 2. The Operas

I comment below on the operas and other material in the order in which they are notated in the enclosed small books and which is the order of composition of the original title, but not necessarily the version in this set as explained. These numbers of the operas are shown on the spines of the named slipcases, numbered 1 to 30 and constitute sixty-nine of the seventy-five CDs in the collection. This anomaly in numbers of the operas is, as I have explained, due to the fact that whilst there are only twenty-eight opera titles, the collection includes two versions of both La Forza del Destino and Don Carlos as detailed below. I repeat that further complications in respect of the numbering involve the likes of Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra. These appear as numbers ten and twenty-one respectively, but contain performances of the later versions of the works concerned, not the original versions of 1847 and 1857.

Verdi was the son of a literate small landowner and trader in the hamlet of Le Roncole in the Duchy of Parma near the small town of Busseto. The young Giuseppe was educated by priests until he was aged eleven when he entered the school in Busseto, lodging with the local cobbler. At an early age he had already shown musical talent to the extent that his father bought him a battered spinet that was repaired by a local admirer. The instrument now resides in the museum of La Scala. This teaching and his instrumental skills gave him the facility that, when lodged in Busetto, earned him money playing the organ back at Le Roncole each Sunday and on Feast Days, walking between the town and the hamlet in bare feet.

While in Busseto Verdi had formal education at school and music lessons with Ferdinando Provesi, maestro di cappella at the local church, and also director of the local music school and Philharmonic society. Provesi was a free-thinking Republican and radical. By the age fifteen Verdi was conducting the local orchestra and composing marches as well as arias, duets, concertos and variations on themes by famous composers. In all but name he was Provesi’s number two. As importantly he had also come under the eye of Antonio Barezzi, a wealthy local merchant known to his father who was patron of the local orchestra that met in his house. Having taught music to Barezzi’s children Verdi moved in to lodge with the family and fell in love with Margherita the elder daughter, seven months his junior whom he later married and who bore him two children, a daughter Virginia Maria born in March 1837 and a son Icilio in July 1838. Verdi’s joy was short-lived as his daughter died shortly after the birth of his son.

Barezzi financed Verdi’s studies in Milan after he was refused entry to the Conservatoire on the basis of being too old; it was a slight he never forgave. On his return to Busseto in 1835, the year Bellini died and of Donizetti’s forty-seventh opera, Lucia di Lammermoor, Verdi took over as maestro di musica of the local philharmonic and married Margherita Barezzi. Whilst Verdi performed his conducting and teaching duties he composed marches, overtures and a mass as well as a complete set of vespers. Regrettably, in later life Verdi ordered all his early compositions to be destroyed. Meanwhile he was chafing at more ambitious plans including the composition of an opera. He was in contact with Milan and a series of letters indicates the writing of Rocester to a libretto by a Milanese journalist Antonia Piazza. He tried to get this staged in Parma without success. Encouraged by friends in Milan, and with the help of the librettist Temistocle Solera, Verdi revised the work under the title of Oberto conte di Boniface. Determined to get the work staged he resigned his Busseto post in October 1838 and left for Milan with his wife and surviving child in February 1839.

In 1839, Milan was a city of one hundred and fifty thousand people. It had been ceded to Austria under the terms of The Congress of Vienna in 1815 and was the capital of the province of Lombardy-Venetia. The Austrians kept a tight rein on the local population. There was Austrian soldiery everywhere and police vigilance was unceasing as were the detailed activities of the censor who determined the political and religious suitability of any play or opera proposed for presentation in the city’s theatres. Few of the population chafed at the situation. Any awareness of the concept of a united Italy was restricted to some exiles and literati. The local aristocracy mingled with artistes in their salons. The La Scala theatre was run jointly with a theatre in Vienna under the direction of the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, who had written libretti for Donizetti. Its operatic activities could be seen as a tool of social control - an opiate administered by a superb roster of singers and dancers. It was in this milieu that Verdi sought to establish himself as an opera composer. He was twenty-six years of age. By the same age Rossini had had twenty-four of his operas staged and was internationally acclaimed.

1. Oberto conte di Boniface. (CDs 1-2)
This work was premiered on 17 November 1839. If its premiere was delayed by illness among singers its recording was to wait even longer. Verdians were despairing when Philips aborted their series of the composer’s early opera recordings in 1979 after only eight operas. However, the small Orfeo label took up the task with, as for the Philips series, Lamberto Gardelli on the rostrum. Featuring Carlo Bergonzi, non pareil Verdian tenor, Ghena Dimitrova and Rolando Panerai it was an excellent stop-gap (C 105842 H) until Philips resumed their early Verdi recordings in 1996 with this version of Oberto. Marriner is the somewhat surprising for conductor. If he is no match for Gardelli as a Verdian, he is thoroughly reliable, a word also applicable to Stuart Neill compared with Bergonzi in the tenor role. Also featured are Samuel Ramey as a sonorous, if not always ideally steady, Oberto, Maria Guleghina as a generous-toned dramatic Leonora and the then unknown Lithuanian Violetta Urmana as a rich-voiced Cuniza. The recording quality is superior to that on Orfeo. Also included is an appendix of two items Verdi composed for a La Scala revival of the work in the autumn season of 1840. These additions show a significant step in compositional maturity on Verdi’s part compared with the original score and like the rest of the recording reflect well on Marriner and his cast and orchestra. Oberto is also significant insofar as it shows the composer drawn from the start of his career to the often-troubled father-daughter relationship that was to recur overtly in so many of his works. Tragically for the composer his son Icilio died during rehearsals.
Oberto was a big enough success for Merelli to extend the number of scheduled performances to fourteen that season and twelve the next. He also sold the score to Ricordi for the not inconsiderable sum of two thousand Austrian lire thus recouping some of his investment. More importantly for Verdi, Merelli contracted the composer for three more operas to be presented over the next two years for a fee of four thousand lire each and half the money raised if the score were sold for performance elsewhere.

2. Un giorno di regno (CDs 3-4)
The first of the three contracted operas to follow Oberto for La Scala was initially to have been Il proscritto, a libretto written by Gaetano Rossi who had provided Rossini with the librettos for Tancredi and Semiramide. Before Verdi could commence work Merelli’s plans changed, he needed an opera buffa and he passed several texts by the house poet, Romani, over to Verdi. None really appealed, but with time short he settled on Il finto Stanislau written twenty years earlier, performed at La Scala in 1818 and never revived. The title of the work was changed to Un giorno di Regno (A King for a day). During the work’s composition life for Verdi was difficult. Money was short and his wife pawned jewels to pay for their lodgings. Always prone to psychosomatic symptoms, Verdi suffered from a bad throat and angina during the composition. Then, in June 1840 on the feast of Corpus Christi his beloved wife died of encephalitis.
To crown Verdi’s misfortunes Un giorno di Regno premiered on 5 September 1840 was whistled off the stage at its first performance. The other five scheduled performances were cancelled. Whilst the composer recognised limitations in his score he was pleased, four years later, to note that what had been hissed at La Scala was a great success in Venice. In Naples in 1852 it played to full houses under its earlier title. It is thoroughly enjoyable and shows the quality of the music being quite worthy of a young composer and equal to all but the best of Donizetti’s comic operas. Whether or not scarred by his experience, Verdi did not write another comic opera until Falstaff in 1893.
The Italian company Cetra thought the piece sufficiently strong to issue a recording at the time of the fiftieth anniversary of the composer’s death in 1951. Although re-issued by Warner-Fonit the recording is surpassed in all respects in August 1973, by the third recording in Philips’ early Verdi series under Gardelli’s idiomatic and sympathetic baton. It features outstanding singers in José Carreras, Jessye Norman, Fiorenza Cossotto and Wladimiro Ganzarolli. It is thoroughly recommendable in all respects.

3. Nabucco (CDs 5 and 6)
After the traumas of his family bereavements, and the failure of his second opera, Verdi returned first to Busseto and then to recoup and stage Oberto in Genoa. On returning to Milan he returned the unused libretto of Il proscritto to Merelli, convinced that he had no future in the theatre. In return, Merelli pressed on Verdi the libretto of Nabucodonosor by Temistocle Solera, which Nicolai, then at the height of his Italian career, had refused. Perhaps to satisfy Merelli, Verdi read the libretto and was greatly stimulated by it. Between the spring and early autumn of 1841 he composed the opera that came to be called Nabucco. With three new operas scheduled before the end of the season in March Merelli wanted to postpone staging it until the following season. It took some vehement correspondence from the composer before the opera was premiered on 9 March 1842 in secondhand sets but with a first-rate baritone and bass. Giuseppina Strepponi, who was to be a great influence in Verdi’s life sang Abigaille, but was in poor voice. The work was a resounding success and although the season had only ten days to run Nabucco was given eight more times. The delighted Merelli promptly scheduled a revival for the following autumn when there were another sixty-seven performances, breaking all La Scala records. The chorus Va pensiero was regularly encored with the Milanese public, under Austrian occupation, clearly identifying themselves with the oppressed Hebrews of the story. It was a tenuous start to the identification of Verdi and his operas with the movement later in the 1840s for the liberation and unification of Italy called the Risorgimento.

For an opera of such pulsating rhythms, glorious choruses and well-written parts for principal soprano, baritone and bass, Nabucco has had curiously few studio recordings. This may be due to the impact of the outstanding first stereo recording by Decca in 1965 and included in this, collection. It was recorded in the company’s favourite venue in Vienna with the orchestra and chorus of the State Opera under the baton of Lamberto Gardelli. His conducting of Decca’s Nabucco, allied to the atmospheric recording, the singing of the chorus and the outstanding portrayal of Tito Gobbi in the name part and Elena Suliotis as his supposed daughter, made the recording one of the best of the period. Suliotis aged 22 was unknown, but her portrayal of Abigaille brought big headlines. The role is dramatic and strenuous. Her entrance recitative-cum-aria Prode guerrier ranges from B below middle C to B in alt and combines declamatory and coloratura styles (tr.6). Suliotis attacks the aria and the rest of the role with youthful vocal abandon, sometimes bordering on the reckless but always thrilling and involved. It is an approach which presages visceral and dramatic excitement rather than vocal beauty, but one which conveys Abigaille’s ruthless character and ultimate softer plea for forgiveness to great satisfaction. Gobbi, the odd raw patch at the top of his voice apart, is as characterful and vocally expressive as one would hope. Carlo Cava as the High Priest could be steadier whilst the chorus is strong and sonorous if lacking a little Italianata.

In one bound Nabucco put Verdi to the forefront of Italian opera composers. The salons of the aristocracy were opened to the country boy. From this period his long friendships with the Countesses Appiani, and particularly Maffei, date. In their salons he mixed with the cognoscenti of Milanese literature and music, many of whom were politically radical thinkers. Present at the premiere, Donizetti was greatly impressed by Verdi’s creation and his melodic and dramatic music.

4. I Lombardi alla prima crociata (CDs 7 and 8)
After Nabucco Verdi never lacked for commissions. Indeed there were times when the pressures from impresarios and publishers became too great and his health suffered. In the next nine years he composed thirteen operas for all the great theatres of Italy as well as for London and Paris. Verdi was to call these years his ‘anni de galera’ (years in the galleys). With the raging success of Nabucco on his hands, impresario Merelli wanted to get Verdi started on his next opera. This would be the last of the three the composer had contracted for the theatre after the modest success of Oberto and including the failure of Un giorno di Regno. Merelli, recognising Verdi’s newfound status, asked him to name his own fee. Uncertain, the composer sought the advice of Giuseppina Strepponi who was singing Abigaille during the run of Nabucco. She advised him to ask for the same fee as Bellini was paid for Norma, eight thousand Austrian lire. Verdi asked for, and got, nine thousand.

The opera I Lombardi alla prima crociata (the Lombards of the first Crusade) was written, just like Nabucco, to a libretto by Solera and was premiered at La Scala on 11 February 1843. The theme has a religious basis and there are plenty of choral interludes and more than a hint of patriotic nationalistic fervour for the audience to identify with. At the first performance the act 4 chorus O Signore, dal tetto natio’ (O Lord, give us a native heath) aroused a storm of approval just as Va pensiero had done in Nabucco. The opera also marked an early brush with the Church and censor as was to be the case with many of the composer’s works. Verdi refused point-blank to alter what was written and it required some diplomacy on Solera’s part with a sympathetic Chief of Police to settle on the simple change of Ave Maria to Salve Maria, which Verdi accepted.

Philips launched their series of eight recordings of early Verdi operas under Lamberto Gardelli with I Lombardi. Recorded in London in 1971 it features the young Plácido Domingo, then a contracted RCA artist, in pristine, virile and fresh-voiced vocal condition as Oronte. His stylish singing is well matched by the sonority and evenness of Ruggero Raimondi as the later contrite villain Pagano. In the role of Viclinda, Christina Deutekom is more variable. However, in this collection Decca prefer the version involving their contracted tenor Luciano Pavarotti. Recorded in America under conductor James Levine in 1996 where this version scores highly is in the immediacy of the recording and the singing of the Metropolitan Opera Chorus who are full-bodied and vibrant. Although not as fast-paced as his earlier self Levine cuts several minutes off Gardelli’s time for Philips.

Oronte was a role Pavarotti had sung on-stage earlier in his stage career, albeit a diva who sang the role of Giselda was scathing in her autobiography in respect of his preparation, arriving not having learned Oronte’s act four aria, from heaven; the tenor had not read the ending. A little greyer in tone than a decade or so before, Pavarotti’s contribution is good whilst several of the remainder of the cast outclass their never less than adequate rivals on the Philips recording.

5. Ernani (CDs 9-10)
After his successes at La Scala Verdi became a name on the lips of other impresarios and theatres. The composer was also keen to escape Solera’s somewhat limited vision and dogmatic overview and move towards more intimate personal dramas. Thus he accepted a generous commission from La Fenice at Venice where he was introduced to a young librettist called Piave. It was the most fruitful collaboration that lasted over twenty years and many operas. The subject was settled as being based on Victor Hugo’s play 'Hernani'. Premiered in March 1843 it was a modest success and Verdi felt it justified the twelve thousand lire fee he was paid after the first performance, as he had insisted, rather than the usual third. In later productions in Milan and Vienna for which Verdi added music and tightened the drama it was a resounding success.

