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Orating Verdi: Death and the media c.1901

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2012

GAVIN WILLIAMS
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Abstract

This article explores Verdi's death as a ‘media event’, tracing the unfolding news from the earliest reports of his imminent demise up to the monumental commemorations held 30 days afterwards. Throughout this time, news media helped to define a period of so-called national mourning. Yet a broader range of media (including the telegraph, tram and railway) played an important role in demarcating the geopolitical scope of this collective grief. As a point of comparison, Verdi's death is considered in relation to the assassination of King Umberto I – a recent incident, of greater magnitude, which had provoked a spell of national mourning only months into the new century. Echoes of Umberto's assassination can be heard in responses to Verdi's death, linking both events to a common historical and political moment. This new context for understanding Verdi's final moments not only seeks to illuminate the manifold interactions between public and persona in Liberal Italy but also raises questions about the construction of auditory experiences in national mourning and the sensory dimension of the nation state's lugubrious politics.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , November 2011 , pp. 119 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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References

1 These observations on the Hôtel Milan's environs, along with those mentioned above, can be found in ‘Corriere’, L'illustrazione italiana (3 February 1901), 96–100.

2 The parliamentary communications commemorating Verdi are reproduced in Checchi, Eugenio, Giuseppe Verdi, 1813–1901 (Florence, 1901), 211–24Google Scholar.

3 See, for example, the front page of the Corriere della sera (28–9 January 1901).

4 Axel Körner describes Verdi's funeral as a ‘media event’ in The Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy: From Unification to Fascism (Oxford, 2009), 217. Reception studies of Verdi point towards the same conclusion. See Pauls, Birgit, Giuseppe Verdi und das Risorgimento: ein politischer Mythos im Prozess der Nationenbildung (Berlin, 1996), 295–9Google Scholar; and Polo, Claudia, Immaginari verdiani: opera, media e industria culturale nell'Italia del XX secolo (Milan, 2004), 167–78Google Scholar.

5 300,000 is the figure routinely cited in contemporary newspapers and repeated in historical studies. L'illustrazione italiana compares this figure with the population of Milan at the turn of the century, which stood at half a million. Thus, it was claimed that more than half the city turned out to see Verdi's coffin. However, there were many references to people (for example, students) having travelled to Milan from other cities for the occasion. The phenomenon of train travel in connection with state funerals is mentioned by Brice, Catherine in Monarchie et identité en Italie, 1861–1900 (Paris, 2010), 195Google Scholar.

6 For example, imposing commemorative concerts – involving Verdi's music, orators and the parading of his bust – were held at theatres in Naples and Rimini on 27 February. See Gazzetta musicale di Milano (28 February 1901), 132.

7 In addition to the numerous published orations, there are doubtless many that were not. Notably, while still a student Benito Mussolini may have given his first public speech to mark the death of Verdi; see de Rensis, Raffaello, Mussolini musicista. Mussolinia: biblioteca di propaganda fascista diretta da Franco Paladino (Mantua, 1927), 15Google Scholar.

8 Although I will be using the term loosely in this article, ‘media archaeology’ refers to a growing body of scholarship, interdisciplinary in outlook but heavily influenced by German media theory as well as film studies. For an overview, see ‘Introduction: An Archaeology of Media Archaeology’, in Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, ed. Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka (Berkeley, 2011), 1–21.

9 L'illustrazione italiana (3 February 1901), 96.

10 Alfredo Panzini, Natura ed arte 10 (15 February 1901); republished in Carlo Gatti, Verdi (Milan, 1931), II, 521.

11 In addition to his many novels, Panzini (1863–1939) was a lexicographer, famous for his dictionary of neologisms and modern scientific terminology. See Panzini, Alfredo, Dizionario moderno: supplemento ai dizionari italiani (Milan, 1905)Google Scholar.

12 All quotations from Panzini appear in Gatti, Verdi, II, 527–9.

13 ‘La giostra dei tram elettrici con bagliori e fiamme di lampade si susseguiva attorno al monumento del gran Re, che in quel grigio albore spiccava più nero e più scompigliato che mai.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 528.

14 ‘Folla signorile e plebea, pelliccia e camiciotto operaio, stretti insieme nel carro giallo che rombava.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 528.

