Opera Two Views of Verdi

Productions We listen to Verdi for his music; we watch for the human interest of his stories. With the single exception of La traviata, however, all Old and New of his 29 operas are set in the historical past, mostly far removed from our own time. In this class, we shall examine two different strategies for having the audience identify with these settings. One is to depict the milieu in such detail as to carry the audience there as on a magic carpet. The other is to find parallels in events closer to our own time, and harness the emotions they evoke.

Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) was (with Richard Wagner, born in the same year) one of the two internationally dominant opera composers of the mid-19th century. Verdi’s output of 29 operas is generally divided into two periods, separated by the remarkable trio of Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata in 1851–53. Before are his “years in the galleys,” which produced numerous operas in a popular style, often with strong patriotic overtones. Attila (1846) is one of these. After Rigoletto come works of increasing subtlety, flexibility of form, and musical invention, culminating in his masterpieces in the French tradition, Don Carlos (1867) and Aïda (1871), and the two remarkable Shakespearean fruits of his old age, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).

6. To a Distant World . . .

Two Views When, in the search for “authenticity,” we try to imagine what a Verdi premiere might have looked like, there is much we cannot know, in of Verdi: terms of the acting conventions of the time. But with some of his later works, Aïda among them, we have designs for scenery and costumes, and detailed production books, showing the disposition of chorus and Aïda /Attila principals in all the main scenes. The production we shall show, from the Liceu in Barcelona in 2003, does not exactly reproduce these was halted by a combination of famine and delaying tactics by the things, but it comes close, principally by reusing the hand-painted Roman army, though Church tradition assigns most of the credit to paper scenery designed by Josep Mestres Cabanes beginning in 1936, Pope Leo I, who met with the invader near Mantua and persuaded as a deliberate return to the illusionistic painting of Verdi’s time, and him into a treaty. The subject had a political resonance for Verdi’s inevitably the kind of production that would take place in front of it. contemporaries as Northern Italy was then under the rule of Austria. Verdi: Aïda, Liceu Barcelona, 2003. But it has less resonance us today. The Huns left little or no art or Daniela Dessi (Aïda), Elisabetta Fiorillo (Amneris), Fabio Armiliato architecture, making it hard for us to imagine their world, and our (Radames), Juan Pons (Amonasro), Roberto Scandiuzzi (Ramfis), knowledge of the Roman empire is mostly of an earlier period. La Scala Stefano Palatchi (King); c. Miguel Martínez; d. José Gutiérrez. opened its 2018–19 season with a new production of Attila by Davide After a brief survey of the Cabanes sets, we shall look at two scenes Livermore that looks to our own time for relevance: to all those news from the opera, and part of a third. The famous triumphal scene that photos (and in some cases memories) of wartime destruction and ends Act Two contains all the elements that make Aïda a French grand occupation from WW2 to Yugoslavia. It is not a consistent approach, as opéra in all but name: historical subject, theatrical spectacle, moral we shall see, but it is never less than interesting. conflict, huge choruses, and of course the ever-present ballet. Verdi: Attila. La Scala, Milan, 2018. — Aïda, Act II, scene 2. Triumphal march and ballet (part) 5½ Saioa Hernández (Odabella), Fabio Sartori (Foresto), George Petean (Ezio), Ildar Abdrazakov (Attila), Gianluca Buratto (Leone); — Aïda, Act II, scene 2. Entrance and aria of Amonasro 8½ c. Riccardo Chailly; d. Davide Livermore; des. Giò Forma . By contrast, the scene between Aïda and her father Amonasro in Act Three contains only two people. It is a development of the cavatina/ After a glimpse of a more conventional staging from St. Petersburg, we action/cabaletta model from bel canto opera, but here used with shall look at two substantial scenes from La Scala, plus some shorter remarkable subtlety, and culminating in an emotional coda. excerpts. The first is the Prologue. Attila has just conquered the city of Aquileia and is surprised that some female inhabitants have been left — Aïda, Act III. Amonasro/Aïda scene 8½ alive. The resistance fighter Odabella pours scorn on the Huns who Finally, if time, we shall hear the very end of the closing scene. It is a leave their women quietly at home. Her attitude intrigues Attila. distillation of all that ethereal music Verdi gave to his dying sopranos, — Attila, Prologue. Opening scene 13½ only this time shared with the tenor, as Aïda and Radames die in each other’s arms. — Attila, Act I, scene 1. Intro to Odabella’s aria 1 — Aïda, Act IV, scene 2. Duet: “O terra addio” 5 — Attila, Act II, scene 2. Dance at Attila’s banquet 2½ The freak storm that blows the lights out at the end of that excerpt . . . and Back Into Our Own from the Act II finale is an omen of Attila’s eventual fall. But he has already received an even more disturbing omen in the dream which Attila the Hun was an historical figure who ravaged much of Europe in opens the last scene of Act I, and then becomes real (or does it?) in his the 5th Century as warlord of a group of warrior tribes from the East encounter with Pope Leo I that forms the Act I finale. and center of the continent. One of his last campaigns was the — Attila, Act I, scene 2. Attila’s dream and finale 15 invasion of Italy. After destroying the city of Aquileia, causing its survivors to seek refuge in the marshes of what would later become Venice, and laying waste to much of the country north of the Po, he http://www.brunyate.com/opprodcolumbia/