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Genre and content in mid-century Verdi: ‘Addio, del passato’ (La traviata, Act III)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

James A. Hepokoski
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Extract

In the attempt to construct the ‘story’ of post-Rossinian Italian opera it has been standard practice to identify as the central plot the dissolution of traditional structural types and genres. The charting of those musical ‘facts’ that illustrate this dissolution is a familiar musicological endeavour, and there remains a persistent temptation not merely to notice the ever-weakening pull of convention but also to identify it with the notion of ‘historical progress’: a move towards the mature virtues of dramatic complexity, idiosyncrasy and flexibility. Considerations of established conventions and their modifications tend to encourage anti-generic evaluative positions, judgements which are then bolstered by appealing to influential aesthetic systems. Thus Benedetto Croce: ‘Every true work of art has violated some established kind and upset the ideas of the critics’. Or Theodor Adorno: ‘Actually, there may never have been an important work that corresponded to its genre in all respects’. Or Hans Robert Jauss: ‘The more stereotypically a text repeats the generic, the more inferior is its artistic character and its degree of historicity […]. A masterwork is definable in terms of an alteration of the horizon of the genre that is as unexpected as it is enriching’? So bewitching is this image of genre dissolution that artistic production is often assessed by the degree to which it rebels against the idées reçues of tradition or encourages the momentum of the ‘historically inevitable’.

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Research Article
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Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 1 , Issue 3 , November 1989 , pp. 249 - 276
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 Croce, B., Aesthetic as Science of Expression and General Linguistic [1902], rev. edn, trans. Ainslie, Douglas (New York, 1922), 37.Google Scholar

2 Adorno, T., Aesthetic Theory [1970], ed. Adorno, Gretel and Tiedemann, Rolf, trans. Lenhardt, C. (London, 1984), 285.Google Scholar

3 Jauss, H. R., ‘Theory of Genres and Medieval Literature’ [1972], in Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Bahti, Timothy (Minneapolis, 1982), 89, 94.Google Scholar

4 ‘New Music and the Problem of Musical Genre’ [1969], trans. Puffett, Derrick and Clayton, Alfred, in Dahlhaus, C., Schoenberg and the New Music (Cambridge, 1987), 40.Google Scholar

5 These concepts have been laid out with great care by Carl Dahlhaus. Particularly useful is his Analysis and Value Judgment [1970], trans. Levarie, Siegmund (New York, 1983), 18–19 and 34–8.Google Scholar See also Dahlhaus, , ‘Über gut komponierte schlechte Musik’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 135 (1974), 28.Google Scholar Far more venomously, Adorno takes pleasure in addressing the subject of kitsch, and Mediterranean cultures seem often to be the direct target: ‘The most powerful objection that one can raise to French art [ … ] is that it has no word for kitsch’ (Aesthetic Theory, 434). Nineteenth-century Italian music, for Adorno, is apparently so discredited ipso facto that he need not even bring up the topic in a serious way. The central point is that according to this nineteenth-century, preponderantly Germanic paradigm ‘functional music remained excluded from the concept of art’ (Dahlhaus, ‘New Music’ 30.)

6 Carpani, G., Le rossiniane ossia Lettere musico-teatrali (Padua, 1824), 24Google Scholar; as cited in Benedetto, Renato Di, ‘Poetiche e polemiche’, Teorie e techniche: immagini e fantasmi, vol. VI of Storia dell'opera italiana, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio (Turin, 1988), 55.Google Scholar See also Balthazar, Scott, ‘Rossini and the Development of the Mid–Century Lyric Form’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 41 (1988)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, who cites Carpani's allegiance to ‘cantilena, e cantilena sempre, e cantilena bella, e cantilena nuova, e cantilena magica, e cantilena rara’ (102).