15 ‘Mi voltai: un'onda di silenzio precorreva avanti. Poi una fronte di cavalieri Savoia prendeva tutta la via … Nel mezzo incedeva un prete: due ceri ai lati. Poi il carro con sopra una stretta bara nera.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 528.

16 During the 2001 centenary celebrations, the Italian state broadcaster RAI aired a series of short documentaries about Verdi's life, one of which was called ‘Giuseppe Verdi: gli ultimi anni’. At the end of this ten-minute programme, the presenter Piero Angelo introduced an early twentieth-century film clip, newly excavated from the archives, which he suggested could have been shot at Verdi's funeral; the film is available at www.giuseppeverdi.it/allegato.asp?ID=520009 (accessed 26 January 2012). However, the funeral procession in this clip contradicts contemporary descriptions of Verdi's cortège: it is decorated with garlands, pulled by four horses, not accompanied by military entourage and takes place in broad daylight.

17 The final version of Verdi's will is dated 14 May 1900; an earlier version, dated 25 April 1898, had been even more specific about the funeral's mise-en-scène: ‘Basteranno due Preti, due Candele ed una croce’ (Two priests, two candles and one cross will suffice). Verdi's wording here is close to Panzini's, who nevertheless remembered one priest. Arrigo Boito later recalled Verdi's wish for ‘one priest, one candle, and one cross’; cited in Walker, FrankThe Man Verdi (London, 1962), 506Google Scholar. This variation on the phrase suggests that it had become a mascot for Verdi's funeral. An image (confirming Panzini's account) was published in L'illustrazione italiana (3 February 1901), 101; see also Baldassarre, Antonio and von Orelli, Matthias, Giuseppe Verdi: Lettere, 1843–1900 (Bern, 2009), 21Google Scholar.

18 ‘Il raccoglimento della folla, il silenzio solenne, fu il più affettuoso, il più epico saluto che Milano potesse rendere al grandissimo artista.’ Gazzetta musicale di Milano (31 January 1901), 71.

19 Although, as Peter Metcalf and Richard Huntington suggest, noise may be an even more pervasive association: they argue that noise (especially loud noise) is – like silence – heavily burdened by ambiguous symbolic meaning in funeral practices, evoking supernatural presences and the irreversibility of time. See their Celebrations of Death: The Anthropology of Mortuary Ritual (Cambridge, 1991), 67–8.

20 The British two-minute silence, held for the first time on 11 November 1919, had its origins both in the one-minute silence held at US President Theodore Roosevelt's funeral and in the midday silences held in South Africa to assuage racial (and linguistic) tensions under British ‘Dominion’. This is briefly discussed in Gregory, Adrian, The Silence of Memory: Armistice Day, 1919–1946 (Oxford, 1994), 10 and 41Google Scholar. On collective silences in Italian commemorations of the First World War, see Wittman, Laura, The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Modern Mourning, and The Reinvention of the Mystical Body (Toronto, 2011), 88Google Scholar.

21 The revival of ‘VIVA VERDI’ immediately following Verdi's death is discussed in Birgit Pauls, Giuseppe Verdi und das Risorgimento, 250–1. However, patriotic memories of the phrase (without the image) had already been stirred in print at least once in the intervening years, for example in the Gazzetta musicale di Milano (7 December 1890), 773; for further discussion of this issue, see Francesca Vella's forthcoming dissertation, ‘Verdi Reception in Late-Nineteenth-Century Milan’ (King's College London). On the slogan's early reception, see Michael Sawall, ‘Viva V.E.R.D.I: Origine e ricezione di un simbolo nazionale nell'anno 1859’, in Verdi 2001. Atti del convegno internazionale, Parma, New York, New Haven, 24 gennaio–1 febbraio 2001, ed. Fabrizio Della Seta, Roberta Montemorra Marvin and Marco Marica (Florence, 2003), 123–31.

22 ‘Les fanfares de 1848, les fanfares fatidiques avaient donc chanté cette nuit sur la ville comme jadis, pour que tout un peuple fut ainsi debout en cette aube livide.’ Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ‘Les Funerailles d'un Dieu’, La Vogue: Revue mensuelle de littérature (15 February 1901); republished in Gatti, Verdi, II, 521–5. Marinetti lightly revised this essay and included it in a book about the deaths of major Italian artists; see Tommaso Marinetti, Filippo, Les Dieux s'en vont: D'Annunzio reste (Paris, 1908), 11–29Google Scholar.

