Verdi's First Rifacimento:'I Lombardi'and 'Jérusalem'

Music and Letters JANUARY, 1979

VOLUME LX NO. 1

Music AND LETTERS was founded in 1920 by the late A. H. Fox Strangways. It was continued by the late Richard Capell and is now the property of Music and Letters Limited, a Company Limited by guarantee and comprising Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 representatives from the Royal Musical Association and Oxford University Press and others. BUSINESS & ADVERTISING ADDRESS : Ely House, 37 Dover Street, London, W1X 4AH. EDITORIAL ADDRESS : Faculty of Music, 32 Holywell, Oxford, OX1 3SL. ISSN 0027-4224 © Music & Letters Ltd. and Contributors 1979

VERDrS FIRST RIFACIMENTO: «I LOMBARDF AND 'JERUSALEM'

BY DAVID R. B. KIMBELL

E A c H o F Verdi's half-dozen rifacimenti offers points of special interest to the student. As a matter of fact it is unlikely that Jerusalem is the first: that distinction probably belongs to Oberto. But with the loss of Rocester we lack the material that would enable us to study the process of recasting and rewriting from which Oberto eventually emerged. With / Lombardi and Jerusalem such a study is for the first time possible. Jerusalem shows the way in which Verdi went about the task of adapting an Italian melodrama to form a Parisian grand opera. It is a process we can study again in Macbeth; but there is a crucial difference between the two works. Macbeth originated in Florence in 1847 and was revised for the Paris Ope"ra only in 1865; Jerusalem, the Paris adaptation of / Lombardi, followed the original at a distance of a mere four and a half years in 1847. The rifacimento of Macbeth reflects not only the composer's view of what was necessary to make an Italian opera conformable to the operatic traditions of Paris; it reflects besides Verdi's enormous growth in maturity and sophistication over a period of nearly twenty years. With Jerusalem, on the other hand, it is the desire to give the opera a Parisian form and style that is the dominant consideration. Clearly JSrusalem is the work of a more mature composer than / Lombardi—that kind of development cannot be ignored

1 altogether; but the real interest of the opera is in illustrating the way Verdi responded to the idiom of 'grand opera' at the period of its greatest prestige. Generally Italian composers had uneasy relations with grand opera. It is alleged that the ascendancy of the genre he had helped create was one of the factors that contributed to Rossini's early silence. Verdi obviously never admired the Paris OpeVa quite as much as he felt he ought. Nevertheless it was, paradoxically, the Italians who wrote the only examples of the genre that can really be said to have survived :

Rossini's William Tell, Verdi's Don Carlos and a number of works Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 such as Nabucco and Aida which can best be described as Italian grand operas. The Italians rarely lost their sense of fitness when con- fronted with the staggering resources of the Ope"ra, with the masterful complication of its musical idiom and the cleverness of its practitioners; they contrived to put these assets to some worth-while dramatic purpose. And they were able to do this because their musical and theatrical instincts had been formed in a tradition which, for all its modesty, its convention-proneness and its crudities, had a stylishness and a wisdom beyond the imaginings of the rouS artists of the Ope"ra. The best short definition of what was involved in converting an Italian opera into a Parisian grand opera is probably Donizetti's. He defined the work he had to do on Poliuto in transforming it into Les Martyrs in the following terms : ... I have had to rewrite all the recitatives, compose a new finale for Act I, add arias, trios, and such related ballets as they use here, so that the public may not complain that the facture is Italian . . . French music and dramatic verse have a cachet all their own, with which every composer must conform; whether in the recitatives or in the lyrical pieces. For example, a ban on crescendos, etc., a ban on the usual cadences,1 joy, joy, joy; then between one statement of the cabaletta and the other there is always poetry that intensifies the action without the usual repetition of lines which our poets use.2

Verdi, too, through Muzio, described the process as being that of 'adapting the music of / Lombardi to a new libretto, and composing additional music'.* So our study of Jerusalem must begin with an examination of what the librettists Royer and Vaez did to Solera's libretto. This can best be demonstrated by means of an annotated synopsis of the plot of / Lombardi.