Considering the musical and dramatic merits of Ernani the paucity of recordings is surprising. The recording chosen is one made in 1987 and is the last collaboration between Decca artists tenor Pavarotti and soprano Joan Sutherland under the baton of Richard Bonynge, the diva’s husband. The recording quality is excellent. However, it remained in the Decca vaults for over a decade before being released. The reason is not difficult to determine as one listens to the tenor’s tentative start, the diva’s poor diction and lack of steadiness in Ernani involami, Nucci’s nasal sound and the glottal Italian of Burchuladze. In fairness, Pavarotti improves to give a worthy and at times thrilling performance. A 1967 studio recording made by RCA in Rome in 1967 with Bergonzi as Ernani and Leontyne Price as Elvira does far better justice to Verdi and Piave’s creation, but seems not have been available for this collection.

On his return to Milan after the Venice production of Ernani, Verdi found himself offered contracts to write for several Italian theatres. He was seen, aged thirty, as the coming composer and natural successor to Donizetti. He was to write ten operas in the remainder of the decade.

6. I Due Foscari (CDs 11-12)
On his return to Milan after the Venice production of Ernani Verdi’s first task was to agree a subject for his new opera as part of the forthcoming season at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The censors objected to his first choice and he turned to the subject of I due Foscari (The two Foscari), which he had considered for Venice but had been warned off; the Venetians only liked good news stories about their city. I due Foscari is based on Byron’s play, one of the first to investigate the dark and repressive side of Venice, a city that was so often portrayed as a carnival town. I due Foscari, Verdi’s sixth opera, was premiered to acclaim with the composer conducting on 3 November 1844. On the second night Verdi himself took over thirty curtain calls.

With this work the collection returns to the trusted source of the Philips recordings, in this case the sixth in the series and recorded in 1976. Featuring the young plangent-toned tenor José Carreras as the Doge’s son, Cappuccilli’s long-phrased brooding Doge, and Katia Ricciarelli’s strong Lucrezia. Sam Ramey does ample and sonorous justice to the role of Loredano whilst on the rostrum Gardelli illuminates Verdi’s more mundane passages. This original Philips audio recording shows the opera to be one of the most original of Verdi’s early works. Despite the fact that the opera was only a modest success in Rome, and Donizetti considered it only showed Verdi’s genius in fits and starts, it was widely performed over the next thirty years.

7. Giovanna d’Arco (CDs 13-14)
On his return to Milan Verdi faced a heavy workload. He was involved in a revival of I Lombardi that opened the Carnival Season at La Scala on 26 December 1844, whilst also starting to compose a new work for presentation at the theatre later in the season. In agreeing to write a new work for La Scala Verdi was aware that he would not have the choice of singers or librettist, which would be in impresario Merelli’s gift. The work chosen is based on Schiller’s "Die Jungfrau von Orleans". Librettist Solera feared copyright problems in France.

During the composition of Giovanna d’Arco, and the preparation for performances of I Lombardi, Verdi became increasingly frustrated and angry. Merelli was a very warm-hearted and generous man, but a pretty lousy impresario. Far too often the singers dictated what went even involving them inserting arias by other composers to show off their strengths or to give greater weight to a role that they considered not commensurate with their status. The I Lombardi rehearsals became stormy with Verdi complaining about the size of the orchestra as well as the indolence, arrogance and poor quality of the principal singers who were also scheduled to feature in the new opera. Verdi even refused to attend the opening night of the new production of I Lombardi.

Giovanna d’Arco opened on 15 February, a mere eighteen weeks after the premiere of I due Foscari in Rome and it was well received with the street barrel-organs soon ringing to the prologue tune of Tu sei bella, the demons’ chorus that haunts Joan. As well as the stage and singer problems, Verdi’s relationship with Merelli became further strained when the latter negotiated the sale of the full score without the composer’s knowledge. It was the end of a friendship. Verdi vowed never to set foot in the theatre or speak to Merelli again. A man who carried grudges, Verdi carried out his threat for over twenty-five years until the revised La Forza del Destino was premiered there in February 1869. The hatchet buried, La Scala went on to premiere the revised Simon Boccanegra in 1881, the four-act 1884 version of Don Carlo, the first Italian performances of Aida and the composer’s two final operatic masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff.

The performance included in this collection is the most recent of all the featured recordings being live from the Salzburg Festival in August 2013. In the eponymous role Anna Netrebko uses her then recently acquired vocal sumptuousness to good effect in the more dramatic moments. However, her earlier coloratura facility evidenced in the likes of Willy Decker’s production of La Traviata a decade before is lacking with the omission of cabalettas or significant decoration. She does not erase memories of Caballé’s all-round assumption on the 1973 EMI Classics recording. Whilst evincing pleasing Italianate tone Francesco Meli, a late replacement in the role of Carlo VII, King of France, lacks vocal character and tends to squeeze the climactic note at the end of a verse or phrase. Then there is the issue of Plácido Domingo in the baritone role of Giovanna’s father. He is unsteady at the start, and whilst better than his assumption of Di Luna in the Il Trovatore in the same year, he is simply not up to meeting the demands of this Verdi baritone role. Yes, he sings in tune and characterises well but that does not create a Verdi father character.

On the rostrum, Paolo Carignani handles the opening orchestral prelude (CD 1. Tr.1), and the choral interludes with welcome and appropriate Verdian vibrancy. For whatever reason he omits many bars of music reducing the timing of the whole. A pity this collection does not use that featured in the earlier Italian issue, albeit older, and which features, Renata Tebaldi, Carlo Bergonzi and Rolando Panerai, in a dated recording but with a true baritone and the best Verdi tenor of the time at his peak. For recorded quality none match the RCA recording referred to above where Caballé is joined by Domingo and Milnes.

8. Alzira (CDs 15-16)
After the 1844 success of Ernani one of the first people to approach Verdi for a new opera was Vincenzo Flauto, impresario of the San Carlo theatre in Naples. Together with La Scala, Venice’s La Fenice and the San Carlo made up the trio of leading theatres in Italy. Both Rossini and Donizetti had been music directors of the Royal theatres of the city. The San Carlo had been the cradle of classical opera and the base for Rossini’s musical innovations and greatest opera seria whilst Barbaja was in charge as well as many of Donizetti’s greatest creations, all facilitated by its professional orchestra.

Verdi contracted to write an opera for production in June 1845, a mere four months after the premiere of Giovanna d’Arco. The subject settled on, between the theatre and the librettist, Cammarano, was Voltaire’s play Alzire. Cammarano had written the librettos for several of Donizetti’s successes including Lucia di Lammermoor and Roberto Devereux. He was adept at avoiding conflict with the repressive Neapolitan censors and Verdi readily approved his synopsis. The speed of Verdi’s approval, and the few instances of the composer’s interference, might have sounded warnings had Flauto known his man better. The composer was emotionally, and perhaps creatively, exhausted. The stresses of I Lombardi and Giovanna d’Arco at La Scala and his falling out with Merelli had taken their toll. He pleaded for a time extension furnishing medical certificates in support. Flauto, a doctor, at first dismissed his pleas suggesting the warm air of Naples would effect a speedy cure. With Cammarano’s aid a postponement was achieved and Alzira, Verdi’s eighth opera, was premiered on 12 August 1845.

Cammarano’s libretto for Alzira reduced Voltaire’s five-act play to a prologue and two acts, a total of six scenes. It is his shortest opera. The plot involves a love triangle for tenor, soprano and baritone set in Lima, Peru. Verdi is said to have composed the music in twenty days, for him a barely believable time-scale. The opera was only moderately well received in Naples and was a failure when revived in Rome in the November following its premiere. A revival at La Scala in 1846 earned Verdi his worst notices since the fiasco of Un Giorno di Regno. In later years the composer recognised Alzira’s limitations but considered it beyond redemption. It was lost sight of until revived in a production in Rome in 1967, performances that indicated the score to be at least vibrant and melodic in parts.

After Philips aborted their early Verdi series of recordings after Stiffelio in 1979, Orfeo with Gardelli on the rostrum recorded it. In 1997, with the catalogue still lacking acceptable recordings of three of Verdi’s works, Philips took up the challenge again with a recording of Aroldo with Jerusalem the following year and finally Alzira in 1999. All of them, as I note above, feature Fabio Luisi on the podium. He brings strength and sympathy to the Verdi’s music, as did his predecessor Gardelli. With an intriguing sinfonia in two distinct parts adding colour (CD 1 Tr.1) coupled with vibrant choral writing it is unmistakably Verdi, even if not at his best. Alongside a vibrant chorus the principal soloists are excellent with Anna Mescherakova lyric-toned and full-voiced in the title role. Ramon Vargas is sensitive as any tenor around as Zamoro, albeit a little stretched in his second act aria (CD2 Tr.7) whilst Paolo Gavanelli portrays a characterful Gusmano.

Recorded in Geneva the sound is superior to the earlier Orfeo recording with Bavarian forces in 1982. The work may lack the definitive character of its predecessor and successor, but it has all the hallmarks of Verdi. I thoroughly enjoyed my rehearing of it for this review and commend the experience to others.

9. Attila (CDs 17-18)
The failure of Alzira and the pace of his compositional life took its toll on Verdi’s frail psyche and bodily well-being. In 1845 he wrote ‘My mind is always black … I must look forward to the passing of the next three years. I must write six operas’. One of those six was Attila, his ninth opera. It was the first of three written under a contract with the publisher Lucca who retained all rights. It was the first time Verdi had written for a publisher not a theatre. Some year’s later Lucca sold the autograph of Attila to a wealthy Englishman living in Florence. It is now in the possession of the British Museum and is the only Verdi autograph not held by the Italian publisher Ricordi or the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.

Earlier Verdi had enthused to Piave about Werner’s play of 1808 titled "Attila König der Hunnen" and after the success of Ernani the librettist prepared an outline. When Attila became the subject of the opera for Venice’s La Fenice the composer considered the more grandiose Solera a better bet for the libretto of Attila. Later, when the dilatory Solera had to go to Spain on family matters, Verdi turned again to Piave to make the modifications he required to the last act. Solera was not pleased. It was the end of a collaboration that had not produced a single failure.

Verdi’s Attila is traditional in structure with arias, duets and cabalettas. It has the composer’s hallmark of verve and colour as one scene or confrontation moves to the next. Although the librettists followed the composer’s instructions to concentrate on the principals there are significant and particularly vibrant choruses. Neither Verdi nor the audience passed over the dramatic situation when the Roman General Ezio calls on the conquering Attila, King of the Huns, You may have the universe but leave Italy to me. It is a wonder that the occupying Austrian censors passed the scene, which regularly produced a vociferous reaction from the audience. It doubtless contributed to the contemporary success of Attila. It is the heaviest and noisiest of the ‘galley years’ operas and maintained its place in the repertoire of Italy’s theatres during Verdi’s lifetime.

On record Attila was a natural for the second in Philips’ early Verdi series. Recorded in London in 1972 it has Ruggero Raimondi as Attila himself and Christina Deutekom as Odabella, whose father was killed by the Hun and on whom she avenges herself by stabbing him to death. Both singers feature in the earlier recording of I Lombardi. Raimondi is in sonorously refulgent voice and conveys the magnanimity of the role well whilst the soprano is no match for Cheryl Studer on the rival EMI recording. The tipping point in this recording, along with Raimondi’s contribution, is Carlo Bergonzi’s elegantly sung and phrased Foresto with Sherrill Milnes' smooth voiced singing matching him for vocal elegance and characterisation.

10. Macbeth (CDs 19-20)
 Five days after the premiere of Attila, Verdi returned to Milan. He was expected to travel to London to write an opera for the impresario Benjamin Lumley, to be produced at Her Majesty’s Theatre. He was in a state of collapse. His doctors forbade travel and ordered six months complete rest with no thought of composing or future commitments. Although physically strong, Verdi’s psyche was unable to sustain the demands made on composers by the Italian theatres in the way Rossini and Donizetti had. Whether this was a consequence of the intensity and involvement he brought to the planning and staging of his works, perhaps coupled with the lack of the support of a family and the manner of their early deaths, can only be conjectured.

For the first few months of his enforced rest Verdi did as instructed by his doctors whilst being cared for by his pupil and amanuensis Emmanuele Muzio. Verdi sent medical certificates to Lumley in London who tended to be as sceptical, as Flauto in Naples had been, regarding the composer’s illness. Whilst taking the waters at Recoaro in July his friend Andrea Maffei was a visitor. A man of letters and translator of Shakespeare and Schiller, Maffei set Verdi’s mind in different directions, to Byron’s play The Corsair that the composer had earlier discussed with Piave and Lucca as the subject for London. By mid-August his mind was divided between an opera based on Schiller’s 'Die Raüber', which later became I Masnadieri, and Macbeth based on his beloved Shakespeare copies of whose works he kept by his bed. Verdi envisaged Schiller’s Karl as a tenor and wrote to Lanari, the impresario in Florence, which was now taking precedence over London, to enquire if the tenor Fraschini was to be a member of the company. He was not, and Verdi turned to the subject of Macbeth knowing he would have the baritone Varesi available in Florence whom he considered ideal in temperament and appearance for the title role.

The choice of Macbeth was bold on Verdi’s part, as the play had not yet been staged in Italy, though it had been translated. Since Florence was also the centre of liberal thought, Verdi was able to treat scenes of supernatural interference in political events, of regicide and political tyranny, that censors elsewhere in Italy would never have permitted. It was a pioneering piece, not the first opera based on a Shakespeare plot, but the first that can truly be described as Shakespearean, the first that altered operatic conventions to serve the play rather than converting the play into traditional operatic formulas. As Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's speeches were composed, Verdi sent them out to his principals, with repeated injunctions that they should study and declaim the text, and serve the playwright rather than the composer. This was a new kind of opera, he said ... and it was.