23 On Marinetti's early politics, see Berghaus, Günter, Futurism and Politics: Between Anarchist Rebellion and Fascist Revolution, 1909–1944 (Providence, 1996), 15–46Google Scholar.

24 ‘une foule silencieuse de femmes, de vieillards, de gamins haillonneux affluait par torrents rapides sur la place du Dôme … La canaille et la glèbe étaient venues aussi des faubourgs et des campagnes, déferlant, grouillant par masses confuses, rejaillissant en écume noirâtre sur les corniches, les socles des monuments, les terrasse et les pignons.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 522.

25 ‘les balayeurs mornes ramassent, dans les flaques, des étoiles agonisantes et des larmes jaunes de réverbères.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 522.

26 ‘grande âme chantante et glorieuse de l'Italie.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 523.

27 Gatti, Verdi, II, 527.

28 However, Marinetti had recently written an extended review of the riots for another French literary journal; see Tommaso Marinetti, Filippo, ‘Les Émeutes milanaises de mai 1898: Paysages et silhouettes’, La Revue blanche, 22 (15 August 1900), 561–70Google Scholar.

29 ‘Era gente mischiata, confusa che seguiva un morto. Molta gente! Tanta gente! Ma se avessero portato al sepolcro un operaio caduto dall'alto d'un ponte o colpito da una palla in una sommossa ci sarebbe stata la stessa folla.’ Sebastiano Lopez, ‘Dal nostro inviato speciale: In morte di Giuseppe Verdi; le onoranze funebri a Milano’, Il secolo XIX (31 January–1 February 1901); republished in Franco Contorbia, Giornalismo italiano (Milan, 2007), I, 1629–33.

30 ‘Con l'umiltà di un operaio modesto che ha compiuto la sua lunga giornata, Giuseppe Verdi ha voluto il riposo.’ Contorbia, Giornalismo italiano, I, 1629.

31 ‘L'umile paesano di Busseto è sepolto: rendiamo onore al genio d'Italia.’ Contorbia, Giornalismo italiano, I, 1633.

32 Briggs, Asa and Burke, Peter, Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge, 2009 [2002])Google Scholar.

33 Briggs and Burke, Social History of the Media; see also Winston, Brian, Media Technology and Society; A History: From the Telegraph to the Internet (London, 1998), 23–4Google Scholar.

34 Nicastri, Luisella, ‘Il tram è messaggio’, in In tram. Storia e miti dei trasporti pubblici milanesi, ed. Pirovano, Carlo (Milan, 1982), 113–18Google Scholar.

35 Ogliari, Francesco, Milano in tram. Storia del trasporto pubblico milanese (Milan, 2006), 47Google Scholar.

36 Nicastri, ‘Il tram è messaggio’, 113.

37 ‘La chiusura dell'anno santo’, L'illustrazione italiana (6 January 1901), 8.

38 Gatti, Verdi, II, 522.

39 As Marinetti put in his ‘Fondation et manifeste du futurisme’: ‘Nous chanterons les grandes foules agitées par le travail, le plaisir ou la révolte; les ressacs multicolores et polyphoniques des révolutions dans les capitales modernes’ (‘We shall sing of the great crowds roused up by work, pleasure or revolt; the multicoloured, polyphonic waves of revolution in modern capitals’). See the front page of Le Figaro (20 February 1909).

40 ‘roues disloquées et lasses ont gémi dans toutes les ornières de la terre.’ Gatti, Verdi, II, 523.

41 Contorbia, Giornalismo italiano, II, xi.

42 Roux, Onorato, La prima regina d'Italia (nella vita privata, nella vita del paese, nelle lettere e nelle arti) (Milan, 1901), 164.Google Scholar

43 Roux, La prima regina d'Italia, 186.

44 There is, however, a longer version of Margherita's ‘Preghiera’, which had the title ‘Divozione in memoria di re Umberto I mio signore e amatissimo consorte’. For the short version, see Roux, La prima regina d'Italia, 186; for the long version, see Gozi, Domenico, Epigrafi delle città italiane a S. M. Umberto I di Savoia, Re d'Italia (Rimini, 1901), viiGoogle Scholar.