1'Solite cadenze': this could of course mean 'the usual cadenzas'; but there are just as many cadenzas in Let Martyrs as in Donizetti's Italian operas. On the other hand reiterated tutti cadence patterns are far less conspicuous, and I suggest that this is what Donizetti is referring to. "Letter of 8 April 1839: G. Zavadini, Donizetti: vita-miuiche-epistolario, Bergamo, 1948, pp. 494-5. 1 L. A. Garibaldi, Verdi nelle lettre di Emanuele Muzio ad Antonio Barezzi, Milan, 1931, p. 350. i LOMBARDI, ACT i: Vengeance Scene 1. The piazza in front of the Basilica of Saint Ambrose in Milan. Joyful music is heard from the church. A group of citizens discuss the return to Milan of Pagano, one of the sons of Folco, Lord of R6. He had been exiled and gone on a pilgrimage of contrition because of his jealous attempt on the life of his brother Arvino. The brothers emerge from the church in procession and publicly give one another die kiss of reconciliation. Nevertheless, Arvino and the bystanders are still troubled by die expression in Pagano's eye, and it does soon transpire that at the very ceremony of atonement he is plotting revenge with Pirro, one of Arvino's servants, whom he has suborned. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 The Prior of Milan announces that the Pope has appointed Arvino to lead the Lombard forces on the Crusade. He urges Pagano to join him in an oath of allegiance. The brothers look forward to destroy- ing die infidels in the Holy War. The stage empties, leaving Pagano and Pirro alone. Pagano admits that long years of exile have served only to make more fierce his passion for Viclinda, his brother's wife. Pirro introduces his gang of thugs, who are ready to fire Arvino's house and commit any murder that may be needful. Pagano exults in his hour of vengeance.

Scene 2. A gallery in the Folco palace. Night. Arvino tells his wife and their daughter Giselda to retire to their rooms. He is leaving his elderly father with them while he goes to investigate some suspicious noises. The women pray and then retire. Pirro conducts Pagano into the gallery and points out to him Arvino's chamber. Pagano goes off to kill his brother, and after a while re- emerges from the room with blood-stained sword, dragging with him the screaming Viclinda. But Pagano's exultation is turned to dismay when Arvino returns, and to horror when it is realised that he has killed his own father. All the assembling household express their loathing for Pagano's crime. Arvino would kill him but is pre- vented by Giselda; Pagano's despairing attempt to kill himself is also frustrated. He is condemned to a life of penitence and remorse.

Characteristic of Solera's style in this opera is his straining for exaltation of mood by heaping up romantic and vicious and religious passions in their most extreme forms. The first act especially is distinguished by a sustained hyperbole of language—of which the final tutti furnishes a good example :

Va! fra i fiori di lieto cammino, Nelle grotte, fra i boschi, sul monte, Sangue ognor verserai dalla fronte, Sempre al dosso un demon to stara! (Go! among the flowers of the pleasant pathways, in the grottos, in the forests, on the mountain, your face will always pour blood, always a demon shall stand behind you !) —and extravagant and often incongruous imagery :

Qual dall'acque l'alimento Tragge l'italo vulcano, Io cosl da te lontano Crebbi agli impeti d'amor. (As the Italic volcano draws its nourishment from the waters, so I, dilUnt from you, swelled up with the transports of love.)

The general turbulence of the effect is exacerbated by Solera's refusal to distinguish between primary and secondary issues or primary Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 and secondary characters. Whether Pagano's guilty passion for Vic- linda, the consequences of his parricide, or the Crusade is going to be the central dramatic issue we have no means of knowing, for all characters, major, minor and collective, express themselves with the same violence. Nervous of Arvino's safety—whedier because of Pagano's 'rolling eyes' or because of the perils of the Crusade is not made clear—Viclinda urges her daughter :

Giuriam, s'ei copre di suo manto pio Tuo padre, il mio consorte, Giuriam, che, nudo il pie', verremo al santo Sepolcro orando. (Let us vow—if with his compassionate mantle he covers your father, my consort—let us vow that, bare-footed, we shall come to the Holy Sepulchre in prayer.)