7 There have been some notable exceptions, primarily within the nationalistically tilted Italian journalistic or literary traditions. The classic argument favouring the more conventional middle Verdi over the later, supposedly over-intellectual Verdi of Otello and Falstaff may be found in Barilli's, BrunoIl paese del melodramma: ‘In my opinion [Verdi] actually reached the highest peak of beauty, with a completely southern immediacy, in Il trovatore’ (1929; rpt. Florence, 1963), 105.Google Scholar The most eloquent and subtle modern statement of this position is Baldini's, GabrieleAbitare la battaglia [1970], trans. Parker, Roger as The Story of Giuseppe Verdi (Cambridge, 1980).Google Scholar For a summary of Verdi scholarship with regard to the composer's development, see the present author's Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff (Cambridge, 1983), 138–44.Google Scholar

8 The main compositional line to follow begins primarily with Mercadante's supposed reforms of the 1830s, as described, for example, in his 1838 letter to Florimo: ‘I have continued the revolution begun with Il giuramento – varied the forms, abolished trivial cabalettas; concision, less repetition; more novelty in the cadences; due regard paid to the dramatic side; the orchestration rich but without swamping the voices […]’. See Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi (London, 1973–1981), II, 6.Google Scholar The line continues through an inventory of non-normative procedures to be found in Donizetti, Pacini and Verdi, and finally reaches the radically changing styles of the 1860s (neatly complemented by the Boitian reform manifestos), the 1870s and the 1880s.

9 See Budden, , II, 13–17.Google Scholar

10 Curiously, Dahlhaus, Carl, in his recent ‘Drammaturgia dell'opera italiana’ (in Teorie e techniche [see n. 6], 77–162)Google Scholar, appears to take the most restrictive position. Under the general rubric ‘Questioni di genere’ he considers three issues: ‘L'opera come romanzo’: ‘Tragedia e lieto fine’; and ‘Commedia con musica e commedia in musica’. Dahlhaus deals with certain aspects of the formal structures in a sub-section entitled ‘Strutture temporali’ as well as in a more general section with the title ‘Forme e contenuti’. The problematic issue of operatic form and genre has also been addressed by Stefan Kunze, `Überlegungen zum Begriff der “Gattung” in der Musik’, in Gattung und Werk in der Musikgeschichte Norddeutschlands und Skandinaviens, Kieler Schriften zur Musikwissenschaft, 26, ed. Krummacher, Friedhelm and Schwab, Heinrich W. (Kassel, 1982), 50–1.Google Scholar

11 Wellek, René and Warren, Austin, Theory of Literature, 3rd edn (New York, 1977), 231.Google Scholar For the Shaftesbury-Goethe connection (transmitted principally by Karl Viétor in the 1920s and 1930s) see also Guillén, Claudio, ‘On the Uses of Literary Genre’, in Literature as System: Essays toward the Theory of Literary History (Princeton, 1971), 107–34, and Jauss (n. 3).Google Scholar

12 Considerations of genre run throughout Dahlhaus's works. Particularly helpful are: ‘New Music and the Problem of Musical Genre’; ‘Was ist eine musikalische Gattung?’, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, 135 (1974), 620–5Google Scholar; and ‘Zur Problematik der musikalischen Gattungen im 19. Jahrhundert’, in Gattungen der Musik in Einzeldarstellungen: Gedenkschrift Leo Schrade, ed. Arlt, Wulf, Lichtenhahn, Ernst and Oesch, Hans (Bern, 1973), 840–95.Google Scholar A summary of Dahlhaus's thought on genre (immediately followed, however, by a rather puzzling set of objections) may be found in Kallberg, Jeffrey, ‘The Rhetoric of Genre: Chopin's Nocturne in G Minor’, 19th-Century Music, 11 (1988), 238–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Dahlhaus, , ‘Gattung’, 621.Google Scholar