As I note above, I am commenting on the operas in the sequence of their first production and as they are presented and numbered in this collection. However, the music, particularly in respect of this performance of Macbeth is significantly different from that heard at the premiere. This is because in the winter of 1863-64 Verdi was visited by his Paris representative, Léon Escudier, who informed him that Paris’s Théâtre Lyrique had enquired if the composer would write ballet music for insertion into Macbeth for performances at the theatre. Verdi’s response was more than Escudier could have hoped for, indicating that the composer wished to undertake a radical revision, originally in French, of the opera he had written eighteen years before. Verdi’s proposals for the revised Macbeth included new arias for Lady Macbeth in act 2, with the conventional two verse Triofonai securo being replaced by La Luce langue (CD 1 Tr.10), its chromaticism in his later style. He also made substantial alterations to act 3 including Ora di morte, a duet for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth as well as an additional ballet, de rigueur for Paris, (not included in this recording but present with other ballet music on CD 75). In act four, Verdi re-wrote the opening chorus Patria oppressa (CD 2 Tr.7), added the thrilling battle scene and replaced Macbeth's death scene with the finale Inno de Victoria (CD 2. Tr.16) where Macduff, to great rejoicing, reports killing Macbeth.

This recording was made in January 1976 following Giorgio Strehler's much-admired staging of the work, conducted by Abbado, at La Scala. Regrettably that stage performance is only available on poor pirated recordings. With the theatre in mid-season and not available, a difficult acoustic any case, it was recorded in the most difficult of conditions in the partially completed Centro Telecinematografico Culturale requiring improvisation by the recording team. From that adversity comes victory; the sound here is close, warm and clear. Abbado balances the lyric and the dramatic episodes in an outstanding manner that glosses over the musical differences present in the score between the original and the Paris revisions. To this add a superb cast, particularly Shirley Verrett as the wife, her smoky tone meeting in a musical manner Verdi’s very specific requirement for the role. In the eponymous role Piero Cappuccilli gives one of his most involved readings of the many opera recordings he made. Not as incisive, or as vocally biting as Gobbi might have been, his is nonetheless an interpretation to cherish. Nicolai Ghiaurov is outstanding as Banquo and Plácido Domingo is a vocally virile Macduff. All in all one of the greatest Verdi opera recordings.

There is a recording of the original 1847 version from the series made for the BBC under Verdi scholar Julian Budden’s guidance. This features Peter Glossop in the title role and Rita Hunter as his lady, two of the finest British singers of their generation in this repertoire.

For Verdi his ‘anni de gallera’ were not yet over. However, in Macbeth there is a new freedom and depth in his composition. Those qualities surely reflect the less pressurised period that the composer had enjoyed during the work’s composition. The work has novelties such as the sleepwalking and apparition scenes and the lack of love interest.

11. I masnadieri (CDs 21-22)
Next up for Verdi was to fulfil more of his contract with Lucca including writing a work for London. The original proposal for Il Corsaro based on Byron’s poem was ditched in favour of I Masnadieri, the libretto written by the composer’s friend Andrea Maffei. Similar in structure to Attila it has never had the popularity of that work, particularly in Italy.

Impresario Lumley had gathered a fine cast for Verdi’s opera including Jenny Lind, known as the Swedish Nightingale. For the first time in her life she was to create a role specially written for her. Verdi was impressed by her personality but less so by her singing with her inclination to show off her technique in fioriture and trills. Significantly, Verdi left the cadenzas to her invention. She expected to derive her own and they remained her property. Mindful of Jenny Lind’s vocal qualities and limitations, Verdi’s writing of the role of Amalia keeps to the middle and upper soprano reaches, much as for Gilda in Rigoletto.

For this issue, faced with the choice of the superbly cast Philips 1974 recording featuring Carlo Bergonzi, Pierro Cappuccilli and Ruggero Raimondi with Montserrat Caballé in the Jenny Lind role of Amalia, the choice is the later Decca recording featuring their star coloratura soprano Joan Sutherland alongside the rarely recorded Franco Bonisolli as Carlo. I do not know why Pavarotti, Sutherland’s regular partner, was not involved, but the chosen tenor is not the most renowned for vocal elegance. Although the Welsh National Opera Chorus are in good form the earlier Philips recording would be my choice. Montserrat Caballé, despite recording the lirico-spinto role of Aida a month before in London, with Muti on the rostrum, has the capacity to fine down her voice for the lighter role of Amalia. Caballé was also the queen of the sotto voce pianissimo and coloratura floated on a wisp of breath, albeit she lacked Sutherland’s trill. Despite the Bonynge recording being DDD the Philips analogue runs it close sonically.

Lumley was sufficiently impressed to invite Verdi to become Musical Director of Her Majesty’s Theatre. This would involve him in writing one opera each year and conducting the others in the season; the proposed contract to be for ten years. Like the London climate this proposal did not appeal to Verdi who suggested a three-year deal at ninety thousand francs per season. Although Lumley proposed discussing the matter further when he visited Italy, the matter did not proceed.

On the way to and from Paris Verdi spent time with Giuseppina Strepponi whom he had known since her creation of Abigaille in Nabucco and who was to play an increasingly important part in his life.

12. Jérusalem. Sometimes shown as Gerusalemme (CDs 23-25)
The Paris Opéra had approached Verdi for a composition shortly after the premiere of Giovanna d’Arco. It marked significant recognition for him as a composer. However, he was fully committed to his contract with Lucca. Back in Paris from England, as well as seeing a lot of Strepponi, Verdi agreed on a work for the Opéra. Given the pressures of time he followed the example of both Rossini and Donizetti in adapting an existing work. In Verdi’s case this was I Lombardi, his fourth opera which became Jérusalem his twelfth. The composition kept Verdi in Paris for the next few months during which his relationship with Strepponi came into full blossom. The French librettists, Royer and Väez, produced a libretto that was no mere translation of the Italian of I Lombardi into their own language. Although the shape of the plot, and the historical period of the crusades remained the same, the Italian crusaders of Lombardy became French from Toulouse. Verdi wrote a new orchestral introduction to replace the brief prelude as well as the required ballet music. In addition he composed substantial additions to the score. Importantly, he discarded the rather immature scene in which the deceased Oronte appeared from heaven complete with aria. The changes are sufficient for Jérusalem to be considered a separate entity from I Lombardi. Although Verdi had high hopes for the Italian translation, as Gerusalemme, these were only partially realised.

At its premiere 26 November 1847 Jérusalem, involving the tenor Duprez renowned for singing his high C notes from the chest, and creator of Edgardo in Donizetti’s Lucia, was a fair success. Recorded in 1998 in Geneva with the Suisse Romande Orchestra and the home chorus under Fabio Luisi it is stunning as a performance and recording. When released in 2000 I was in the record store promptly for the three CD set and thoroughly enjoyed the listening experience, a joy repeated in re-listening for this review. There is a little disappointment in the lack of incisive tone and sonority in the singing of Roberto Scandiuzzi, but I am more than happy with the characterisation, if not the diction, of Marina Mescheriakova as Hélène. With her strong firm tone she has gone on to a considerable career. Marcello Giordani as Gaston sings with ringing tone and, to my ears, reasonable French. The Francophone Philippe Rouillon perhaps shows up the linguistic limitations of the others. The remainder of the cast are never less than competent. Already owning the Orfeo Alzira, the new recording gave me a full hand of Verdi operas on CD including the important original versions. I must also admit most other Verdi operas were, and are, in several versions.

Were it not for the dramatic political upheavals in France in 1848, leading to the abdication of Louis Philippe and the establishment of the Second Empire, Verdi would have returned to the Paris Opera long before he did. The political strains in France did not inhibit Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi’s love affair that flourished in a manner that would not have been possible in the more restrictive Catholic ambience of Busseto.

13. Il corsaro (CDs 26-27)
Verdi still had the third obligation to Lucca to fulfil. It says something about his newly found financial situation that he offered the publisher ten thousand lire to release him from the contract. The offer was refused and Verdi turned to Piave’s libretto of Byron’s 'Corsair', which he had held for some time under the title Il Corsaro. He composed the work over the winter months of 1847-48 and sent the completed score to conductor and friend Muzio in Milan asking that he deliver it to Lucca. Normally, Verdi would have attended rehearsals, modifying the score to meet the singer’s strengths and limitations. He didn’t do so. Even worse, he could not be bothered to attend the premiere at the Teatro Grande, Trieste on 25 October 1848 preferring to stay in Paris with Strepponi. Local patriotism was outraged and the reception hostile despite Lucca having carded a strong cast for the premiere. Verdi had hoped that Muzio would conduct the opera, but he had to flee to Switzerland following the failed Italian revolution. The local press made hay with comments about full pockets of English guineas and French francs. Il Corsaro appeared in Milan, Venice and Naples in subsequent seasons but was not received with enthusiasm. Later, when Venice’s La Fenice proposed its revival in the season that was to produce La Traviata, the composer declined a special contract to take charge of rehearsals. After 1854, Il Corsaro disappeared for more than a century.

The Philips recording of 1975, the fifth in the series is that chosen here. The work at 94 minutes is marginally longer than Alzira. Gardelli conducted the Philharmonia Orchestra and Ambrosian Singers. The work is lacking in choral content and sounds a little more placid than usual whilst maintaining Gardelli's usual model of the epitome of a Verdian stylist. As the hero Corrado, pursued by two women, José Carreras is appropriately virile vocally as well as tasteful. The two heroines, Jessye Norman, as the faithful wife Medora, is full-toned and characterful whilst Montserrat Caballé as Gulnara is tasteful but lacking a little in vocal bite; they are nicely contrasted in vocal tone. As Pasha Seid Gian-Piero Mastromei sings strongly without erasing thoughts of what Cappuccilli would have brought to the role. The analogue sound is good with space and warmth.

14. La battaglia di legnano (CDs 28-29)
As I have already noted, 1848 was a year of political disturbance in Europe. This had an influence on Verdi, an ardent republican, who wanted to see northern Italy liberated from Austrian occupation. Earlier in the year Austrian troops in Milan fired on a crowd precipitating the building of barricades in the streets and five days of street fighting known as the ‘Cinque giornate’. Verdi had returned to Milan from Paris and saw the gigantic barricades. To give succour to his fellow radicals he composed the hymn Suona la Tromba. However, it was a false dawn. Internal divisions returned matters to the status quo for another decade. Verdi’s prime purpose in returning, and one that was to dominate his future life and actions, particularly his operatic compositions, was the purchase of the Villa Sant’Agata near Busseto. In due course he set up house there with Giuseppina Strepponi. After completion of this business he returned again to Paris and Strepponi.

Verdi was still contracted to supply an opera for Naples and the house librettist, Salvatore Cammarano, came up with the suggestion of the 1176 Battle of Legnano when the Lombardy League defeated Frederick the Great. It was a subject, Cammarano argued, that would stir every man with an Italian soul. With the historical background not troubling the censors and with Cammarano’s ready accommodation of Verdi’s suggestions the outcome was a taut melodrama of patriotic sentiments and violent action. That said, the political upheavals of 1848 gave the censors of Naples second thoughts and Verdi’s contract to give the opera in that city fell by the wayside. In the event his patriotic opera La battaglia di Legnano, his fourteenth, was premiered in Rome on 27 January 1849 conducted by the composer.

At the time of the premiere Rome, minus the Pope, was about to declare itself a Republic. The republican leaders Mazzini and Garibaldi had arrived and the city was electric with excitement. On the night of the premiere, the Teatro Argentina was packed out. At the first words of the opening chorus Viva Italia! Sacro un patto tutti stringe I figli suoi (Long live Italy! A holy pact binds all her sons together) there were cries of Viva Verdi and Viva Italia. The fourth act, where the news of the triumph of the Lombard League soldiers was revealed with cries of Vittoria! Vittoria!, the following grand scena, trio and Hymns of Victory, had to be encored in its entirety at every performance of the season. The audience knew full well what they were cheering and it had more relevance than a battle seven hundred years before. La battaglia di Legnano received a few performances elsewhere in northern Italy but succumbed to Austrian censorship as they once again took over the region and its states.

There were some attempts at revivals with the venue and situation changed. Later the opera came to be thought of as a pièce d’occasion and passed into oblivion. What is notable in the work is that Verdi’s music takes a significant step forward in its construction in what is the last of the grandiose operas of his early period. Not only is grandiosity more focused, but Verdi also shows that he is more easily able than previously to give musical dimension to the personal relationships in the story.

The recording included in this collection is that by Philips with Gardelli back in fine form on the rostrum and a solo team of Katia Ricciarelli and Carreras as the fated lovers. Recorded in one of Decca’s favourite venues, the Konzerthaus, Vienna in July 1977, it was the penultimate recording in the first Philips series. The visceral thrill of the music is considerable. I might have preferred Caballé and Cappuccilli among the soloists but that is purely personal and should not detract from a wholesome recommendation.

15. Luisa Miller [CDs 30-31]
After the launching of La battaglia di Legnano Verdi returned to Paris and to Strepponi. During the revolutionary upheavals he had formally written to the San Carlo breaking off his contract. However, it was not to be got rid of that easily. As the Austrians had re-taken control in the north, the status quo returned. The San Carlo blamed librettist Cammarano for failing to provide a libretto and threatened to sue and imprison him. With a wife and six children to support Cammarano wrote to Verdi begging him to renew his Naples contract; for his librettist’s sake the composer did so. To Cammarano he stipulated that the new opera should be ‘a brief drama of interest, action and above all feeling’. Verdi also wanted something spectacular to suit the size of the San Carlo and proposed an opera based on The Siege of Florence. Unsurprisingly the Naples censor would have none of it. Cammarano suggested Schiller’s Kabale und Liebe, the last of his early prose plays, noting there was ‘no rebellion, or the rhetoric of Die Rauber’, the source of I Masnadieri. The opera premiered in London. Cammarano took care to eliminate the political and social overtones of the play with its story of innocence destroyed by corruption and the machinations of those in power. In Cammarano’s hands, subtly manipulated by the composer, Schiller’s play became Luisa Miller, Verdi’s fifteenth opera. It was premiered at the San Carlo on 8 December 1849.