The activities of a gang of thugs are described in a grotesque and brutal hymn, as lyrically exalted as everything else in the libretto.

Fra le grida, fra i lamenti, Imperterriti, tacenti, D'un sol colpo in paradiso L'alme altrui godiam mandar. Col pugnal di sangue intriso Poi sediamo a banchettar. (Undaunted and silent amid the shrieks and lamenting^ we enjoy sending another man's soul to paradise with one single blow. Then, our daggers still imbrued in blood, we sit down to feast.)

The first act of Jerusalem is a deft piece of adaptation on the part of Royer and Vaez. Widely separated in time and place from the rest of the opera, the opening scenes of / Lombardi are more like a prologue than a first act; they provide the background to the main action rather than its opening stages. The French librettists decided that there are in fact only two issues in it crucial to the subsequent development of the drama. One is the preparation for the Crusade, led in / Lombardi by Arvino, in Jerusalem—adapting the situation reasonably enough to a more familiar French historical context—by the Count of Toulouse. The other is the commission of an appalling misdeed which condemns the perpetrator to a life of exile and remorse. Here Royer and Vaez saw their first opportunity for tightening up Solera's libretto. In / Lombardi we are asked to believe in a man, who, after a penitential exile of some twenty years, returns to Milan still prepared to perjure himself before God and man, instigate arson and indiscriminate slaughter and to commit fratricide, in order to get his hands on his brother's wife, Viclinda, now a matron with a daughter of her own of marriageable age. What is more, Viclinda, having been the innocent cause of the violence at the start of the opera, disappears from the scene never to return. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 This is an absurd and shoddy piece of dramatic planning, and a more plausible object for guilty passion was not far to seek. In Jeru- salem the count's brother, now named Roger, is in love not with his sister-in-law but with his niece, Helene, the Giselda of / Lombardi. And the murderous attack that Roger's jealousy provokes him to unleash is consequently not on his brother, but on a rival. Before this modification could be worked out fully, though, Royer and Vaez had to remedy another weakness in Solera's libretto. / Lom- bardi, like Nabucco, is an opera in which a poignant personal history, that of the love of Giselda and Oronte, is set in a grandiose frame of momentous historical and religious events. But no inkling of this has been given in Act I. Who the principal characters are and what their interest is to be is nowhere made clear. Giselda's only solo is an anony- mous prayer; Oronte has not appeared at all. In Jerusalem on the other hand, Helene and her lover Gaston are put in the centre of the action from the start. Indeed the most apparent novelty of the French libretto is that it begins with a short scene in which the lovers bid one another farewell after a nocturnal assignation. With VicUnda removed from the scene altogether and with two lovers already added to the principals borrowed from Solera—the count and his brother—Royer and Vaez are able to design an action that is not only far tauter, but far more representative of the central themes of the opera than Solera's had been. Just a few of the most significant dif- ferences may be mentioned. H&ene's lover, Gaston, Count of B6arn, is a member of a family long hostile to the Count of Toulouse. The betrothal to which the Count of Toulouse now assents is a symbol of the reconciliation between the families before they set out together on the Crusade. Roger's murder plot involves sending a bribed soldier to kill Gaston while he is at prayer with the Count of Toulouse; it misfires because the count has just given Gaston his white cloak as a further gesture of amity, and is stabbed himself instead. Finally Roger is able to evade the consequences of what he has done by bribing the soldier to claim that the murder was instigated by Gaston, a plausible enough lie in view of the long hostility between the families. It is thus Gaston who is exiled and anathematised, though Roger is secretly overcome with remorse and likewise resolves on exile. In addition to these major changes in the plot, the librettists contrived a number of smaller improvements in dramatic fluency and taste. The whole act is designed as one continuous action, not in the two discrete scenes of the original. With the murder attempt on Gaston in the hands of a single hireling, the relish of the assassins' chorus can be legitimised by turning it into an off-stage drinking song in which a crowd of soldiers looks forward to such incidental pleasures of the Crusade as introducing houris to Christianity and wine. What in Solera's opening scene had been a gargoyle-like obtrusion has become Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 a humorous background detail.