14 ‘Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory’ [1970], in Jauss (see n. 3), 3–45.Google Scholar See also Kallberg, (n. 12), 243–6.Google Scholar Readers unacquainted with the perplexities encountered within the concept of musical genre are invited to peer into the abyss suggested by Wulf Arlt's attempt to define the term. According to Arlt a musical genre (Gattung) is ‘eine Merkmalskonstellation, bei der es primär um den Zusammenhang zwischen musikalischer Struktur und Funktion (sowie gegebenenfalls um einen bestimmten Zweck) in einem an Konventionen faβbaren Erwartungshorizont geht, der mit einer abgrenzbaren (historischen) Begrifflichkeit verbunden ist.’ ‘Gattung – Probleme mit einem Interpretationsmodell der Musikgeschichtsschreibung’, in Gattung und Werk (see n. 10), 18–19.Google Scholar

15 Weiss, P., ‘Verdi and the Fusion of Genres’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 35 (1982), 138–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

16 See, for example, the characteristic early-Verdian sentiments found in the letters cited by Weiss, , ‘Verdi and the Fusion of Genres’: a letter to Cammarano on 24 03 1849Google Scholar (‘This mixture of the comic and the terrible [à la Shakespeare] will, I believe, do well and also serve to distract and to relieve the monotony of so many serious scenes’ [144]); and to Piave on 28 April 1850 (‘As for the genre, I don't care whether it is grand, passionate, fantastic, so long as it is beautiful’ [151]).

17 Budden, (see n. 8), II, 55.Google Scholar For the contradictions between the later Verdi's remarks and his compositional style, see also the present author's Giuseppe Verdi: Otello (Cambridge, 1987), esp. 48–9.Google Scholar

18 The structural terms quoted here are those of Harold S. Powers (a ‘dialogue duet’ is one built from a single poetic metre, often set in a parlante texture). Powers's extensive study of the architecture of Verdi's operas will appear in his forthcoming Verdian Musical Dramaturgy, As is clear from his ‘Simon Boccanegra I.10–12: A Generic-Genetic Analysis of the Council Chamber Scene’, 19th-Century Music (forthcoming), as well as from ‘“La solita forma” and The Uses of Convention’, Acta musicologica, 59 (1987), 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Powers is concerned with conventional models and their adaptations or alterations in Verdi. This is the ‘generic‘conservative’ librettist Salvatore Cammarano and the related letter to their mutual friend Cesare De Sanctis. See Budden (n. 8), II, 61. While Il trovatore abounds in bizarre touches and eccentricities, its fundamental adherence to the basic system of Italian libretto- and opera-making is beyond doubt. See also Verdi's extraordinary remark to Cammarano on 28 February 1850 about the proposed King Lear, ‘We must not make of King Lear a drama containing the forms that have been in use more or less up to the present, but […] we must treat it in a totally new, spacious manner, without regard for conventions of any kind’ (trans. from Weiss [see n. 15], 150). As with Il trovatore, the Lear libretto is nowhere near as revolutionary as Verdi's letter might lead one to expect. See Schmidgall, Gary, ‘Verdi's King Lear Project’, 19th-Century Music, 9 (1985), 83–101.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 The ‘conservative’ aspect of Verdi's early style has been noted by Budden, (see n. 8), I, 14Google Scholar: ‘[Early] Verdi invariably follows Bellini's more periodic style of melody in all his first movements’. After having undertaken an intensive study of the standard patterns of the primo ottocento, Scott Balthazar (see n. 6) has confirmed the conclusion: ‘Rossini wrote a wide variety of different melodic types, while Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi (early in his career) limited themselves to a narrower range of possibilities centred on the mid-century lyric form’ (124).