Verdi might originally have wanted something spectacular for the San Carlo. What he and Cammarano hatched was an intense personal drama. In parts of La battaglia di Legnano Verdi had learned how to express intimate emotions in his music. In Luisa Miller the composer takes this skill a quantum leap forward together with a new concentration of lyrical elements. This is achieved with the avoidance of excessive use of brass and timpani. Instead, the plaintive woodwind tones give character to the more intimate pastoral nature of the early scenes in particular. The individual characters are filled out musically and encompass the varying emotions they have to convey and which differ significantly in the three acts. It is in the music of the last act where scholars suggest that Verdi really breaks new ground and shows himself compositionally ready for the subjects of the great operas that were subsequently to flow from his pen.

The version included is an original Decca recording, made in Kingsway Hall London in June 1975 with Ray Minshull as producer and James Lock and Keith Wilkinson as engineers. It is Decca sound at its best for the time and has lasted well. On the rostrum Peter Maag, relatively unknown on record in this repertoire, is a sympathetic Verdian. The cast is sumptuous. As Luisa, Montserrat Caballé, with her soft singing rising to climactic agonies characterises superbly. Luciano Pavarotti as her suitor Rodolfo, at his elegant and tasteful best, matches her vocally and histrionically and sings the act three aria Quando le sere la Plácido with elegant phrasing and tonal variation (CD2 Tr. 5). Sherrill Milnes as Luisa’s father is at his considerable best whilst British singers Richard Van Allan as the evil Wurm and Anna Reynolds as Frederica are more than fully up to the task. It is widely accepted that, in the final act in particular, Verdi shows his newfound mastery to give musical dimension to the personal relationships in the story. It was a skill that was to play a vital part in his compositions in what is now referred to as his middle period.

In Naples the first part of Verdi’s fee was not forthcoming and acrimony ensued between Verdi, the impresario and the financially strapped San Carlo directors. Luisa Miller was well, but not over-enthusiastically, received, and Verdi returned home somewhat soured and vowing never to compose for the San Carlo again. He never did, although both sides made attempts at reconciliation.

16. Stiffelio [CDs 32-33]
By 1850, following the premiere of Luisa Miller his ‘anni di gallera’ could finally be seen to be over. In Luisa Miller Verdi showed he was compositionally ready to tackle subjects involving more personal problems, interactions and relationships. This ability was perhaps paralleled in his personal life as during the composition of Luisa Miller Verdi and Strepponi left Paris to live in Busseto. Their cohabitation caused difficulty with his parents and estranged him from several old friends. Later it caused a brief fracture with Barezzi, his father-in-law and benefactor, whom Verdi revered. When the composition was finished Verdi took Barezzi to Naples for the premiere and to show him the sights of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Ischia.

Verdi’s contracted commitments were twofold. The first was an opera for Ricordi, his publisher, to be given in the autumn of 1850 in any Italian theatre of the publisher’s choosing, except, at Verdi’s continued insistence, Milan’s La Scala. The second was for La Fenice in Venice. With time pressing Verdi proposed four subjects to the compliant Piave, including Le Roi s’amuse that he had already suggested to Cammarano. Piave countered with a list including Stiffelius, based on a French play. The story concerns a protestant minister whose wife commits adultery in her husband’s absence and who forgives her from the pulpit choosing an apposite reading from the Bible. It is a melodramatic story packed with human emotions and inter-relationships as well as dramatic situations. With his success in conveying the intimate relationships involved in his previous two operas, Verdi felt confident in his capacity to deal with the story. He also badgered Piave to study Victor Hugo’s 'Le Roi s’amuse'; the subject obviously captivated him.

The Ricordi commission was placed at the Teatro Grande in Trieste. Piave produced the libretto of Stiffelio, quickly and the composer spent the summer months of 1850 on the work. The two travelled to Trieste for the premiere and hit big opposition from the Catholic Church who not only objected to the concept of a priest being a married man, but also that the congregation were represented kneeling in prayer. Further, Stiffelio’s quotation from The Sermon on the Mount, as he publicly forgives his wife Lina her adultery was forbidden, as was her earlier address to her husband when she appeals Ministro, ministro confessateri (Minister, minister, hear my confession). Verdi considered that the changes demanded would emasculate the dramatic impact of the whole plot. He agreed to compromises with the censors as long as the dramatic situation and the thrust of his music were not affected. In later circumstances, and where compromise was not possible, as will be seen with Un Ballo in Maschera, he packed his bags and took his opera elsewhere. With Stiffelio having been placed by Ricordi this was not open to him despite his frustration and anger at the necessary revisions. The premiere was given on 16 November 1850 and was well received with press comments such as "tender melodies follow one another in a most attractive manner". All the performances in Trieste were sold out with the church scene omitted in at least three of them. However, in stagings in other Italian cities Stiffelio was re-titled Guglielmo Wellingrode, its principal character no longer a 19^th century protestant pastor, but a Prime Minister of a German principality in the early 15^th century. So as to utilize the music better Verdi himself determined that he would find a way of making it censor-proof and did so in a major revision of period and locale as for Aroldo in 1857, dealt with as number twenty-two below.

Stiffelio was lost for over a century, Verdi saw his music in Aroldo as the definitive version. However, luck and scholarship enabled a performing edition to be presented in Parma in 1968 conducted by Peter Maag. The Philips recording of Stiffelio included in this collection was made in one of Decca’s favourite venues, the Musikverein, Vienna, in June 1979. It was the last in the series of eight started in 1971 featuring Lamberto Gardelli on the rostrum and produced by Erik Smith. The recording is vibrant and clear with excellent sound, particularly important in the highly dramatic last act.

On this Philips recording the role of Stiffelio is taken with significant dramatic thrust by José Carreras. Sylvia Sass sings the adulterous wife with full dramatic tone and involvement in one of her rare assumptions on an international label. Matteo Manuguerra is a little blustery as Stankar the avenging father. Wladimiro Ganzarolli is surprisingly firm as Stiffelio’s fellow priest as is Ezio Di Cesare as the seducer of Lina, both of the latter roles being shown as comprimario in the score. Since this present seminal recording, both Covent Garden and New York’s Metropolitan Opera presented productions in 1993 and these are available on DVD. The London production features José Carreras in the title role (Opus Arte OA R3103 D); the role is taken by Domingo in New York (DG 073 4288 GH).

17. Rigoletto [CDs 34-35]
After Stiffelio had been put to bed Verdi was eager to get to grips with an opera based on Victor Hugo’s Le Roi s’amuse, called by him and Piave at this stage La maledizione. Verdi considered the play "perhaps the greatest drama of modern times" and the jester Tribolet, later to become Rigoletto in his opera, "a creation worthy of Shakespeare". In Verdi’s mind there could be no greater compliment. He and Piave worked on it throughout the summer of 1850. Piave, a native of Venice, had assured Verdi that the Austrian censors of that city would not object to the subject. However, on arrival in the city Verdi found that the censors did not merely object to the subject’s immorality, but also to such detail as a King being involved, that Rigoletto was a hunchback and that the body of his stabbed daughter was on the stage, in a sack, in the finale. Verdi packed his bags and returned to Busseto. Piave tried to re-cast the libretto to satisfy the censors, but Verdi rejected his efforts outright, considering that they nullified the dramatic impetus and thrust of the story and his composition. From Busseto he wrote to the President of the La Fenice offering a re-written ending to Stiffelio, in fulfilment of his contract to provide a new composition for its upcoming Carnival Season with himself being present as for a new revision. Verdi also informed Piave that the librettist would not be paid the final part of his fee. He was not merely angry but in high dudgeon. With the Carnival Season already under-way, Piave and the secretary of the La Fenice met the General Director of Public Order who made a number of concessions. The pair then hurried to Busseto on 30 December. In a six point document Verdi in his turn offered to compromise on a Duke instead of a King, but otherwise maintaining the original characters of Victor Hugo’s drama and particularly a setting where the threat of a curse was carried significant force. He also maintained the principle of Rigoletto’s deformity and the presence of the stabbed Gilda in the final scene. The points were accepted by the censor and Rigoletto, Verdi’s seventeenth opera opened at the Teatro La Fenice, Venice on 11 March 1851 with Felice Varesi, creator of Macbeth, in the title role.

Despite having to live with a deformity that set him apart, and which doubtless would have contributed to his sense of grievance and bitter tongue, Rigoletto is one of the most profoundly human of Verdi’s creations. His character is defined in the music of the great duets with his daughter Gilda. The first, in act one, is of fatherly love and concern, the second is of fury as he discovers her defilement by the Duke and the third of despair as he opens the sack and she tells him of her sacrificing of her life to save the man who raped her yet whom she loves. The vocal and histrionic demands of the role have drawn every great high baritone since its creation. A privileged few have set down their interpretations on record for posterity. To convey the cloistered and virginal Gilda, Verdi wrote the role for a light and flexible soprano, a voice-type that is rare in his works. To the rapacious Duke he not only gave the memorable aria La donna è mobile, destined to become the most famous tenor aria of all time, Nessun Dorma notwithstanding, but also the opening phrases of the most famous quartet in opera that follows in the final act. The Duke is one of the most gracefully lyrical of all Verdi’s tenor roles, which might be seen in some way as compensating for the vileness of his character.

As far as recordings are concerned, and for the first time in the Verdi canon, there is plenty of choice from Universal’s catalogue. The decision is to opt, for the first time in the collection thus far, for a recording conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and featuring arguably the best Verdi baritone of his generation, Piero Cappuccilli, already appearing in this selection in the demanding dramatic title role of Macbeth. Giulini, as I have noted, has been admired as a Verdian since his work at La Scala in the 1950s and a recording of the Requiem in the same period. A somewhat introspective aesthete I do not find his approach in this performance sufficiently biting or dramatic as befits the music and performance practice. Perhaps the limitations of the cast restricted him? Without the backing of a stage performance, as in the Macbeth referred to, and Simon Boccanegra below, Cappuccilli does not match his rivals in vocal interpretation or characterisation seemingly lacking vocal strength and depth. He significantly fails to express the agony or love as Gilda’s father in act one or in berating the courtiers as he seeks her presence in act two. As Gilda, Ileana Cotrubas, a pleasing presence and actress on stage, is not in best voice particularly at the top, despite a good trill. Nor does Plácido Domingo have the boyish brio exhibited by Pavarotti on the second Decca recording conducted by Bonynge, often seeming to squeeze the higher notes. Sutherland is more vocally secure than Cotrubas whilst Milnes brings greater interpretive strength and biting tone to the title role. Compared to Talvela’s low register, Ghiaurov here is no match as Sparafucile tells Rigoletto his name and slowly departs. The comparative Italian issue of 2012 features Pavarotti, June Anderson and Leo Nucci. It is not one I am conversant with.

The recording ambience and microphone placings give a somewhat closer sound, lacking in perspective compared with Decca’s best at the same venue.

From the start Rigoletto was popular with audiences although the censors, especially in the Papal States, did their best to emasculate it. In Naples it appeared as Clara de Perth with an altered text. Despite the virtues of its immediate successor operas, Il Trovatore and La Traviata, it was a long time before Verdi surpassed Rigoletto in compositional density of invention. At the age of 38, Verdi had put his own stamp and a new face on Italian opera; the period of the primo ottocento was finished. I suggest Verdi’s Rigoletto did for Italian opera what Beethoven’s Eroica had done for the symphony fifty years earlier; it moved the genre down a significantly new path. There might be regressions along the way, but the new direction was clear.

18 Il trovatore [CDs 36-37]
After the third performance of Rigoletto, Verdi left Venice for Busseto and Giuseppina. The notoriety of the subjects of his last two operas, Stiffelio and Rigoletto, followed him into the rather puritanical provincial countryside. The pair moved into the property at Sant’Agata. This involved Verdi moving his parents into another property, his father having been a poor manager of the farm. To compound matters Verdi’s mother died in the June. The questioning among the locals grew as to why Verdi had brought Giuseppina to Busseto without the benefit of marriage.

Matters did not go well in Naples either. Cammarano was not wholly in tune with Verdi’s enthusiasm for Garcia Gutiérez’s Spanish play Il Trovador as a basis for his next opera. Matters got worse as the librettist died without completing the work. The Young poet Emmanuele Bardare, who had converted Rigoletto into Clara di Perth for Naples, undertook the completion of the libretto. Verdi paid Cammarano’s widow the full fee, plus a premium, as she and her children were poorly provided for.

The various additions to the libretto of Il Trovatore that Verdi required of Bardare show his intent on a two-diva opera, with the voices concerned being of distinctly different ranges and colour. Needless to say the censor quibbled about details. The stake might be too vivid a reminder of the Inquisition and the words of the Miserere were altered, as strict liturgical phrases were not allowed. With these relatively minor problems sorted Il Trovatore, Verdi’s eighteenth opera, was eventually premiered at the Teatro Apollo, Rome, on 19 January 1853. It was a resounding triumph with the final scene being encored in its entirety.

The delay in the provision of the libretto meant that Verdi had to work on Il trovatore and La Traviata simultaneously if he was to meet the contracted date for the later work for La Fenice, Venice. Given the wholly different musical moods of the two works this was a measure of Verdi’s compositional maturity at this stage of his career. The two works were premiered a mere six weeks apart.

Caruso’s opinion of the quality of singers required for a performance of Il Trovatore as the work needing the four best singers in the world is fairly near the mark. The catalogue has many well-sung and conducted performances with this one under Giulini’s direction being one of the best. If his interpretation was, in my view, somewhat flaccid and lacking in dramatic thrust in Rigoletto this performance finds him in ultra-dramatic mode and with a cast to meet his vision. The tinta of the music calls for distinctly bigger voices than Verdi’s earlier operas or the operatic works of other Italian composers. The baritone singer of Rigoletto or Miller will generally encompass the role of Di Luna with ease. The same cannot be said of the tenor role of Manrico in Il Trovatore compared with the Duke in Rigoletto, Rodolfo in Luisa Miller or, for that matter, of any of the tenor roles in the composer’s previous works. The role of Leonora, which Verdi filled out for a prima donna voice, demands flexibility in coloratura and the dynamic range and colour of a dramatic, spinto, soprano. However, it is the role of the gypsy Azucena that really marks out the opera. Verdi had never previously written so full and dominant a role for contralto or dramatic mezzo voice. It was to be the first of a series of memorable roles for the voice type in his succeeding operas.