. . . En silence ouvrant la porte Les houris preterit main forte Au chr^tien qui leur apporte Le bapteme et le bon vin.

In general the tone of the language is much moderated : Roger's cantabile for example, seems positively mild when set against Pagano's:

Oh! dans Pombre, dans le mystere, Feu coupable que j'ai su taire, Reste encore, cache a la terre Mes angoisses, mes remorts . . .

i LOMBARDI, ACT u : The man in the cavern Scene 1. A room in Acciano's palace in Antioch. An assembly of ambassadors, soldiers and people. In the face of the threat posed by the crusaders, the Moslem cities vow to forget their rivalries and fight together for Mohammed. Meanwhile, however, Giselda has been captured by the Antiochan forces and in her captivity fallen in love with the tyrant's son Oronte. Oronte's mother, Sofia, who is secretly a Christian, hopes that this attachment may bring about his conversion, and Oronte is indeed much disposed to believe that the only true God is that wor- shipped by Giselda.

Scene 2. A cavern in a mountain near Antioch. Pagano, now a hermit in the wilderness near Antioch, longs to see the crusaders' approach. He resigns himself to God's will, still hoping that the day will come when he will be able to do deeds of valour to win his soul redemption. A man dressed like a Moslem approaches the cave. In fact it is Pirro, who has fled from Europe in remorse, abandoned his Christian faith and gained a position of responsibility in Antioch. Now in anguish of mind, and hearing of the hermit's reputation for sanctity, he has come for advice. As they converse, the approach of the crusaders is heard in the distance. Pagano urges Pirro to deliver Antioch into their hands. They are now surprised to find the Lombard contingent approach- ing the cave. Arvino too, in despair at the loss of his daughter, has come for the holy man's help. The hermit avows that Giselda will be found and that on the morrow the crusaders will be in possession of Antioch. All join in a warlike hymn. Scene 3. The harem in Acciano's palace. The women of the harem mock the newly arrived Giselda, clearly jealous of the effect she has had on Oronte. But suddenly blood- curdling screams are heard. Turkish soldiers flee from the approach- ing crusaders, and Sofia tells how Acciano and Oronte have been slaughtered before her very eyes. When Arvino and the hermit arrive

to release Giselda, she denounces them for the senseless slaughter Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 they have committed. In visionary rapture she foretells the appalling revenge that will be wrought on a Europe that has so abused the teaching of its faith.

Solera's language has moderated conspicuously in this act: only in the cantabile of Oronte's cavatina does the overwrought imagery characteristic of Act I recur :

. . . Vorrei destar coi palpiti Del mio beato amore Tante armonie nell'etere, Quanti pianeti egli ha; (With the throbbing! of my happy love I would that I might awaken in the empyrean as many harmonies as it has planets.)

Elsewhere Solera is vehement without grotesqueness, and In a number of scenes rises to real eloquence. He is, for example, particularly good at such blending of religious fervour and savagery that we find in the hymn of the crusaders :

Stolto Allah . . . sovra il capo ti piomba Gia dell'ira promessa la piena; Santa voce per tutto rimbomba, Proclamante l'estremo tuo dl Gia la croce per l'aure balena D'una luce sanguigna, tremenda; £ squarciata la barbara benda, L'infedele superbo fuggi. (Foolish Allah! . . . over your head the flood of promised wrath is already falling; a holy voice resounds everywhere proclaiming your last day. Already the cross flashes in the air with a bloody, terrible light; the barbarian stan- dard is torn down, the proud infidel has fled.)

The incorrigible vulgarity of Solera's talent is shown this time rather in the action than the language : in the fantastically contrived series of coincidences that bring Arvino, Pagano and Pirro together once more on a mountainside outside Antioch; or in the profusion of over-heated incidents with which the act closes.