21 For the impact of French traditions on Verdi's post-Traviata style see Kerman, Joseph, ‘Lyric Form and Flexibility in Simon Boccanegra’, Studi verdiani, 1 (1982), 47–62Google Scholar, and Budden, (n. 8), II, 33–56.Google Scholar

22 Hepokoski, (see n. 17), 139–62.Google Scholar

23 Basevi, A., Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Florence, 1859), 191.Google Scholar

24 As noted in Ashbrook, William, Donizetti and His Operas (Cambridge, 1982), 350CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tomlinson, Gary, ‘Opera and Drame: Hugo, Donizetti, and Verdi’, Music and Drama, Studies in the History of Music, 2 (New York, 1988), 171–92Google Scholar, Verdi's procedural model for the Rigoletto-Sparafucile encounter seems to have been the unusual Rustighello-Astolfo ‘dialogue duet’ in the first act of Donizetti's, Lucrezia Borgia (1833).Google Scholar Here, too, the structural point was probably an ‘illicit’ one: both of these minor characters stumble on each other in the streets of Ferrara as they carry out secret orders, the former from Duke Alfonso (involving the future murder of Gennaro), the latter from Lucrezia. Essentially the same argument may be adduced in Verdi's next two non-normative ‘dialogue duets’, both from the 1857 Simon Boccanegra: Pietro and Paolo's brief scena e duettino (‘Che disse? A me negolla’) that precedes the first act finale – the unfolding of the stealthy plans to abduct Amelia; and (even more clearly modelled on the Rigoletto-Sparafucile encounter) the Paolo-Fiesco duet (‘Prigioniero in qual loco mi trovo?’) from the second act – in which the villainous Paolo tries to tempt Fiesco, now a prisoner, into murdering the Doge in his sleep. These and later instances of such duets are studied in Powers's forthcoming Verdian Musical Dramaturgy (see n. 18).

25 The most obvious model for ‘Pari siamo’ is the celebrated ‘dagger’ monologue ‘Mi si affaccia un pugnal?!’ from Macbeth. Again, the reasoning behind the unusual expansion of a standard convention seems similar, and in both instances Verdi seems to have been striving for the operatic equivalent of a Shakespearean soliloquy.

26 Cf. Fabbri's, Paolo remarks in ‘Istituti metrici e formali’, in Teorie e techniche (n. 6), 219–20Google Scholar, which touch on Verdi's gift for ‘making eccentric [poetic] structures blossom even in non-picturesque moments, as in “Addio, del passato” […] and “Di Provenza”’.

27 Related instances are the alternations of doppi senari and senari tronchi in the ‘Coro di ribelli montanari e banditi’ that opens the first act of Ernani (‘Evviva! … beviamo! – Nel vino cerchiamo/ Almeno un piacer!’) and, perhaps, the alternating settenari and endecasillabi in Ferrando's racconto (‘Di due figli vivea padre beato / Il buon Conte di Luna’) in the first act of Il trovatore.

28 This has also been noticed by Ashbrook, (see n. 24), 691.Google Scholar Cf. also Maria's F-minor preghiera, ‘Havvi un Dio’, from Donizetti's Maria di Rohan.

29 To a lesser extent the refrain (Ex. 2a) of ‘Robert, toi que j'aime’ also foreshadows that of ‘Ah! fors'è lui’ (Ex. 2c). But as delivered in the third stanza, Meyerbeer's refrain seems to have been the model for yet another portion of La traviata. Basevi (see n. 23) put his finger on the point: ‘[In Act II of La traviata] when we arrive at the key of F, with the words “Amami, Alfredo”, the rhythm becomes regular. Certainly at this point Verdi had in mind the famous phrase from Isabelle's aria in Robert le diable, at the words, “Grâce, grâce pour toi même”, etc., which bring with them, when they are repeated for the third time, a fortissimo that gives one shivers’ (236). Verdi's La traviata, that is, has several of the effects of these earlier strophic songs ‘on its mind’, and it probably cannot be properly explained without reference to them.