In this original 1984 DG recording Plácido Domingo repeats his assumption of Manrico in Mehta’s recording for RCA in 1970. In the intervening period the tenor had become the dominant Otello of his generation, a role he undertook relatively young, with many critics fearing he would damage his voice. On the contrary, the tenor added darker hues and greater strength, qualities well in evidence in his all-round performance here. As Leonora Rosalind Plowright matches Domingo’s vocal strength whilst Zancanaro as Luna sings with fine legato and elegant phrasing. The then growing dearth of Verdi voices is exemplified by the casting of Brigitte Fassbaender as Azucena. More used to singing the likes of Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus, she had never sung the role on stage and cannot match either the Verdian patina, or Italianata, of her colleagues or recorded rivals.

The recording is directed, as was the Rigoletto, by Günther Breest. He manages the problematic Santa Cecilia with care, allowing the drama full weight in a close acoustic whilst not equalling, to my ears, the quality Decca were getting contemporaneously.

19. La Traviata [CDs 38-39]
Whilst on a visit to Paris Verdi had seen and been impressed by Alexander Dumas’ semi-autobiographical play La Dame aux camélias based on the novel of the same name. The subject appealed to him, but he recognised that it might present problems with the censors. If Verdi felt he had hit problems with the composition of Il Trovatore, they were nothing compared to those he faced for the staging of La Traviata, a commission he had agreed for Venice’s La Fenice with Piave as librettist. It was the most contemporary subject he had set and was keen that the staging should reflect this. He was also worried about the suitability of the scheduled soprano for the title role. La Fenice decided to set his contemporary subject in an earlier period thus losing the immediacy and relevance that he intended for the audience. Verdi was correct in worrying about the censors and the whole project was nearly called off when they objected. As to the singers, all went well at the start and at the end of act 1, with its florid coloratura singing for the eponymous soprano, Verdi was called to the stage. The audience was less sympathetic to the portly soprano portraying a dying consumptive in the last act and laughed loudly. The tenor singing Alfredo was poor and the baritone Varesi, who had created both the roles of Macbeth and Rigoletto, considered Germont below his dignity and made little effort. Verdi himself considered the premiere on 6 March 1853 a fiasco.

The administrator of Venice’s smaller San Benedetto theatre undertook to meet Verdi’s demands. He revised five numbers in the score and on 6 May 1854 La Traviata was acclaimed with wild enthusiasm in the same city where it had earlier been a fiasco. Verdi was well pleased, but particularly by the circumstances and the location. La Traviata is now considered Verdi’s most popular opera and along with Mozart’s Magic Flute lays claim to be the most performed work on the lyric stage. Its vocal demands on the eponymous heroine are considerable and diverse between the three acts. The American diva Renée Fleming contends that Violetta is the perfect role in the entire soprano lexicon and that by which most sopranos have, historically, been measured. She contends that the three acts each demand a different acted and vocal quality.

Certainly Verdi’s creation is demanding on his prima donna in this performance. However, in respect of the choice of version made here I suggest the ultimate determinant is the presence of the conductor Carlos Kleiber. In volume three of filmed interviews and examples of the work of La Scala (review) Claudio Abbado, then Music Director of the theatre, openly states his admiration for Kleiber as a conductor of opera. A very shy, introverted and modest man he often had difficulty in realising his mental vision of a work and left few opera recordings. His qualities are in evidence throughout from the opening prelude. He evokes an ethereal spirituality in the quieter passages, particularly the preludes to acts one and three, whilst imbuing the more picturesque ones with brilliance. Recorded three years before her Gilda in Rigoletto mentioned above, the role of Violetta finds Ileana Cotrubas in much better voice. She does well with the coloratura of act one, stands up to Germont in act two and is superb in her characterisation in Violetta’s death scene in act three. As her suitor Alfredo, Plácido Domingo is in pristine lyric-toned form. There is none of the baritonal hue that came with singing Otello. He follows his conductor and achieves one of his best-recorded performances on record; likewise Sherrill Milnes as Giorgio Germont. Refulgent of tone, his characterisation and smooth legato are evident throughout.

Is this then the perfect, or even the best, recorded Traviata? It could have been so in the highly competitive race of nearly thirty recordings if it was complete. Regrettably it is not; around ten minutes are cut including second verses and cabalettas as was not unusual in stage performances at the time. A pity they were allowed in a recording made over a week in the Bürgerbräukeller Munich in May 1976 with the engineers providing a well-balanced and clear sound-picture.

20. I vespri siciliani [CDs 40-42]
Back in Busseto after the Traviata premiere, Verdi turned his mind towards his contract with the Paris Opéra for a five act grand opera including a ballet. The 1830s and 1840s were the golden age at The Opéra under the management of Veron with Auber, Meyerbeer and Halévy developing opera with greater complexity and spectacle than had been seen before. Every aspiring Italian composer of worth wanted to make his debut there and Verdi had done so with his revision of I Lombardi into Jérusalem. However, the dramatic political upheavals in France, leading to the Second Empire in 1848 made future plans impossible at that time. Verdi did not return to Paris until 1852 to negotiate a new contract with The Opéra who were desperate for a new grand opera to be premiered in 1855 during the Paris Exhibition of that year. Fully aware of his own value in the international market, Verdi drove a hard bargain. The full resources of the theatre were to be put at his disposal and no other new opera was to be performed at the theatre that year. Further, Verdi would choose all the cast himself and there would be forty performances guaranteed. The composer was also to enjoy the services of Eugène Scribe as librettist.

Verdi and Strepponi travelled to Paris in October 1853 when the scheduled date for the new opera was more than a year and a half away. Scribe tried to palm Verdi off with a libretto that had been turned down by Halévy and later partially set to music by Donizetti as Le Duc d’Albe (review). Even when the subject of Les Vêpres Siciliennes, Verdi’s twentieth title, was settled, Scribe persistently failed to provide the composer with a dramatically taut final act. Verdi demanded release from the contract, as its terms, as originally stipulated by him, had not been met. Eventually matters were resolved and the composer and poet reconciled their differences with the plot being set in Palermo, Sicily, in 1292 at the time of the French occupation. The five act opera, complete with ballet, was premiered on 13 June 1855 and was well received. Although Les Vêpres Siciliennes received more performances in the season than the contracted number, Verdi’s first Grand Opera had a chequered fate. Although there was a revival in Paris in 1863, for which Verdi wrote several new arias, it was not heard in France in its original language after 1865.

Musically, Verdi used the story as a basis for a new, more ample and rhythmically complex style of melody. He also, seized the opportunity of solving a problem, which had eluded him in a somewhat similar work, La battaglia di Legnano, namely that of reconciling the private and public emotions of the main characters by means of a more varied musical language albeit its main lyrical numbers lack the melodic impact of the three great Italian operas that preceded it. The composer subsequently succeed in mastering any deficiency in his later works.

The first Paris performances over, Verdi organised an Italian translation, I Vespri Siciliani, only to discover that the subject was not acceptable in Italian theatres due to the censors' objections to its revolutionary context. Consequently, in the first productions in Italy the location of the action and the title were changed and the opera made an auspicious start in Italy with nine productions in different theatres during the 1855-56 carnival season. The ballet was eventually dropped in Italian performances. It was not until the liberation and unification of Italy that either the original French title or the equivalent Italian was permitted.

In the present day, the work has never achieved great popularity in either French or Italian, a fact indicated by the dearth of recordings. Until the issue by Opera Rara of the original French version of Les Vêpres Siciliennes (review) the work had only been heard on record in its Italian manifestation, I Vespri Siciliani. No French version is provided in this collection, it’s most serious omission. The 2011 Italian version of this collection includes the 1974 RCA recording featuring Plácido Domingo, Sherrill Milnes, Ruggero Raimondi and Martina Arroyo (RCA 80370). Although a little hard-driven by Levine, both the performance and recording are better than that included in this collection conducted by Muti and derived from several live performances at La Scala in December 1989 and January 1990. Of the soloists only Cheryl Studer as Elena and Giorgio Zancanaro stand out in a mediocre recording. The record sleeve indicates its origins on EMI. The La Scala performance under Muti is available on DVD (Opus Arte OA LS 3008 D). The ballet music is included here as well as being repeated in an altogether better Decca recording on CD 75 conducted by Chailly.

21. Simon Boccanegra [CDs 43-44]
In March 1856 Verdi travelled to Venice to witness the triumph of La Traviata at the La Fenice, the very stage where its premiere had been a fiasco three years before as I explain above. The following month Piave made an extended return visit to Busseto where Verdi reluctantly agreed to his suggestion to exchange the Protestant Minister in Stiffelio for an English crusader and add an entirely new act. The premiere of the revision was at first envisaged for the autumn of 1856 in Bologna. This was not to be as Verdi signed a contract with La Fenice to compose an entirely new work for the 1857 Carnival Season to a libretto written by Piave. The title of the new opera was to be Simon Boccanegra, Verdi’s twenty-first, based like Il Trovatore on a play by Gutiérez.

As with the Macbeth included in this collection that of Simon Boccanegra is not of the original version using Piave’s libretto. Instead the recording is a studio version of another Giorgio Strehler production at La Scala which used the version Boito provided for Verdi in 1881 as a precursor to their collaboration in the final two of Verdi’s operas, Otello and Falstaff.

The time gap between the original and the revision of Simon Boccanegra was even greater than that between the versions of Macbeth, which had been a great success at its premiere. The revision, which is the form in which the opera is performed today, was to all intents and purposes a new work with major alterations and additions to the dramatic situations, particularly the inclusion of the highly dramatic Council Chamber scene. More importantly Verdi’s musical maturity was at its apex in the three operas he composed to Boito’s new, or in this case revised, libretti. He had moved to a more seamless style with less of the traditional aria, duet and chorus style of his earlier works. Inevitably his earlier and new style mix somewhat in the revised Simon Boccanegra with the entirely new Council Chamber Scene in Verdi’s new style whereas other parts are in his older style.

As with his Macbeth recording described above, this Boccanegra was made after a staged production at La Scala under Abbado, with Piero Cappuccilli in the title role. He is unrecognisable from his anaemic Rigoletto featured in this collection. He rises to histrionic heights in the Council Chamber scene really applying fearsome weight of tone as he addresses the assembled Council particularly as he calls on them with the words "Plebe! Patrizi! Popolo!" (CD.43. Tr.16) and then curses the perpetrator of the attempted abduction of Amelia. He also shows greater sensitivity in the recognition duet of act one when Boccanegra discovers that Amelia is his long lost daughter living in the household of his enemy the patrician Fiesco (CD.43 Tr.11). This concludes with a soft high note on O figlia that Cappuccilli’s achieves with a delicate sensitivity that defeated Gobbi in the 1950s recording.

Whilst Freni sounds a little mature in the recognition duet she comes into her own in the later dramatic confrontations of act two as she pleads with her father for clemency for Gabriele her lover and has to convince him that her love of the Doge is pure convincing him to join forces against the rebels (CD.44 Trs. 4-7). As her lover Gabriele, José Carreras is ardent and characterful in his singing throughout whilst Nicolai Ghiaurov as the seemingly implacable patrician Fiesco is quite magnificent in tonal sonority and vocal characterisation. His singing of the recit and aria Il lacerato spirito in the prologue (CD.43 Tr. 3) is as good as it gets. There are no weaknesses in the cast whilst Abbado is outstanding on the rostrum in one of his greatest opera recordings. The sound in the completed Centro Telecinematografico Culturale, Milan, has presence, clarity, warmth and a wide dynamic.

This is one of the outstanding recordings and performances in this collection.
 
22. Aroldo [CDs 45-46]
After the premiere of Les Vêpres Siciliennes Verdi did not immediately return to Busseto in his usual way. Instead he was concerned to safeguard his interests in England and also at the Paris Théâtre Italien where several of his operas had been given in pirated versions. When he did return home in December 1855 he had no firm contract for a further opera. However, Verdi had purchased more land in Busseto to enlarge his farm at Sant’Agata and was aware that he would have to take up his compositional pen to clear his debts. He had three possible projects on the horizon. These included revision of Stiffelio and which would involve Piave, now resident stage director of Venice’s La Fenice. As well as having Verdi direct the production, and Piave to stage it, the performances were to have the benefit of a professional conductor in the person of Angelo Mariani who was rapidly establishing himself as primo in this newly emerging profession. Mariani’s presence enabled Verdi to write three sophisticated choruses, with elaborate part writing, for new last act. This act, set on the shores of Loch Lomond in Scotland, is entirely new and bears no relationship to the equivalent scene in Stiffelio. Well used to crusaders and the like in the operas of Rossini and Donizetti, and without the complications of a married clergyman, Aroldo Verdi’s twenty-second opera was a success. Much of the writing is Verdi 1857 vintage. With five other operas behind him since the composition of Stiffelio, at every comparable point between the two works, except perhaps for the opening scene of Stiffelio, the later Aroldo is superior.

Despite its recording date of 1997 this recording was not issued until 2001, alongside Alzira recorded two years later in Geneva, the two presumably issued to coincide with the centenary of the composer’s death. With the 1998 recording of Jerusalem, also recorded in Geneva and issued in 2000, it brought Philips’ Verdi recordings to a conclusion, the company being already subsumed into Decca, and then alongside DG, into Universal.

The choral scene in act four may have influenced the choice of an Italian venue with its orchestra and chorus. If so, the benefits are negated by the dominant Anglophonic principals. On re-listening I find Neil Shicoff, despite singing strongly, to be without much Italianate tone and certainly does not erase thoughts of Carreras, Bergonzi and Domingo who had featured on Philips' earlier rare Verdi recordings under Gardelli. Carol Vaness is a shadow of her former self whilst Anthony Michaels-Moore had not yet acquired the depth and strength of tone for a Verdi baritone. Whether these weaknesses contributed to Fabio Luisi’s somewhat anaemic conducting I can only surmise. However, his Verdi conducting in the other two recordings, and contemporaneously at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, surpasses his contribution here. In this recording Roberto Scandiuzzi is caught in steadier voice than on some later occasions. The recording quality is far better than the only rival, on the CBS label (M2K 79328) and derived from live New York performance in 1979 conducted by Eve Queler and featuring Montserrat Caballé.

