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Verdi, Solera, Piave and the libretto for Attila

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 October 2010

Francesco Izzo
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Abstract

This article clarifies the relationship between Verdi and Solera, shows why it broke down in 1846 and discusses Solera's idiosyncratic verses. It also rereads a widely misunderstood letter that Verdi sent to Solera, which contains not only Piave's emendations to the final act of Attila but also Solera's response to them, angrily scribbled over Piave's work.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , November 2009 , pp. 257 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 Cited in Weaver, William, “Verdi and His Italian Librettists” in The Verdi Companion, ed. Weaver, William and Chusid, Martin (New York, 1988), 124Google Scholar . The Italian original is quoted in Conati, Marcello, La bottega della musica: Verdi e la Fenice (Milan, 1983), 102Google Scholar .

2 Letter to Clarina Maffei, 3 April 1861, in Carteggi verdiani, ed. Alessandro Luzio, 4 vols. (Rome, 1935), IV, 246.

3 Enthusiastic reviews of the two operas include Regli, Francesco, ‘Temistocle Solera e la sua Ildegonda’, Il pirata, vol. 5, no. 77 (24 March 1840), 315–316Google Scholar , and Cominazzi, Pietro, ‘Critica Musicale: Milano: I. R. Teatro alla Scala’, La fama, 80 (7 October 1841), 317Google Scholar .

4 Pougin, Arthur, Giuseppe Verdi: Vita aneddotica con note ed aggiunte di Folchetto [Giacomo Caponi] (Milan, 1881), 45–46Google Scholar .

5 I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio (Milan, 1913), 439.

6 Copialettere, 432.

7 Copialettere, 439.

8 In a letter from Barcelona dated 8 [?] November 1845, Solera informed Verdi that he would be unable to help with the revision, and suggested he turn instead to Maffei or to someone else. The original document is found in Sant'Agata, and a microfilm copy is available in the Archive of the American Institute for Verdi Studies at New York University.

9 A partial transcription of the letter appears in Copialettere, 440–1. The document is discussed in detail below.

10 Carteggi verdiani, IV, 245.

11 Attempts to revive the artistic partnership came in the early 1850s, when Regli acted as an intermediary between the two hoping to secure a contract for Verdi to write an opera for Spain to a libretto by Solera. There is no indication that Verdi was ever seriously interested in the deal, which rapidly fell through when the composer's requests to own the rights for Spain could not be granted. See Copialettere, 121–3. A few years later, in January 1857, Solera approached Verdi directly offering him a new libretto titled I giudizj del mondo. See Carteggi verdiani, IV, 246.

12 de Van, Gilles, Verdi's Theater: Creating Drama Through Music (Chicago and London, 1998), 67Google Scholar .

13 Solera, Temistocle, Il contadino d'Agliate: Melodramma in due atti da rappresentarsi nell'Imp. Regio Teatro alla Scala . . . l'autunno dell'anno 1841 (Milan, 1841), 21Google Scholar .

14 In 1860, as soon as it became viable to comment publicly on the patriotic vein of Solera, Regli did so passionately in his Dizionario: ‘Solera, even under the pressure of censorship, always wrote as an Italian, and in every melodramma of his the patriotic element dominates in the first degree’ (‘Il Solera, anche sotto la pressione della Censura, scrisse sempre italianamente, ed in ogni suo melodramma domina in primo grado l’elemento patrio'). Regli, Francesco, Dizionario biografico dei più celebri poeti ed artisti melodrammatici . . . che fiorirono in italia dal 1800 al 1860 (Turin, 1860), 504Google Scholar .

15 All quotations are to Solera, Temistocle, Attila: Dramma Lirico in un Prologo e Tre Atti . . . da rappresentarsi nel Gran Teatro La Fenice nella Stagione di Carnevale e Quadragesima del 1845–46 (Venice, [1846])Google Scholar .

16 The first to comment on the use of religious imagery in a Solera libretto was Abramo Basevi in his discussion of I Lombardi in his Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence, 1859), 21. On the combination of political and religious themes in Solera see also De Van, Verdi's Theater, 67, and Izzo, Francesco, ‘Verdi, the Virgin, and the Censor: The Politics of the Cult of Mary in I Lombardi alla prima crociata and Giovanna d’Arco', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 60 (2007), 557–597CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

17 I use the technical terminology employed and described in Tim Carter et al., ‘Versification’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O008300 (accessed 30 May 2009).