Though the dramatic unities of the French classical tradition had long since ceased to tyrannise the imagination of romantic playwrights, the loose episodic structure of Act II of / Lombardi can hardly have recommended itself to Royer and Vaez. Indeed, years earlier, the same librettists, addressing Donizetti, had specifically made the point that 'French dramatic form does not accept voluntarily . . . changes of scene ... in the middle of the acts'.* It was easy to see which of Solera's three scenes they should focus their attention on. As H£lene already had a lover back home in Tou- louse, the Turkish prince Oronte is not required. And if the one principal character from the Moslem ranks was being dispensed with, it was clearly unnecessary to fill in the details of his background. His Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 secretly Christian mother, his Pasha-cum-tyrant father, the public world of pan-Moslem politics, all became irrelevant, and the first scene of the act could be discarded altogether. So, strictly speaking, might the third scene have been. But a team working under Duponchel, the veteran of Meyerbeer's dancing nuns and bathing handmaidens, was not likely to deny itself the pleasure of a harem scene: at such a prospect even the fastidious critics of Paris might be persuaded to compromise their dramatic principles. So it was decided that the third scene of Solera's second act should be kept as well; that the Moslem world, even if not required dramatically, might be turned to advantage in a divertissement. To begin with, however, there was work to be done on the scene in the hermit's cave. In Solera's libretto the scene could be said to comprise three strands : characterisation, in the analysis of the state of mind of the remorse-haunted Pagano; intrigue, in the plan for the defeat of Antioch and the rescue thence of Giselda; and spectacle, in the approach of the crusaders and later their war-hymn and recessional march. Of these strands it is, characteristically, the last that Royer and Vaez make the most of. Like Solera, they provide for a crusader's march, to the strains of which the Christian armies can process into the presence of the hermit and off again towards Jerusalem. And again like Solera, they furnish a hymn for the crusaders to sing before they depart. But such a simple tableau as this could not fully satisfy the aspirations of Duppnchel and his men. If a scene was to be dependent upon spectacle, then the spectacle needed to be as varied as possible in colour and mood. It was decided therefore to add to the scene the famous chorus from Act IV of / Lombardi, 'O Signore, dal tetto natio', and to assign it to a group of thirst-tormented pilgrims. In this way both the scale and the emotional range of the tableau could be extended. The success the scene enjoyed as a manifestation of the values of the Paris Opera is clear from Gautier's review. . . . When we speak of an army of crusaders do not imagine one of those armies composed of half a dozen extras which could be hidden behind a bush. 4 Dedicatory epistle from the French libretto of Lucia di Lammermoor: Zava- dini, Donizttti, p. 883. The army of the Opera is as numerous for certain as the contingent of the most powerful baron of the Middle Ages. There are crossbowmen, archers, pikemen, knights covered in mail from head to toe; real armour, real cuirasses, and above all, real horses . . . But to provide an army is not enough : it needs baggage, pack-mules and chariots for the provisions.—Nothing in the retinue is lacking. People had even spoken of those fine Homeric carts drawn by oxen, which are so popular in the Orient, but it was feared that inopportune lowings might be added to the basses at some moment of pathos."