45 Roux, La prima regina, 189.

46 An extensive list of materials on Margherita, along with the details of ten musical settings of her ‘Preghiera’, is given in Roux, La prima regina d'Italia, 481–500. According to Domenico Gozi, who compiled a collection of epigraphs to Umberto from various Italian cities, an early setting of Margherita's ‘Preghiera’ had already been written on 12 August by Giustio Dacci, professor of music at Parma, who also set a Latin translation of the text as a four-part motet. See Gozi, Epigrafi delle città italiane, vii.

47 Kittler, Friedrich, Discourse Networks 1800/1900, trans. Metteer, Michael (Stanford, 1990), 184–6Google Scholar.

48 Cesari, Gaetano and Luzio, Alessandro, eds., I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1913), 724Google Scholar.

49 In its full form, Margherita's original wording seems to have been: ‘Hanno ucciso te, che tanto amavi il tuo popolo. Questo è il più gran delitto del secolo.’ See Alfassio Grimaldi, Ugoberto, Il re ‘buono’: la vita di Umberto I e la sua epoca in un'esemplare ricostruzione (Rome, 1980), 447Google Scholar.

50 Brice, Monarchie et identité, 363.

51 A formidable collection of telegrams to the royal household was published under the title Per la morte del Re Umberto I (Rome, 1901).

52 Brice, Monarchie et identité, 361–5.

53 Brice, Monarchie et identité, 199.

54 Despite long-standing tensions between the Vatican and the monarchy, these ancient customs were observed, and Masses for Umberto were held the following Sunday. However, even larger in scope were the civil ceremonies for Umberto held in piazzas and theatres, which, as Brice suggests, mark the growth of an Italian ‘civil religion’ – with its own liturgy of national symbols, often accompanied by military bands. Brice, Monarchie et identité, 227–32

55 Taken from a letter dated 9 August 1900; see Brice, Monarchie et identité, 186.

56 Brice, Monarchie et identité, 186.

57 Gregory, The Silence of Memory, 8.

58 Gorini, Paolo, La conservazione della salma di Giuseppe Mazzini (Genoa, 1873), 20Google Scholar.

59 As Luzzatto also points out, Mazzini's funeral recalls those of political figures during the French Revolution, which were routinely the pretext for agitation; see Luzzatto, Sergio, La mummia della repubblica: storia di Mazzini imbalsamato (Milan, 2001), 35–48Google Scholar.

60 On the iconography of the body politic, see Schnapp, Jeffrey T., ‘Mob Porn’, in Crowds, ed. Schnapp, and Tiews, Matthew (Stanford, 2006), 1–45Google Scholar.

61 Sonnino, Sidney, ‘Quid Agendum? Appunti di politica e di economia’, Nuova antologia, 35 (16 September 1900), 342–64Google Scholar.

62 For more on the sensory, political and historical dimensions of ‘common sense’, see Rosenfeld, Sophia, ‘On Being Heard: A Case for Paying Attention to the Historical Ear’, The American Historical Review, 116/2 (2011), 316–44CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

63 Gazzetta musicale di Milano (14 February 1901), 98. Original italics and bold.

64 ‘La commemorazione di Verdi al Teatro alla Scala’, L'illustrazione italiana (10 February 1901), 112.

65 Gazzetta musicale di Milano (31 January 1901), 69–73, 78–84; (7 February 1901), 85–6, 91–4; (22 February), 97–9, 105–10.

66 ‘Va pensiero’ may also have been considered a tribute to Strepponi, who created the role of Abigaille in Nabucco at La Scala in 1842; the chorus, which also concluded the programme of the commemorative concert at La Scala on the evening of 27 February (but not that of 1 February), was clearly considered one of Verdi's most potent patriotic statements. However, a myth endures that an enormous crowd – whether that attending the funeral or the trigesimo – spontaneously broke into singing ‘Va pensiero’. Most recently, the story has been perpetuated in Martin, George, ‘Verdi, Politics and “Va Pensiero”: The Scholars Squabble’, The Opera Quarterly, 21/1 (2005), 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Martin's account is based on an interview with Carlo Gatti in which – over 50 years after the fact – he remembered an emotive crowd bursting into the chorus; Gatti is quoted in Wechsberg, Joseph, ‘Our Far-Flung Correspondents: The Black Felt Hat’, The New Yorker (22 October 1955), 168Google Scholar. No such choral eruption was mentioned in either Marinetti's or Panzini's contemporary accounts of the funeral (discussed above). For a fuller account of the allure of ‘Va pensiero’ in the patriotic imagination, see Parker, Roger, Leonora's Last Act: Essays in Verdian Discourse (Princeton, 1997), 20–41Google Scholar.