23. Un ballo in maschera [CD 47-48]
With all other business out of the way, Verdi turned his mind to the contract he had signed with the San Carlo in Naples. This was for an un-named opera for the 1857-1858 Carnival Season. Somma had completed the libretto of King Lear and if the right cast could be assembled this was the intended subject. Verdi used the non-availability of his preferred soprano for the role of Cordelia to abort the proposal; it was an opera he was never to write. In 1896, passing the libretto to Mascagni, Verdi later admitting self-doubts as to his own ability to set "the scene in which King Lear finds himself on the heath terrified me." As a consequence of his prevarication Verdi failed to meet his June 1857 contract date with the San Carlo to provide a synopsis of the chosen plot. With time pressing he settled on an adaptation of an existing five-act libretto by none other than Eugène Scribe based on an actual historical event, the assassination in 1792 of Gustavus III of Sweden at a masked ball in the Stockholm opera house. Given contemporary events in Italy and Europe, and that Naples was part of a kingdom, Verdi was not surprised that the local censors demanded a change of locale. They demanded much more besides, including transfer to a pre-Christian age. Verdi accepted a change of location, and the King became a Duke, but he insisted on a period such as that of Louis XVI’s court. These changes were submitted to the censor when Verdi arrived in Naples in January 1858. Any chance of their approval went with the news of Felice Orsini’s attempt on the life of Napoleon III of France in Paris on 13 January. The Naples Chief of Police ruled that the opera text would have to be re-written in its entirety to preclude any dancing on stage and the murder must be off-stage.

In the ensuing impasse the San Carlo management decided another poet would re-set the opera to an entirely new libretto meeting all the local legal and censorship requirements. Verdi refused to have anything to do with the new libretto and the San Carlo sued him for breach of contract. Verdi counterclaimed for damages and had much popular support in Naples. The case was settled out of court with the theatre management charges dropped on condition that Verdi returned in the autumn to present a revival of Simon Boccanegra. During the legal brouhaha Verdi cast around for an alternative theatre for his opera and noted that a play titled Gustavus III had been given in Rome. He initiated secret negotiations with impresario Jacovacci to premiere his opera Un Ballo in Maschera, his twenty-third title, in that city subject to the approval of the Papal Censor. After some prevarication the censors agreed the principles of the plot and the action, provided the location was removed from Europe to North America at the time of the English domination. In this revised scenario Gustavus became Riccardo Earl of Warwick, Governor of Boston, whilst his secretary became Renato, a Creole. Un Ballo in Maschera was premiered at the Teatro Apollo, Rome, on 17 February 1859 to wide acclaim.

Fortunately for the recorded legacy, Un Ballo in Maschera’s consummate melodic music so illuminates the plot that the work has appealed to conductors and singers alike, all keen to set down their interpretations for posterity. Of the Three Tenors generation Pavarotti, a Decca exclusive artist, twice recorded the role of Riccardo, one that suits his voice and character well. His 1970 recording features Renata Tebaldi, rather past her best as Amelia, Sherrill Milnes, a strong Renato with Bartoletti, a sympathetic Verdian conducting (Double Decca 460 762-2). His second, and the one chosen for inclusion here was recorded in 1982. It features Margaret Price as a very graceful Amelia and Renato Bruson, a characterful secretary, all conducted by Solti who shows more signs of sympathy to the composer than his earlier self. The Kingsway Hall, London, recording was spread out into two summers with further dubbing also involved. The casting of Christa Ludwig as Ulrica is not ideal in an otherwise well-recorded and enjoyable version. It does not quite obliterate memories of the less well recorded 1966 RCA issue featuring Bergonzi in the tenor role alongside Leontyne Price, the Verdi lirico-spinto of her generation, as Amelia, but is well worth inclusion for Pavarotti’s assumption, one of his best on record.

Intermission
After the premiere of Un Ballo in Maschera the Rome impresario, Jacovacci, attempted to persuade Verdi to sign a contract for a new opera. The composer was 46 years old and had written twenty-three operas in the previous twenty years. He announced to a small circle of friends, including Jacovacci, that he had given up composing and intended to return to his farm and enjoy the fruits of his labours in a more relaxed manner. Italian politics, which had not languished during Verdi’s Naples fiasco, were to make demands on his time and also to help, inadvertently, to tempt him to compose opera once more.

These time demands concerned moves for the unification and independence of Italy with statesman Cavour manoeuvring to bring France into an Italian war of independence. War technically started on 26 April 1859. Gounod’s Faust had been premiered in Paris a month before. The battle of Magenta was followed by that of Solferino on 24 June, involving three hundred and ten thousand men. Whether concerned about the dangers from war, the political uncertainties or for other reasons, Verdi and Giuseppina were married secretly on 29 August in the Piedmontese village of Collonges-sous-Salève, near the Swiss border of the province of Savoy. Meanwhile Verdi’s home state, The Duchy of Parma, had voted first to join with neighbouring Modena and then Piedmont. Verdi was elected to the Assembly in Parma and he went to Turin, as part of a delegation, to meet Vittorio Emmanuele, King of the South, and also to visit Cavour. Insurgent fighter Garibaldi, although an ardent Republican, determined that Italy would be wholly united and with a small body of men began fighting in Sicily before marching, with an ever-increasing army, to Naples whilst proclaiming that he would go on to Rome and make it the capital of a united Italy. Cavour called for elections to a National Parliament. At Cavour’s insistence that his presence, as a pre-eminent Italian, would bring lustre to the Parliament’s proceedings, Verdi stood and was elected as a Deputy. With his estate to manage and Parliamentary duties in Turin, opera composition was, in the immediate future, very much on the back-burner. Verdi was to live for another forty years and if circumstances, situation and not least the fee were to his liking, he could be tempted to the theatre again. There were five new operas, two major revisions and the great Requiem to come from his pen.

Initially Verdi attended parliamentary sessions in Turin regularly. He spoke in favour of financial support from the state for the theatres of Rome, Naples and Milan so as to enable them to have a permanent ensemble including orchestra and chorus. He always voted the same way as Cavour, but worn out by his efforts, the great statesman and father of Italy died on 6 June 1861. Thereafter Verdi became less assiduous in his attendance and wanted to resign. The time was never deemed right and he served until the elections of 1865 when he refused to stand again.

24. La forza del destino [CDs 49-51] 1862 - St Petersburg version (Gergiev)
In December 1860, whilst Verdi was away in Turin, Giuseppina received a letter from a friend in Russia. Also enclosed was an invitation from the great Italian dramatic tenor Enrico Tamberlick, who Verdi knew and admired. Acting on behalf of the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg the letter invited Verdi to write an opera for the following season. Despite the likelihood of temperatures of minus 22 degrees below zero, the prospect appealed to Giuseppina and she promised to use all endeavours to persuade Verdi to accept. Whether it was her skills of persuasion, the fact that he was missing the theatre or the conditions of the contract, particularly the fee, that appealed, Verdi agreed.

Despite having been promised carte blanche as to the choice of subject, the Russians at first demurred at an opera based on Victor Hugo’s Ruy Blas, a play about a common valet who becomes the lover of an Empress and later Prime Minister of his country. As time dragged on without Verdi signing a contract, Tamberlick sent his son - some say younger brother - to see the composer with the message that the Russians would accept anything he demanded, even Ruy Blas, as long as he would compose for them. With the continued encouragement of Giuseppina and the prospect of a large fee, which would help fund the major alterations at Sant’Agata, Verdi searched sedulously for a suitable plot. He eventually settled on the subject of the Spanish romantic drama "Don Alvaro, o La fuerza de sino" by Angel Perez de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas.

The dark core of Rivas’s drama involves scenes set among the common people including a gypsy fortune-teller. Verdi lightens the dark plot with its multiple deaths somewhat further than the play. To do so he uses a scene from Schiller’s Wallenstein Lager involving a panorama of life in a military encampment including "soldiers, vivandieres, gypsies and a monk who preaches in the funniest and most delightful manner in the world." The monk would become Melitone in the opera. Elsewhere there is the necessary conflation of the two sons of Leonora’s father and the student Pereda from the play into the dramatic baritone role of Don Carlo who pursues both lovers for all three to die in the closing scene of the original version.

The contract Verdi signed with the Imperial Theatre of St Petersburg allowed him ownership and rights in all parts of the world outside Russia. To the detailed generous conditions Verdi, in his own hand, added the caveat that "should he fail to fulfil his obligations (other than by reasons of illness or force majeure) he will pay an indemnity of sixty thousand francs to the Management of the Imperial Theatre." Verdi worked with Piave throughout the summer of 1861 as Giuseppina made the domestic arrangements for the shipment of Bordeaux wine, Champagne, rice, macaroni cheese and salami for themselves and two servants. The composition, except for scoring, was finished in early November. The Verdis travelled to St. Petersburg via Paris and Berlin, presumably to avoid Austria, arriving on 6 December. Temperatures of twenty degrees below outside, and only fourteen above inside, met them. They were also met with the illness of the leading soprano scheduled to sing Leonora. With no possible alternative singer available it became obvious that a postponement to the following season was the only solution and Giuseppina and Verdi returned to Paris after a brief visit to Moscow.

There is no theatre in the world more proud of its history and traditions than St Petersburg's Mariinsky and no Music Director more in tune with its traditions than Valery Gergiev. Ever proud of having drawn the master of Italian opera to their centre, in the mid-1990s they staged their wholly owned edition of Verdi’s La Forza del Destino based on the original sets no less. At the time of the premiere the sets were described as extremely lavish along with costumes for which 200,000 francs had been set aside with the Tsar also making available the chorus of his Royal Regiments. The revival, with costume designed by Peter J Hall and the production directed by Elijah Moshinsky and conducted by Valery Gergiev, was recorded on film and has appeared on DVD (Arthaus 100 078 - review) the same principals, with notable exceptions, featuring in this audio recording. For his tenor friend Tamberlick Verdi wrote the most demanding music in respect of both length and vocal weight. In this 1862 version, the role of Alvaro is certainly not for a lyric tenor with aspirations. Gegam Grigorian as Alvaro sings the role with wide dynamic, full ringing tone and no little vocal grace. Although his fated lover, Leonora, gets quite a long rest after her big sing in acts one and two it is a role that requires a full spinto voice with a wide range of expression and colour. In this performance Galina Gorchakova fulfils all expectations and copes admirably. Verdi had written the role of Melitone with the baritone de Bassini, who had created Seid (Il Corsaro), the Doge (I Due Foscari) and Miller (Luisa Miller), in mind. He was not a buffa and Verdi wrote to him to assure him that he did not see the singer or the role in that context. What Verdi wanted, and got from de Bassini, was a full-toned and tuned bass-baritone with capacity for an acted and vocal turn of humour. This is what Georgy Zastavny conveys in this performance in a role that is often seen as a precursor to the composer’s conception of Falstaff. The Carlo of Nikolai Putilin is strong if a little dry and monochrome whilst Olga Borodina sings an outstanding Preziosilla the gypsy, making a fearsome call-to-arms in her of Rataplan (CD50 Tr.13). Her full-toned characterful assumption is a vocal highlight of the issue. However, Mikhail Kit’s raw and unsteady Padre Giordano is a serious liability, particularly in the conclusion to the second scene of act two as Leonora seeks admission and refuge and concludes with the beautiful melodic Il santo nome di Dio …. La Vergine degli angeli (CD49. Tr.18) with Gorchakova following the vocal line and soaring above the chorus of monks, as well as Padre Giordano and Melitone.

If Gergiev does not match Gardelli on the EMI issue of the 1869 version, few others have. The Russian’s conducting is rather stiff at times and he is certainly more a sympathetic and idiomatic Verdian on the DVD recorded three years later; even more so when he brought the company to the UK. I heard their performance of the piece in Birmingham’s Symphony Hall in 2006 (review) where he and his fluttering fingers had his players on top Verdian form. The only other performance of this version on CD is in the Opera Rara series featuring Martina Arroyo and Peter Glossop among other English speakers. It is still at full price (review).

This original 1862 St Petersburg original version has significant differences from the later 1869 revision dealt with below. It is also, I suggest, far easier to comprehend the sequencing of the unfolding drama of this complex and episodic opera, compared with the more commonly performed revision.

25. La forza del destino (CDs 52-54). 1869 La Scala edition.
With the glory of St Petersburg ringing in his ears, not to mention its honours and generous fees in his bank account, Verdi returned to Paris. He did not attend the Italian premiere of the opera in Rome under the title of Don Alvaro. The Papal Censor was still interfering and Verdi was also disappointed by the casting by the impresario Jacovacci, particularly of the role of Melitone. Instead, he and Giuseppina travelled to Madrid where he conducted the Spanish premiere on 13 January. There it was well received by the public. The press however, considered that it desecrated the Duke of Rivas’s play. The elderly author, present in the audience on the first night, shared that view. The version was seen in several Italian cities in 1863 as well as in Madrid again in 1864 and in Vienna in 1865. It was reprised in St Petersburg, with largely the same cast, in the two seasons following its premiere. Verdi did, however, withhold the score from theatres that he considered incapable of doing it justice. It is evident that he recognised the need for alterations early on when he transposed the tenor aria in act 3 downward on the basis that only Tamberlick was capable of meeting its demands. He instructed his publisher, Ricordi, to include the alteration in the scores he hired out. Verdi was unhappy with other aspects of the score as it stood, particularly the three violent deaths in the final scene. Increasingly the performing practice in Italy involved excision of the quarrel duet. Not until after the revision of Macbeth and the composition of Don Carlos did Verdi find a way forward when his publisher, Tito Ricordi, proposed a revival for the 1869 La Scala carnival season. By then Piave, the original librettist had suffered a stroke that paralysed him for the last eight years of his life during which Verdi provided much financial help to his family. The task of versifying the revisions fell to Antonio Ghislanzoni who the composer had met at the time of the writing of Attila and with whom he developed a cordial relationship.