The first part of the scene, on the other hand, the soliloquy of the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 hermit, is simplified and clarified. Roger is, one is made to feel, a more introspective, self-tormenting character than Pagano. The action of the first act suggests this, and Royer and Vaez carry through the consequences nicely into the second. Alone in the wilderness, Roger is exclu- sively preoccupied with the sin he has committed—not, like Pagano, at least half-concerned with wreaking slaughter on the infidel as a way of earning salvation. His mood is one of sustained and dignified remorse, undisturbed by the outbreaks of violence and hatred that con- fuse the issue in / Lombardi. It is in the central part of the scene that Jerusalem departs furthest from / Lombardi: indeed it would be truer to say that there is no common ground at all, because it is here that the Oronte/Giselda strand of the original yields to the Gaston/He'lene strand of the rifacimento. Solera needed to contrive a situation in which his lovers could be brought together for the first time; Royer and Vaez one in which they can find one another again after the separation brought about by Gaston's exile. It was this section of the opera which the librettists had the greatest difficulty in arranging to Verdi's satisfaction.6 Probably their original scheme would have been tidier than what we have now. But Verdi was insistent upon the need for a varied pattern of slow and fast movements, convinced that He"lene needed to experience something 'unex- pected and pleasurable', so that she could sing the most brilliant aria of her role between Roger's slow cantabile and the slow chorus of the thirst-tormented pilgrims. The final solution is hardly a triumph of the vaunted Parisian stage-craft; indeed as a series of gratuitous and improbable incidents it rivals Solera. Firstly a pilgrim dying of thirst staggers to Roger's cave, and, having been given something to drink, collapses. Roger goes out to find the rest of the pilgrims. Now HeUene and her maid Isaure enter. They have left the crusaders to come to seek the advice of the famed hermit: he can perhaps tell them what has become of Gaston, who is known to have undertaken a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, and is rumoured to be dead. To their amazement they recognise the pilgrim collapsed on the floor of the cave as Gaston's 1 Histoire de I'art dramatique en France depuis vingt-cinq am, 5e s£rie, 29 November 1847. * See Verdi's letter to L£on Escudier quoted in J. Budden, The Operas of Verdi, i (London, 1973), 342-3. esquire. He revives and tells them that Gaston is alive, but a prisoner of the Saracens. It is the joyful news that Gaston lives that motivates the insertion of 'Quelle ivresse' at this juncture. Though there is a second scene in Act II of Jerusalem, it will be simpler to defer consideration of it until the action of Act III of / Lorn- bar di has been described.

i LOMBARDI, ACT m : The conversion Scene 1. Palestine. The vale of Josaphat, and the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem can be seen in the distance. The chorus of crusaders and pilgrims process towards Jerusalem Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 through scenes familiar from the Gospel. Giselda has left the crusaders' tents in search of solitude; she continues to brood over the lost Oronte. Suddenly he appears before her. At first she cannot believe her eyes; but Oronte tells her how, left for dead by the crusaders, he had nevertheless recovered, left home, and pursued the Lombard army in order to see her once more before dying. Giselda resolves to flee with him into the desert; she looks forward to converting him, he to worshipping her God. As the sounds of the Lombards' preparations for battle are heard, they flee. Scene 2. Arvino's tent. Arvino has seen Giselda's flight and curses her as a source of ig- nominy and shame. A group of crusaders tell how Pagano has been seen in the camp. Arvino vows to hunt him down and destroy him. Scene 3. Inside a grotto. Through the opening the banks of the river Jordan can be seen. Oronte, who has been mortally wounded by Arvino's men, is tended by Giselda. Realizing that he is dying, she reproves the God who has deprived her of all comfort. Pagano, into whose cave they have stumbled, has overheard her and corrects her. He proposes that Oronte be baptized in the Jordan. Thus spiritually strengthened, Oronte dies : Pagano comforts Giselda. Stylistically the third act brings nothing new : rather confirmation and further illustration of the features observed in the first two acts. The dramatic action is again precariously episodic and dependent upon coincidences and improbabilities of breath-taking inverisimili- tude: Oronte's overhauling of the Lombard crusaders, the recognition of Pagano by casual bystanders in the camp though his brother has conversed long with him without recognising him, and so on. But Solera's libretto continues to arrest the attention by its sheer violence and extravagance. A notorious instance is provided by the Giselda/ Oronte duet: Avrai talamo l'arena Del deserto interminato, Sari l'urlo della jena La canzone dell'amor! Io, sol io sar6 beato Nell'incendio del mio cor! (The sand of the endless desert shall be your bridal bed, the howling of the hyena shall be your love-song! I, only I, shall be blessed in the fire of my heart!)