18 Only the final portion of Solera's libretto for Giovanna d'Arco (‘Un suon funereo – d’intorno spandesi') begins with twelve lines for the chorus, Giacomo and Carlo that, like Attila's recitative, alternate between quinari semplici and quinari doppi. Dramatically, however, the passage could not be more different, as it marks the beginning of Giovanna's death scene, and Verdi fittingly set it to music as a funeral march.

19 Friedrich Lippmann rightly describes the combination of two quinari into a single line as metrically irrelevant. Versificazione italiana e ritmo musicale (Naples, 1986), 38.

20 The concept of lyric form is addressed frequently in scholarly publications on nineteenth-century Italian opera. An important discussion, which provides relevant bibliographical references, is Huebner, Steven, ‘Lyric Form in Ottocento Opera’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 117 (1992), 123–147CrossRefGoogle Scholar .

21 Budden, Julian, for example, described the chorus as being ‘abrupt, uncouth, made up of irregular phrases’. The Operas of Verdi: From ‘Oberto’ to ‘Rigoletto’, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1992), 249Google Scholar .

22 See above, n. 6.

23 Letter to Francesco Maria Piave, 4 September 1846, in David Rosen and Andrew Porter, eds., Verdi's Macbeth: A Sourcebook, (New York and London, 1984), 8.

24 On Maffei's role in the genesis of Macbeth, see Degrada, Francesco, ‘Observations on the Genesis of Verdi's Macbeth’, in Rosen, and Porter, , Verdi's Macbeth: A Sourcebook, 156–173Google Scholar . See also Goldin, Daniela, ‘Il Macbeth verdiano: Genesi e linguaggio di un libretto’, Analecta Musicologica, 19 (1979), 336–372Google Scholar .

25 ‘Ei non ha né meno il buon senso di fuggire e salvarsi, quando si vede in pericolo di vita, e muor, com’oca, infilzato.' Locatelli, Tommaso, L'Appendice della Gazzetta di Venezia, prose scelte di Tommaso Locatelli, 16 vols. (Venice, 1837–80), IX, 231Google Scholar .

26 ‘Certo, il Solera non curò la sua opera, e né men la sua fama’ in Locatelli, IX, 231. A decade later, an article devoted to some prominent poets and librettists and published in the Florentine journal L'armonia, again singled out the libretto of Attila for sharp criticism: ‘I cannot remain silent about Attila, where the insults to common sense are very big. Attila, flagellum Dei, terrible tyrant, trusts a woman, Odabella, and becomes infatuated with her. She kills him and Attila demonstrates greater imbecility than the Count of Vergy’ (‘Non posso però tacere dell’Attila ove i soprusi fatti al buon senso sono grandissimi. Attila, Flagellum Dei, tiranno terribile, fidasi d'una donna, Odabella, e se ne invaghisce. Costei lo uccide, Attila mostra maggiore imbecillità del Conte di Vergy'). Raffaelli, Pietro, ‘Il melodramma in Italia, XII: Andrea Maffei, Bidera, Solera, Piave’, L'armonia, 1/18 (29 April 1856), 71Google Scholar .

27 Werner, Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias, Attila, König der Hunnen: eine romantische Tragödie in fünf Akten (Berlin: in der Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808), 255Google Scholar . See also Engelhardt, Markus, Verdi und Andere: ‘Un giorno di regno’, ‘Ernani’, ‘Attila’, ‘Il corsaro’ in Mehrfachvertonungen (Parma, 1992), 258Google Scholar . Verdi himself, in his 24 November 1845 letter to Piave, indicated clearly that there should be no choruses (‘non mettere i cori …’). Conati, La bottega della musica, 165.

28 See above, n. 9.

29 The original is preserved at Sant'Agata, and a copy is available on microfilm in the Archive of the American Institute for Verdi Studies. I am grateful to the Verdi family for allowing me to quote from this source.

30 Carteggi verdiani, IV, 245.

31 The transition to more intimate subjects following the failed revolutions of 1848–9 is discussed in Chusid, Martin, ‘Toward an Understanding of Verdi's Middle Period’, in Verdi's Middle Period, 1849–1859: Source Studies, Analysis, and Performance Practice, ed. Chusid, Martin (Chicago and London, 1997), 3–7Google Scholar .

32 Roger Parker suggested that ‘perhaps Solera's original plan for a grand choral finale would have been more apt’. ‘Attila’, in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie, www.oxfordmusiconline.com/subscriber/article/grove/music/O005185 (accessed 3 June 2009).