30 Examples include: Odabella's major-mode romanza ‘Oh! nel fuggente nuvolo’ from Attila and the English-horn ‘spots’ in Lady Macbeth's Sleepwalking Scene (a persistent, ominous b6–5 in major; cf. the English-horn colour in the Act I Macbeth-Lady Duet). Earlier, in Giovanna d'Arco, we find elements of the same English-horn formula applied to a tenor romanza with Carlo's ‘Quale più fido amico’ (here combined with solo cello, as in Abigaille's death scene from Nabucco, Odabella's romanza from Attila and, much later, Rigoletto's second-act plea, ‘Miei signori’, in D flat major). See Budden, (n. 8), I, 357 and 385Google Scholar, on the association of oboe melodies with grief.

31 See especially the descriptions of the structure in Kerman (n. 21) and Balthazar (n. 6). Balthazar's distinguishing of the three ‘functional divisions’ of the form – the ‘thematic block ’ (a a′), the ‘medial section’ (b) and the ‘closing section’ (a″ or c) – is particularly useful in tracing modifications, expansions or other variants of lyric-form procedures. Verdi's treatments of the a a′ b c structures are especially noteworthy. Most commonly the expressive content involves the yielding of a formal, more standard posture (the initial a a′ or a a′ b) to a more telling or direct representation of the emotion driving the singer. Recognising the generic trajectory is important in determining the dramatic intent of any piece following this scheme.

32 Cf. Dahlhaus, , ‘Mahler: Second Symphony, finale’, in Analysis (n. 5)Google Scholar: ‘Therefore one may establish in analysis the rule that a movement is to be interpreted, within sensible limits, as a variant of the form characteristic of the genre, and not as exemplifying another schema unusual for the genre’ (82–3). See also Jauss's concept of the ‘generic dominant’ in ‘Theory of Genres’ (n. 3) and Hirsch's, E. D. treatment of ‘intrinsic genre’, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven, 1967), 78–89.Google Scholar

33 Within this tradition the term couplets may be defined as a light, picturesque or sharply characterised song in two or three stanzas, written in the French manner. The most important features of this ‘French manner’ are a simple, naïve or colloquially ‘natural’ style and – most notably – a sub-division of each stanza into two parts: a preparatory first part, often beginning with repeated phrases, that ends with a connecting link (x:, frequently ending with a dominant chord sustained by a fermata) whose task is to set up the more emphatic, concluding ‘punch-line’ refrain. Of the two parts of each stanza, the first is the less ‘stable’ and may be subject to recomposition in subsequent stanzas (especially in the third of a three-stanza song). Occasionally, however, one may find textual or musical alterations in the second section as well, thus depriving that section of a strict ‘refrain’ status.

Some French examples of standard couplets include Alice's ‘Quand je quittai la Normandie’ from Robert le diable, the ‘Couplets militaires des Soldats Huguenots’ (‘Prenant son sabre de bataille’) from Les Huguenots and Oscar's ‘Aux cieux elle sait lire’ from Auber's Gustave ou Le Bal masqué, Examples of Verdi's understanding of the genre at its most elemental include the song ‘Lo spazzacamino’ from the 1845 collection Sei Romanze (the composer's first published example of the most characteristic type of couplets), Hélène's Sicilienne, ‘Merci, jeunes amis’ from Les Vêpres siciliennes and Oscar's ‘Volta la terrea’ from Un ballo in maschera.

34 In Il corsaro, Medora's romanza, ‘Non so le tetre immagini’, Verdi's first strophic solo piece within an opera, lacks a refrain: see Budden, (n. 8), I, 372.Google Scholar To elaborate here the several refrain and non-refrain variants of the couplets and romanze in the works of Verdi and his predecessors would take us far afield. It must suffice to mention that operatic strophic songs subdivide into several overlapping sub-categories of structure, ‘tone’ and content (see, e.g., n. 37 on the romanza). I am currently investigating this topic, and its detailed consideration will have to be deferred to a separate, forthcoming study. For some free variants of couplets in late Verdi, however, see Hepokoski, (n. 17), 142, 151–2.Google Scholar