The revised La Forza del Destino was premiered at La Scala on 27 February 1869. The presentation marked a rapprochement between Verdi and the theatre. The revision and performance are considered here out of calendar order but in the sequence presented in this Decca collection. The alterations of the score from the original version are significant rather than major. They involve the substitution of the prelude by a full overture, which nowadays is often played as a concert piece. Major revisions of the end of act three include the removal of the demanding tenor double aria whilst the whole final scene is amended avoiding the triple deaths. It is replaced by the Father Guardian’s benediction as Leonora dies and Alvaro is left alive.

Due to the changes of role of a conductor, a scheduled recording of the revised version of La Forza del Destino looked to be on the rocks when Sinopoli became music director of the orchestra and DG took over the recording with him on the rostrum and with some significant changes of soloists. Rosalind Plowright who features as Leonora in the Il Trovatore in this collection sings with spinto power and excellent characterization her voice heard to good effect in the act two scene two (CD 53. Trs 1-4) and the final act with its showpiece aria for Leonora, Pace, pace, mia Dio (CD 54. Tr. 14). Agnes Baltsa’s tangy mezzo is ideal for the gypsy and Bruson and Burchuladze, despite the latter’s glottal delivery, sing and characterise excellently. The more lyric-voiced José Carreras is somewhat stretched at times but never lets the side down. On the rostrum Sinopoli shows significantly more feel for Verdian line than on his recorded Nabucco whilst the 1985 digital recording in Watford Town Hall, London, is warm and atmospheric.

Intermission 2
During the staging of the two versions of La forza del destino Verdi seems to have resumed active composition and undertook new commissions more readily than seemed likely when his political activities were playing a more dominant part in his life. As I explain in covering Verdi’s Macbeth above, in the winter of 1863-1864 Verdi was visited by his Paris representative, Léon Escudier, who informed him that Paris’s Théâtre Lyrique had enquired if the composer would write ballet music for insertion into Macbeth for performances at the theatre. Verdi’s response was more than Escudier could have hoped, indicating that the composer wished to undertake a radical revision, originally in French, of the opera he had written eighteen years before. It is this revision, in Italian, that is included in this collection.

Back in Busseto after the premiere of the revised Macbeth, Verdi found himself in dispute with his home town who had constructed a municipal theatre and assumed that the composer would allow it to be named after him. For his part, although originally supportive, he had thought construction should have been put off and the funds used to support the war against the Austrians. Feeling coerced he at first refused before relenting and in August donating a sizeable cheque. Although a box was put at his disposal he never entered the theatre. That same month, having vowed never to have anything to do with the Paris Opéra again after his experiences during the composition of Les Vêpres Siciliennes Verdi was persuaded to relent and signed a contract to compose a new opera for that theatre. After resigning from the National Assembly in September he and his wife arrived in Paris on 1 December 1865. After considering several subjects, including, yet again King Lear, Verdi settled on Schiller’s Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien of 1787. The Verdis stayed in Paris until March 1866 working with the librettists Joseph Méry and Camille Du Locle, the former dying a few months later. When Verdi returned to Busseto the libretto was virtually complete and during the spring and summer he worked at the music, his concentration being disturbed by the onset of the Third War of Independence between Italy and Austria that started on 19 June 1865. After Italy’s defeat it needed the Prussians to rescue the situation with Austria making peace and ceding Veneto first to France, and after a plebiscite, to Italy. Verdi was greatly upset by the manner of the acquisition whilst Rome, as capital of Italy, remained a dream.

26. Don Carlos [CDs 55-58]
In Paris, Perrin the administrator of the Opéra was manoeuvring his roster of singers so as to make the best available for Verdi’s new work, Don Carlos, his twenty-fifth opera. There was trouble with the bass assigned for the Grand Inquisitor whilst Verdi also wanted changes in the last act and to improve cohesion and spectacle elsewhere. The casting of the role of Eboli also proved problematic and Verdi made transpositions to accommodate the singer allocated although the wide tessitura remains, and as a consequence continues to be a challenge for casting directors to this day.

At the dress rehearsal of the whole opera in February 1867 it became obvious that Don Carlos, was, at three hours forty-seven minutes, too long to allow time for suburban Parisians to get their last trains home and the composer reluctantly guillotined over twenty minutes of music. All this music was thought lost until at the Verdi Congress in Parma in 1969 David Rosen, an American scholar, produced a previously unknown section of the Philip-Posa duet that had been folded down in the conducting score prior to the premiere. The English musicologist Andrew Porter, acting on a hunch, visited the Paris Opéra library and asked to see the score. He was amazed to discover that the pages of the music that Verdi omitted from the premiere, and subsequently thought to be lost, were simply stitched together. These excisions give greater cohesion and explanation of the details of the complex story as the work unfolds. With permission Porter copied out the missing parts. Back in London, Julian Budden, the renowned Verdi scholar, then Head of BBC Classical Music, planned a recording for broadcast purposes and included the newly discovered parts. It was the first public performance ever of the opera as Verdi originally intended. It took place before a small invited audience on 22 April 1972. For this unique premiere Budden assembled a cast of mainly French-speaking singers supported by stalwart British principals from the London’s Covent Garden and Sadler’s Wells companies. The seminal broadcast by the BBC took place on 10 June 1973 after which the performance disappeared from the public domain until its re-emergence on CD by Opera Rara made it readily available (review).

Along with the excised music the recording included in this collection also includes other revisions Verdi made as he prepared Don Carlo, the Italian translation. The composer always worked from the French language to maintain unity of prosody with the original. Also included is the complete ballet music (Tr.6) that was replaced in his revision and contraction in the Italian version and replaced it with a newly composed act three prelude.

In respect of the performance included in this collection, recorded in Milan’s Centro Telecinematografico Culturale in January 1983 and June 1984, Abbado’s command of the Verdian idiom is clear. It was already evident during his period as Musical Director of La Scala and is further evidenced in this collection by his conducting in the recordings of Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra. This performance is aided by a warm resonant recording. The cast is an all-star one of singers well versed in their roles, albeit none is a native French speaker, a fact that might be a distraction to Francophone listeners. The recording was made near the end of a period in which outstanding Verdi singers abounded on the world’s operatic stages. The cast, whilst not being perfect, could hardly have been bettered at the time. Subsequent efforts have been made to present the original music of Don Carlos, not least on a CD recording from the Vienna State Opera on 18 October 2004, conducted by Bertrand de Billy. The latter claims world premiere status as the first staged performance of what Verdi had originally intended (review).

Performances of what was seen in Paris at the premiere, with the addition of some excised music, were recorded in Paris in 1996 in a production shared with other theatres including Covent Garden. Conducted by Antonio Pappano it is also available on DVD (Review), Blu-ray (Warner Classics 2564-63478-0) and CD (EMI 556152 2).

27. Don Carlo [CDs 59-61]
The premiere of Don Carlos in Paris on 11 March 1867 was only modestly received by the public and only played for three performances more than the contracted forty, after which it was not seen at the Opéra until the revival conducted by Pappano in 1996 referred to above. Meanwhile an Italian translation, as Don Carlo, by Achille de Lauzières, had been prepared the previous autumn. In offering the rights to Tito Ricordi, Verdi again sought to insist that it only be made available with safeguards. These included that it be performed in its entirety although he was prepared for another ballet to be substituted for his music as long as it was played as an add-on at the end. The first performance in Italian was not given in Italy but at London’s Covent Garden on 4 June 1867. Despite Verdi’s wishes it was given with the first act and ballet removed completely along with various other excisions. Such practices were standard at Covent Garden as at most other European houses. The Italian premiere of Don Carlo at Bologna in September 1867 was given in full, whilst in Rome, still under Papal control, the censor changed the Inquisitor into a Gran Cancelliere. Despite being seen all over the peninsula the Italians were slow to take Don Carlo to their hearts and it was not long before first the ballet and then the Fontainebleau act were dropped. The arrival in Italy of the shorter and grander Aida added to the difficulty of the opera’s length and after a failure in Naples in 1871 Verdi made his first revisions for a revival under his own supervision. Still the fortunes of the opera disappointed the composer and as early as 1875 he began seriously to consider further shortening the work himself. With other demands, not least the commission and writing of Aida, Verdi did not begin serious work on this until 1882, concluding his revision into a four act version the following March with the premiere at La Scala having to wait until 1884. For all the revisions of Don Carlos, except for the Philip-Posa duet, Verdi worked from a French libretto, as he considered the opera to be conditioned by the prosody of the language and traditional French metres. Angelo Zanardini, who also revised Lauzières’ original, put the new lines into Italian. This has become known as the 1884 version after it received its premiere at La Scala in January of that year. This version involved the removal of the first act. The four-act revision as Don Carlo, Verdi’s own, involved much rewording to explain the sequence of events and to maintain a narrative coherence that is otherwise seriously lost by the removal of the original first act. This included the removing of the act one tenor aria from the original to the new act one. He also removed the act three ballet, the Inquisitor’s chorus in act five as well as making many other detailed changes elsewhere. The premiere of the new four act Don Carlo was a great success and featured the tenor Tamagno, who three years later was to create Otello. However, that was not the end of the story and in 1886 an Italian language version including the first act, but not the ballet, was given in Modena with Verdi’s approval and is the version used in this collection (CDs 59-62). It involves 198 minutes of music.

After relative neglect, during the 1930s Don Carlo became more popular in its 1884 four-act version. Performances at London’s Covent Garden in the 1950s of an abbreviated five-act version in Italian in a production by Visconti and conducted by Giulini (review) aroused considerable interest, albeit the abbreviations reducing the performances to 178 minutes. This series of performances made waves throughout the operatic world as no other recent production of the four-act version had done previously. It launched the opera into its rightful place in the Verdi mainstream as a five-act work. There was a hankering for a recording of the full Italian Modena version. Decca, flushed with the success of its Solti Ring cycle, under producer John Culshaw, grasped the nettle and, as noted, it is the version included in this collection. Georg Solti was, by then, Musical Director at Covent Garden, and using the house orchestra and chorus Decca recorded it in London in the summer of 1965 with John Culshaw, famed for his direction of the Ring Cycle.

In Carlo Bergonzi the performance features the best-sung Carlo on record as can be heard in the act 1 opening aria (CD 59. Trs.2-3). Ghiaurov appears as Philip and Martti Talvela as the Inquisitor. The act four confrontation between the two is hair-raising (CD 61. Trs. 2-3). As Elisabeth, Renata Tebaldi, the diva signed by Decca in response to Callas on HMV/EMI in the 1950s, and the backbone of their LP mono and stereo opera recordings of that decade, is past her very best. However, her voice is big enough for the role, unlike rivals who followed, and her singing and artistry does not let the side down. Her singing of the act 5 opening aria Tu che le vanita is far superior to Caballé on Giulini in the 1971 EMI recording. The casting of Fischer-Dieskau as Rodrigo, renowned as a lieder singer but hardly Italianate, is idiosyncratic, but he is tasteful enough and does not spoil an enjoyable performance. Solti’s strong dramatic tempi are more dramatic than rivals and the Decca recording has stood up to the passage of time very well.

Intermission 3
Over the nineteen years that elapsed whilst Verdi made his revisions of Don Carlos much happened to him and to Italy, which had gained independence as a unified state. On 13 November 1868 Rossini died aged 76. The two, whilst not close, were friends. Rossini had once written in a letter to Verdi: "Rossini, ex-composer and pianist of the fourth class, to the illustrious composer Verdi, pianist of the fifth class." Verdi wrote to the Countess Maffei: "Rossini’s reputation was the most widespread and popular of our time; it was one of the glories of Italy." Even before the Memorial Service had been held in Paris, Verdi wrote to Milan’s Gazzetta Musicale suggesting that the musicians of Italy should unite to honour their great compatriot by combining to write a Requiem for performance on the anniversary of his death. No one would receive payment for his contribution with volunteers to each write one section of the Mass being drawn by lot. To Verdi, pre-eminent among the names, fell the closing section, the Libera Me. He had his composition ready in good time despite revising La Forza del Destino along the way. Problems arose in respect of the chorus and orchestra, for which Verdi, somewhat unfairly, blamed his friend the conductor Mariani and the project floundered. Verdi met the costs incurred. His music for that aborted project is included in Part 3 of this collection on CD 70, Tr.13 as one of the Sacred Works and is sung by the soprano Christina Gallardo-Domâs.

28. Aida [CDs 62-63]
In the summer of 1869 Verdi was approached to write an opera for the new theatre in Cairo to celebrate the construction of the Suez Canal. The theatre opened in November 1869 with a performance of Rigoletto conducted by Verdi’s former pupil Emanuele Muzio. The Suez Canal was officially opened on 17 November. Du Locle visited Verdi in Genoa the following month and told the composer that the Khedive (Viceroy) of Egypt wanted Verdi to write an opera on an Egyptian theme for performance at the new opera house. Verdi turned the request down repeating his refusal when in Paris the following spring. Du Locle was not deterred and sent Verdi a synopsis by Auguste Mariette, an Egyptologist in the employ of the Khedive. Stimulated by the synopsis, and also, perhaps, by hearing that Du Locle had been authorised to approach Gounod or Wagner if he continued to prove reluctant, Verdi wrote to Du Locle on 2 June 1870 setting out his terms. These stipulated his control and ownership of the libretto, and that he, Verdi, retained all rights except for performances in Egypt. He also stipulated a fee of 150,000 Francs, payable at the Rothschild Bank in Paris on delivery of the work. On behalf of the Khedive, Mariette accepted these terms to Du Locle on 10 June 1870. The fee made Verdi the highest paid composer ever.

The Khedive had stipulated that the new opera was to be performed in January 1871 but a distant war, to Egypt, intervened. Bismarck had engineered a Franco-Prussian confrontation in autumn 1870. The French army was defeated at the Battle of Sedan and the Emperor Napoleon III captured. With the siege of Paris the scenery constructed there could not be got out and shipped to Cairo. Although Verdi’s composition was completed Aida was not premiered until Christmas Eve 1871. This delay also caused the postponement of the Italian premiere at La Scala as the contract stipulated that the first performances of the opera would be given in the Cairo Opera House. As an appendix to a review on this site of a recorded performance of Aida in Australia, I give a fuller account of the genesis of the sets and costumes at the premiere (review).