67 ‘Dalle locomotive della vicina stazione s'ode, sul bel principio, un fischio … Quale ingrato contrasto! Non si poteva evitare?’ L'illustrazione italiana (3 March 1901), 163.

68 ‘paiano dugento, tanto è vasto lo spazio!’ L'illustrazione italiana (3 March 1901), 163.

69 L'illustrazione italiana (3 March 1901), 163.

70 L'illustrazione italiana (3 March 1901), 163.

71 D'Annunzio, Gabriele, In morte di Giuseppe Verdi: canzone preceduta da una orazione ai giovani (Milan, 1913 [1901]), 3Google Scholar.

72 ‘Io vorrei che la Canzone, ch'io sono per dire, vi sembrasse composta – come fu – in uno stato di preghiera, e che voi al lume della Memoria e della Speranza pregaste con me concordi verso il Passato e verso l'Avvenire.’ D'Annunzio, In morte di Giuseppe Verdi, 4–5.

73 ‘Vi parrebbe, in verità, se quel simulacro vi fosse qui posto innanzi, vi parrebbe di veder manifestata in forma sostanziale l'ideal figura che ciascuno di voi nell'ora del lutto ebbe dentro.’ D'Annunzio, In morte di Giuseppe Verdi, 4.

74 D'Annunzio's description is almost entirely fictional, as pointed out in Walker, Frank, ‘Vincenzo Gemito and his Bust of Verdi’, Music & Letters, 30/1 (1949), 44–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

75 Laura Basini points out the proto-fascist leanings of D'Annunzio's poem, which was reissued in 1913 to celebrate the centenary of Verdi's birth, noting the common thread between the poem and these celebrations in an ‘ideological synaesthesia – the weave of agriculture, art, morals and technology’; see ‘Cults of Sacred Memory: Parma and the Verdi Centennial Celebrations of 1913’, this journal, 13/2 (2001), 141–61. For more on ‘The Myth of Rome’, see Falasca-Zamponi, Simonetta, Fascist Spectacle: The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy (Berkeley, 1997), 90–5Google Scholar.

76 Metcalf and Huntington, Celebrations of Death, 151.

77 Among the many published orations dedicated to Verdi, see for example Renaroli, Giuliano's Per la solenne commemorazione di Giuseppe Verdi che la società dei concerti di Brescia fece nel Teatro Grande la sera del 28 marzo 1901 (Brescia, 1901)Google Scholar; and Fracassetti, Libero's Giuseppe Verdi: parole commemorative (Udine, 1901)Google Scholar, an oration delivered by the author at a charity concert in Verdi's memory on 1 April at the Teatro Sociale di Udine.

78 Coincidentally, D'Annunzio's immediate reaction to the news of Verdi's demise is (at least in part) on record. The Friday before Verdi died, D'Annunzio was delivering his ‘Canzone’ to Garibaldi at Turin's Teatro Regio; he preceded his reading with some choice comparisons between the two figures, for example: ‘Il trovatore di cento melodie è degno dell'apoteosi eroica come il vincitore di cento battaglie’ (‘The troubador of a hundred melodies is as worthy of an heroic apotheosis as the victor of a hundred battles’). ‘Noterelle’, L'illustrazione italiana (3 February 1901), 100.

79 D'Annunzio, In morte di Giuseppe Verdi, 21.

80 Rigney, Ann, ‘Embodied Communities: Commemorating Robert Burns, 1859, Representations, 115/1 (2011), 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 In 1913, the monument's international genesis had already been forgotten – it was now seen as a strongly nationalist tribute; see Kreuzer, Gundula, Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich (Cambridge, 2010), 135Google Scholar.

82 For more on this turn-of-the-century context, see Emilio Gentile, ‘1900: Inizia il secolo’, in Gentile, Emilio, et al. , Novecento italiano (Rome, 2011), 3–32Google Scholar.

83 The army general who gave the order to fire cannons at the Milan crowds, Fiorenzo Bava-Beccaris, had been rewarded by Umberto with the highest military honour, the ‘Gran croce dell'ordine militare di Savoia’ – an act that provided Bresci with his justification for assassinating the king. For an overview, see Körner, Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy, 215–17.