10 The characterisation of Arvino remains more appropriate to a mad- man than the grave general of a crusading army. At the end of Act I he had had to be restrained from killing his brother, at the end of Act II from killing his daughter. Now he hears a rumour that Pagano is alive and in the vicinity, and at once his violence flares again : SI ... del ciel che non punisce Emendar saprd l'errore; II mio brando gia ferisce,

Gia trafigge all'empio il core; Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 Spira gia 1'abbominoso, Io lo premo col mio pie'! Se in Averno ei fosse ascoso, Piu sfuggir non puote a me. (Yes, ... I shall know how to emend the error of a heaven that does not punish. My sword already strikes, already pierces the wicked one's heart. The abominable one already expires, I spurn him with my foot! Were he hidden in Avernus, he could no longer escape me.) We can now perceive the provenance of Jirusalem, Act II scene 2. What Royer and Vaez have done to clarify the structure of Solera's action is to conflate into a single scene the two episodes from / Lom- bardi that had depicted the blossoming of the relationship between Oronte and Giselda—Oronte's solo scena from the first scene of Act II and the duet from the first scene of Act III. The circumstances under which this fusion of incident can be brought about have been prepared in the previous scene, where we have already heard of Gaston's captivity. Essentially the action of the reconstituted scene is a model of simplicity. Gaston, a prisoner in the hands of the Emir of Ramla, thinks of He'lene, whom he knows to be close at hand with the crusaders. He"lene, coming to Ramla in disguise to seek for Gaston, has likewise been captured and brought to the Emir's palace. When the approach of the crusaders throws the city into confusion, the lovers decide to take the chance of making an escape. The language has been as much simplified as the action: Soleran grotesque is transmuted into Parisian vacuity. What in 'La mia letizia' had been a sustained and overblown piece of superterrestrial imagery becomes in 'Je veux encore entendre' a flat and stale literary grace : . . . Ange vers qui s'envole Mon reve d'espoir, Bel ange, mon idole, Je veux encor te voir. And in the duet, both the bridal bed in the desert sand and the hyena's love-song are eliminated in favour of flaccidity : Dans mon coeur ta douce image De l'espoir sera le gage, Dieu me rend tout mon courage S'il me garde ton amour.

11 It is in Act III that the rijacimento departs furthest from the model. The second scene of the act is in fact entirely new, with no points of resemblance to / Lombardi; and while the first scene does borrow some narrative elements from Solera, its principal focus is the newly composed ballet. It has already been remarked that the reworking of the action in Jerusalem deprives the Moslem world of the central position in the drama which it had held in / Lombardi. On the other hand the scope which this world offered for piquant spectacle was keenly appreciated. Nowhere in / Lombardi could one find a better pretext for the incor- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 poration of the ballet, or, one might add, for a more titillating kind of ballet, than among the houris of a Moslem potentate's harem. The third scene of Solera's second act, a scene that from a strictly dramatic point of view might have been dispensed with altogether, is consequently elaborated into the opera's principal divertissement. He"lene and Gaston's attempted escape at the end of Act II is frustrated. Both are brought back prisoners to the Emir's palace, and there the Emir's odalisques mock H61ene as Acciano's had mocked Giselda in / Lom- bardi. Although no scenario for the ballet is given in the libretto, its four movements would presumably have been dominated by harem girls. The 'rondo-finale' of Act II of / Lombardi is also retained in a revised form. However, Royer and Vaez clearly found the excess of incident brought forth by Solera's overheated imagination as distaste- ful as his excesses of language. They have rewritten the scene far more comprehensively than the mere change of characters necessitated, moderating its tone by eliminating all the things that had been most startling : the indiscriminate slaughter, Giselda's visionary rapture, her father's raving attempt to kill her. In Jerusalem the action is much simplified. The Christians' arrival in the city is announced; Giselda prays for deliverance. Soon sounds of battle are heard, and Gaston, who has escaped from his guards, joins her. When the crusaders appear Gaston is at once recognised and taken prisoner, and the count denounces his daughter for her love of the man who had attempted to kill him. Her aria is a denunciation not of the slaughter of the Moslems, but of her father's unjust and vengeful attitude to an innocent man. The newly written Act III scene 2 comprises a funeral march and a 'grand scene et air' with chorus. During the march Gaston is led into the public square of Ramla to be judged by a specially constituted ecclesiastical court. Despite his protestation of innocence he is condemned to death and infamy, his accoutrements of nobility being ritually stripped from him and destroyed. Death is to follow on the morrow.