Aida is one of Verdi’s most popular of operas with its blend of musical invention and dramatic expression. It is a work of pageant with its Grand March (Gloria all’Egitto) and ballet interludes. It is also a work involving various personal relationships. Of these relationships, the rivalry between Aida, daughter of the King of Ethiopia working incognito as a captured slave of Amneris, daughter of the King of Egypt, is intense. Both love Radames, victorious leader of the Egyptian army. He loves Aida but is given the hand of Amneris in reward for his exploits as commander of the Egyptian army. More complex is the relationship of Aida with her father who arrives as an unrecognised prisoner. The many and various complex possibilities of the father-daughter relationship occur throughout Verdi’s operas, but nowhere more starkly than in Aida where the father puts tremendous emotional pressure on his daughter to cajole her lover into betraying a state secret.

There are several recordings in the catalogue from the Universal stable. However, those responsible for the choice have gone back to one of the earliest. In my view this 1959 Decca recording, which was the stereo replacement for an earlier mono one also featuring Tebaldi in the title role was, and remains, one of the finest of this work in the catalogue. With a cast of mainly native Italians, and recorded in one of Decca’s favourite recording locations, the Sofiensaal Vienna, and senior staff under John Culshaw, its sonics were outstanding in their day and remain very good. These qualities are particularly notable in the Triumphal scene of act two and have stood the test of time well, including the arrival of digital recording. As a duo Tebaldi, at the height of her powers (her voice was dubbed onto an early opera film with Sophia Loren an ultra-sexy Aida around that time) and Giulietta Simionato at the height of her idiomatic assumption are quite magnificent. Karajan is on the rostrum seemingly drawing extra power and drama from the orchestra and chorus at critical moments, such as in the confrontation between Aida and Amneris in act one, as the latter goads the former into disclosing her love for Radames (CD 62.Trs.9-11). The recorded quality is also evident later in the trial scene and with the balance of the chorus and soloists all well caught by the microphones the outcome is thrilling (CD 63. Trs 11-12). The choral singing could hardly be bettered in its power and sonority making the triumphal scene in act two the focus of the opera without the benefit of a visual picture. It is a pity the timing means the scene has to spread onto the second disc.

The above virtues would count for nought if the male principals as well as the two women were not equal to the task. As in the Don Carlo detailed above, Decca cast that most elegant of Verdi tenors, Carlo Bergonzi, in the role of Radames. His phrasing, beauty of tone and overall interpretation are outstanding although he does not take the written ending of Celeste Aida as Verdi wrote it, preferring the high note to the gentle finish (CD 62 Tr.3). Arnold van Mill is suitably sonorous as Ramphis and Fernando Corena likewise as the King. The baritone Cornell MacNeil does justice to Aida’s manipulative father.

Intermission 4
In the year of Rossini’s death in 1868, aided by arrangements connived at by his wife and long-time friend Clarina Maffei, Verdi had visited his revered idol, Alessandro Manzoni whom he considered the father of the Italian language. When Manzoni died in May 1873, after a fall, Verdi was devastated to the extent he could not go to the funeral for which the shops of Milan were closed, and the streets lined with thousands. The King sent two Princes of the Royal Blood to carry the flanking cords and they were aided by the Presidents of the Senate and Chamber as well as the Ministers of Education and Foreign Affairs. A week after the funeral Verdi went to Milan and visited the grave alone.

Through his publisher, Ricordi, Verdi proposed to the Mayor of Milan that he should write a Requiem Mass to honour Manzoni to be performed in Milan on the first anniversary of the writer’s death. Unlike his proposal for a Requiem to honour Rossini in 1868, there would be no committee this time. Verdi proposed that he himself would compose the entire Mass, pay the expenses of preparing and printing the music, specify the church for the first performance, and choose the singers. The city of Milan accepted with alacrity. I comment on the recorded performance in this collection on CDs 68-69 below.

Back in Italy after Aida in Paris Verdi composed two new works for his own amusement, a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria, (CD. 70) which were presented in Milan, conducted by his friend Faccio. His publisher, Ricordi, hankered after Otello that he and others had connived over but which seemed to be on the composer's back-burner. Strepponi warned Ricordi to be patient; he listened and suggested to the composer another project, this time the revision of Simon Boccanegra of 1857 (Venice), knowing Verdi felt the work did not deserve its failure and neglect. That Boito had agreed to be the librettist of the revision tipped the scales. Verdi and Boito got on well, the latter adding the completely new Council Chamber scene, the dramatic highlight of the revision. The new version was premiered to acclaim at La Scala on 24 March 1881 and is considered in this sequence as CDs 43-44 relating to the dates of the premiere of the failed first version. Verdi also revised his five act Don Carlos (French) into the shorter Don Carlo (Italian) premiered at La Scala in 1884 and referred to above.

29. Otello [CDs 64-65]
After the composition of Aida, Verdi really did think that his days of opera composition were over. He was not idle; he travelled widely in Europe conducting his own works including the amended version in French of Aida. However, friends among the Milan literati, meeting at the salon of Verdi’s friend the Countess Maffei, thought he had more operatic composition within him, despite his being in his seventh decade and although he protested to her that "the account was settled". A number of them quietly plotted to tempt him, his knowledge and love of Shakespeare being paramount in their thoughts. With the aid of a dinner invitation from Verdi’s wife, who was in on the plot, his publisher, Ricordi, and the conductor Faccio, broached the subject with the great man with Boito’s name being mentioned as librettist. The next day Boito was brought to see Verdi and three days later he returned with a detailed scenario; quick work unless there had been prior manoeuvring. Verdi liked it, but would not commit himself. Verdi encouraged Boito to convert his synopsis into verse with the words "it will always be good for you, for me, or for someone else." However, he would not commit himself to compose the work. Verdi was to prevaricate on "The chocolate theme", as it was called, for some time.
 
Sparked by the success of the revisions of Boccanegra and Don Carlo, Verdi, albeit slowly, worked on "The Chocolate Project" its conclusion eventually coming to magnificent fruition at La Scala on 5 February 1887. It was his first wholly new operatic work for the stage for eighteen years. He was seventy-four years of age and really did think his book of operatic composition was closed with this, his twenty-seventh title. Verdi’s conception of Otello involved greater, and significantly different, orchestral complexity compared to that of Aida and Don Carlos. It marks a major compositional movement from him from his previous aria, duet and chorus scenes, to a more fluent smooth transition from one event in the story to the next. In this conception Verdi was greatly aided by Boito’s taut libretto that reduced Shakespeare’s Otello by six-sevenths but without losing its essence in the destruction of the erstwhile hero by the genie of jealousy aided by the machinations of Iago. Boito dispensed with Shakespeare’s Venice act and focused the whole of the action in Cyprus.

The choice for this collection is the recording made after performances in Paris and London with Russian Sergei Leiferkus as Iago and American diva Cheryl Studer as Desdemona. Domingo’s first recording of the role of Otello had been in 1968 for RCA. At the time, many commentators considered it unwise of him to undertake such a heavy role at a relatively young age and feared it would cause damage to his strong lyric-toned voice. In reality he became the outstanding Otello of his generation and dominated its performances until the end of the century and beyond, several making their way onto sound and visual media. In this 1994 recording he worked with Sergei Leiferkus, a regular stage colleague. The latter's well-articulated baritone, complete with snarling intonations in Iago’s Credo (CD 64 Tr.12), and the evil way he sets up the confrontation between Cassio and Roderigo is professionalism at its best. Cheryl Studer is full-toned and expressive and outstanding in her contribution throughout, particularly in her act four singing of the gently plaintive willow song and then her prayer (CD 65. Trs.15-18). The lesser roles are all well sung as the cast list would make one hope. With Myung-Whun Chung on the podium carefully balancing the orchestra and chorus in a clear sympathetic acoustic the end result is masterful and does full justice to Verdi’s creation.

Intermission 5
The day after the premiere of Otello Verdi excused himself, for reason of tiredness, from a reception given by Ricordi for celebrities, journalists and critics. Verdi was not only tired but also sad. In July his friend of over forty years, Clara Maffei, died in Milan. Verdi interrupted his holiday and rushed to her bedside. It was she who had cajoled him to write more opera during the fallow post-Aida years and it was in her salon that Ricordi and Boito plotted to tempt Verdi to compose more opera. Verdi was also sad that he now lacked a goal. Before he left Milan the directors of La Scala approached him about the possibility of a comic opera. He replied "don’t you know how old I am" and professed his desire to return to his country life at Sant’ Agata where Boito visited him in November with a French translation of Otello. Verdi also concerned himself with the hospital at Villanova which he had built for his locality. Despite having watched its construction with care, in typical fashion he refused to have his name inscribed over the door. Meanwhile he kept his compositional hand in with Laudi alla Vergine, which was followed by Ave Maria scala enigmata, his fourth setting of an Ave Maria. Later, together with the Te Deum and Stabat Mater, each for chorus and orchestra, these became constituents of what came to be called The Four Sacred Pieces (Quattro Pezzi Sacri) featured on CD 69 below in Part 3.

30. Falstaff [CDs 66-67]
The suggestion for a comic opera for La Scala niggled at Verdi but he worried about his age and the possibility of starting another opera and not finishing it. Boito was aware of his feelings and also of his love of Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. Whilst Verdi worried about Boito completing his own opera Nerone, the poet choosing his time well, sent a synopsis to Verdi on his annual holiday in July 1889. Verdi responded enthusiastically only to express doubts the following day, worrying that another operatic composition might over-stretch his strength. Those doubts were not reflected in his invitation to Boito: "Come and see us." Boito assured Verdi that writing a comic opera would be less fatiguing than a tragedy concluding: "There is only one way to end your career more splendidly than with Otello, and that is to end it with Falstaff." After returning to Sant’ Agata later that July, Verdi began to make sketches even before receiving any verses from Boito.

In between the quick start and Boito bringing the completed acts 1 and 2 in November, Verdi digressed to purchase a plot of land in Milan to build a rest home for elderly and indigent musicians and endow it with an annual income. He later appointed Boito’s brother as architect.

The completion of Falstaff, Verdi’s twenty-eighth and final opera, proceeded more steadily than that of Otello, but with Verdi doing no more than two hours work a day on it. For at least a year composer and librettist kept the composition under wraps with not even Ricordi in on the secret. A couple of years after the premiere of Otello Verdi wrote to a friend "What can I tell you? I’ve wanted to write a comic opera for forty years, and I’ve known ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ for fifty … however, the usual buts and I don’t know if I will ever finish it … I am enjoying myself." There were hiccups along the way but the composition was finished by November 1892 with Falstaff being premiered at La Scala on 9 February 1893. Verdi was in his eightieth year. He supervised rehearsals and attended the first three nights as was usual, taking many curtain-calls. It was rumoured that the government intended to give him the title of Marquis of Busseto. In abject horror Verdi wrote to the Minister of Education who replied that the rumour was groundless.

Whilst Boito had reduced Shakespeare’s "Othello" by six-sevenths, for Falstaff he reduced the 23 characters in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" to just ten in the opera. The vocal score does not designate primo or secondo for these characters, but it is clear that six carry the burden of the singing and the plot. The others require vocal competence in the idiom if the reality of the comedy of "Falstaff" is to be fully realised; none more so than in recordings. In Falstaff with the wit being in the words, Verdi carries the seamless musical style of Otello even further. There are almost no formal arias and no recitative, the melodic phrases being insistent to give an almost continuous melodic line; tunes come and go in the flash of a few bars, broken only for ensembles. In a letter to her sister, Strepponi described it as "a new combination of poetry and music."
 
The libretto and music have tempted many conductors and stage directors. Hardly had DG issued Karajan’s second recording of the work when Giulini was tempted into the recording studio, after a considerable interregnum, for Rigoletto (CDs 34-35). This involved a series of staged performances in 1982-83 of a production of Falstaff by Ronald Eyre shared between Los Angeles, Covent Garden and Florence. A live audio recording from takes was made in Los Angeles and issued by DG and is the version chosen for inclusion here. A staged performance of the production at Covent Garden was recorded for TV transmission by Brian Large and issued on DVD (review). How far Giulini was able to stipulate a traditional production has been debated. What is certain is that Hayden Griffin’s sets, Michael Stennett’s costumes and Ronald Eyre’s production would have been recognised by Verdi as well as pleasing Giulini with only the first scene at the Garter Inn being rather cramped for the action that ensues.

Giulini’s conducting of Falstaff is affectionate without being cloying. He is fleet as the wives do their plotting (CD 66 Trs. 5-7) and the lovers serenade each other and appropriately serious and violent as Ford, in his jealousy, searches his house for the would-be seducer (Tr.14). Overall Giulini treats Falstaff as more of and 'opera giocoso', with an element of seriousness that I personally consider to be in the plot and the music rather than as an 'opera buffa'. Falstaff is not a buffa opera and the humiliations of Falstaff in being tipped into the Thames and in the last scene have a bitter flavour in the music, which the conductor catches. In the name part Renato Bruson gives a commanding performance vocally and, as seen on video, histrionically too. His burnished baritone is full of colour, his legato and enunciation of the text rich in nuance. When he dresses up to visit the ladies and sings a mezza voce "when I was a page" it is easy to imagine him really fancying his chances in the seduction stakes. As Falstaff goes off to put on his finery Ford, fearing he is being cuckolded, has his monologue (Tr.14). Nucci is more convincing here than in many of his Verdi portrayals although I find other audio and video recorded interpretations superior. Katia Ricciarelli as Alice fines down her big voice to give a vocally convincing portrayal. Brenda Boozer as Meg is required to make less of a contribution than her colleagues and does the part justice. Lucia Valentini Terrani is a traditional Quickly. Vocally she has all the notes and her sonority is notable in those evocative "reverenza"s with which she approaches Falstaff. Barbara Hendricks as Nannetta lacks a little of the ideal lightness of floated phrase although in the final scene under Hermes' oak she is vocally most appealing. Dalmacio Gonzales as her ardent lover Fenton sings with honeyed tone. The character parts of Bardolph and Dr Caius are in the very capable hands and voices of Covent Garden stalwarts Francis Egerton and John Dobson.

Despite its Music Centre live origins, producer Günther Breest and his engineers presents a warm, clear and well-balanced recording.

Part 1. Introduction ~ Part 3. Other works ~ Performance & Recording Details