35 La Musique mise à la portée de tout le monde [1830], 3rd edn (Paris, 1847), 210–11.Google Scholar The translation is from the 1844 Music Explained to the World (London: H. G. Clark), 163–4.Google Scholar

36 Basevi, (see n. 23), 238.Google Scholar

37 In nineteenth-century French opera the term ‘couplets’ seems to be applicable to any end-accented strophic song; but it can apparently be overridden by a character– or style–designation if the song conveys a recognisably ‘generic’ mood or function. The replacement term ‘ballade’ is common (especially for legends or other tales in narrative stanzas), as is romance, which also often has a semi-narrative component (that is, an intermixture of the narrative and the lyrical) and is especially appropriate for melancholy farewells or ingenuous expressions of love, particularly ones about the virtues of a distant or scarcely glimpsed beloved. One of the potential ‘differences’ of structure between romances and normative couplets is that strict refrain-texts are far less necessary in the former (refrains are thus not defining features of romances), although the presence of a strict refrain within a romance probably signals a simpler or ‘lower’ variant of the genre. Other ‘substitute’ terms, such as chanson, boléro, pastorale, complainte, sérénade and so on, crop up from time to time. As mentioned in n. 34, elaboration of the details will be deferred to a separate study. For some German versions of the ballade, see Abbate, Carolyn, ‘Erik's Dream and Tannhäuser's Journey’, in Reading Opera, ed. Groos, Arthur and Parker, Roger (Princeton, 1988), 129–67.Google Scholar

Complicating the issue within Italian opera is Donizetti's and Verdi's practice of labelling a non-strophic set piece (or Adagio) that lacks a complementary cabaletta as a romanza. See Chusid, Martin, ‘The Organization of Scenes with Arias: Verdi's Cavatinas and Romanzas’, Atti del 1° Congresso internazionale di studi verdiani (Parma, 1969), 59–66Google Scholar, and Budden, (n. 8), I, 16, 187.Google Scholar Such Italianate romanze may be offshoots of the French strophic romance, although the issue has not yet received thorough exploration. In any event, when investigating Verdi's dramatic structures we are occasionally presented with the confusing situation in which certain solo pieces that the composer does not label as romanze (such as Leonora's ‘Tacea la notte placida’ from Il trovatore – probably not labelled as such because of the subsequent cabaletta) seem clear instances of the French romance genre invading the Adagio of a cavatina, while other pieces labelled as romanze because of their single-movement or ‘inset’ status (such as the Doge's ‘O vecchio cor, the batti’ from I due Foscari –an otherwise standard lyric-form piece) seem only marginally related to the French strophic romance.

38 Basevi, (see n. 23), 230–1.Google Scholar

39 Basevi, , 234, 236.Google Scholar

40 See the text of Verdi's 1845 couplets, ‘Lo spazzacamino’: ‘Sono d'aspetto brutto e nero, / Tingo ognun che mi vien presso; / Sono d'abiti mal messo, / Sempre scalzo intorno io vo.’ Within opera the social aspect of the genre is particularly striking when a nobleman disguises himself as a commoner and proceeds to sing a strophic song as part of the disguise, as in Léopold's ‘Loin de son amie’ from La Juive or – even more clearly – Riccardo's ‘Di’ tu se fedele’ from Un ballo in maschera. Occasionally nobles can deliver French romances, as in Raoul's ’plus blanche que la blanche hermine’ (Les Huguenots) and, for that matter, Leonora's ‘Tacea la notte placida’ (Il trovatore). These cases stress the generic situation (semi-narration: see n. 37) or the heartfelt ‘naturalness’ of the character singing; moreover, on stage they are often relatively informal utterances to non-aristocratic comrades-in-arms, ladies-in-waiting and so on.

41 Basevi, (see n. 23), 300.Google Scholar

42 The sketch is reproduced in facsimile by Gatti, Carlo, Verdi nelle immagini (Milan, 1941), 65.Google Scholar A transcription of the music (though lacking two fermate, one of which – prior to the ‘refrain’ – helps to identify the intended genre) may be found in Budden, (see n. 8), II, 127.Google Scholar

43 The correspondence on which my dating of the sketch is based may be found in Conati, Marcello, La bottega della musica: Verdi e la Fenice (Milan, 1983), 267–332.Google Scholar

44 Amore e morte was the title of the original scenario prepared by Piave in mid-October 1852. See Conati, , La bottega, 302–4.Google Scholar

45 Basevi, (see n. 23), 237–8.Google Scholar

46 The point has also been made more recently by Arnold, Denis, ‘La Traviata: From Real Life to Opera’, La traviata: Giuseppe Verdi (English National Opera Guide No. 5), ed. John, Nicholas (London, 1981), 27.Google Scholar See also Groos, Arthur and Parker, Roger, Giacomo Puccini: La bohème (Cambridge, 1986), 74–7.Google Scholar

47 Although it is difficult to be certain, in its bass line Ex. 5 probably presents a slightly fuller version than Verdi actually entered. Certain idiosyncrasies – the three-sharp signature change, the division of fol. 243, measure 4 into two measures – occur only in the voice part. Exactly how much bass support the composer entered cannot be determined, but it is clear that some support was writtten down into the skeleton score. In the transcription I have therefore minimised the bass part (which was, in any case, implied by the melody), but have provided enough to give a fuller sense of Verdi's intentions and to be helpful in hearing the melody. The dating of the skeleton score is based on the documents in Conati, (see n. 43), 315–16, 323–4.Google Scholar

48 I would like to thank G. Ricordi ‘Addio, del passato’.

50 Separating the erased superimposed layers with absolute confidence is impossible, but Exx. 5, 6 and 7 seem the likeliest solutions. Some of the reasoning behind the choices is as follows. Verdi seems to have decided to alter the refrain melody from the first version (Ex. 5) to the second version (Ex. 6b, Version 2) at the moment that he was writing the first strophe into the autograph score. (The task of producing the skeleton-score layer was probably simply that of copying a pre-existing continuity draft and making whatever modifications seemed appropriate.) Immediately after the first strophe had been written (or merely copied), Verdi seems to have wanted to alter the refrain melody to that found in Ex. 6b, Version 2. He then erased Version 1 in the first strophe and entered his alteration. Proceeding to the second strophe, he wrote the refrain in a clean copy of Version 2, but with very slight alterations, and still without the oboe interpolations (Ex. 7). (It is also possible that some of the minor discrepancies between Ex. 6b, Version 2 and Ex. 7 are the residue of Verdi's tinkerings with the first version before he had devised this new, ‘second’ melody. If so, the first and second strophes of the skeleton score would have corresponded more exactly.) At a later point he revised and standardised the two strophes. A number of conclusions follow: (1) it seems likely that the ‘first’ refrain melody (Ex. 5) is closer to the one found on his (now unavailable) continuity draft, which could have been composed several weeks before mid-February 1853; (2) the ‘second’ refrain melody (Ex. 6b, Version 2) must have been conceived at the moment of writing the skeleton score, as must therefore be the case with the ‘second-stanza’ version found in Ex. 7; and (3) the decision to add the oboe interpolations occurred some time after writing the skeleton score of the second stanza – probably during the process of orchestration.

51 Strepponi to Verdi, 3 January 1852, in Abbiati, Franco, Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1959), II, 203–4.Google Scholar

52 ‘There must be more to [Verdi's “popular” works of the late 1840s and early 1850s] than we believed; the master who could create such an opera [as Falstaff] did not write Trovatore as mere hand organ music. […] Verdi's secret (I am not now speaking of the so-called secrets of form) lies as deep as Wagner's.’ Einstein, Alfred, ‘Opus Ultimum’ [1937], in Essays on Music, ed. Lang, Paul Henry (New York, 1956), 87.Google Scholar