12 i LOMBARDI, ACT iv : The Holy Sepulchre Scene 1. A Cave. The hermit explains to Arvino that he has carried back Giselda from the scene of Oronte's death. Like all the crusaders she is tormented by weariness and thirst. Left alone, the sleeping Giselda sees a vision of angels. Among them appears Oronte, who tells her to lead the crusaders to the river Siloam, where they will find water in abun- dance. [Verdi either did not compose, or subsequently omitted, the opening episode of this scene, the dialogue between Pagano (still un- recognized) and Arvino. In the printed libretto it appears in inverted

commas.] Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

Scene 2. The Lombard tents near to Rachel's sepulchre. Afflicted by parching thirst, the crusaders remember the brooks and lakes of Lombardy. They have undergone all manner of trial will- ingly for the holy cause, but call upon God to deliver them from this torment. Giselda, Arvino and the hermit enter, and urge the crusaders on to Siloam. The sound of trumpets is heard, signalling the assault on Jerusalem. Battle is joined.

Scene 3. Arvino's tent. Arvino and Giselda lay the mortally wounded Pagano to rest in the tent. Still haunted by guilt, he is at last moved by Giselda's tender- ness to reveal his identity. The brothers are reconciled. The tent door is thrown back to reveal the crusaders' flag flying over Jerusalem. Prayers and a hymn of praise conclude the opera.

The outstanding feature of this final act of the libretto is the com- pletion of the diet of 'romanticism' with a profusion of naively senti- mentalised Christian supernaturalism. With the suppression of the Pagano/Arvino scene this tone is set from the start in the vision of Oronte among the angelicals. And it recurs again at the close in the extraordinary, remember-me-to-mother verse sung by Giselda over the dying Pagano:

Va felice! il mio sposo beato, La mia madre vedrai nel Signor : Di' che affrettino il giorno bramato, Che col loro si eterni il mio cor. (Go happily! My blessed husband, and my mother you shall see in the Lord. Tell them to hasten the longed-for day when my heart shall be eter- nized with them.)

In the intervening scene we sense rather the double-edged eloquence of the risorgimento poet. 'O Signore, dal tetto natio' includes a quatrain—beginning at 'O fresch'aure'—in which the idealised evoca- tion of the distant homeland is as poignant as in 'Va pensiero', on which the present movement is palpably modelled. And a few lines later follows an exhortation to battle which, even if the documentary sources are entirely silent about their effect, have an assured place in the risoTgimento mythology surrounding Verdi's early operas :

13 ARVINO La santa Terra Oggi nostra sara. TUTTI Si! ... Guerra ! Guerra ! (The Holy Land shall be ours today. Yes! ... War! War!)

Royer and Vaez's duty to the Parisian vogue for tableau and divertissement has now been done, and the most difficult task in the reorganising of the plot—the adaptation of the Oronte/Giselda episode to the new context—largely accomplished. In the fourth act they Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 can return to a simpler, less episodic treatment of the theme. The two scenes of this act depict respectively the advance on Jerusalem and the victory, really nothing more; and the librettists have built it up out of episodes from a number of scenes scattered over the last two acts of / Lombardi. The first scene is based on material from the third act of 7 Lom- bardi. Given the general sense of the scene it is natural that a substantial portion of it should be filled by an extended and elaborated version of the processional chorus 'Gerusalem! Gerusalem!' More cun- ning was the way in which the librettists contrived a pretext for the other still outstanding number of Act III of / Lombardi which Verdi wanted to include, the trio. This trio, it will be recalled, is focused on the figure of the dying Oronte; mortally wounded by Arvino's hench- men after his flight with Giselda, he embraces the Christian faith and is baptised by Pagano on his death bed. At first sight such a situation is quite irrelevant to Jerusalem. But in fact Royer and Vaez have prepared the way for it quite adeptly. For Gaston is as death-devoted as Oronte—not from wounds, but from the unjust sentence delivered in the judgement scene at tne end of Act III. And if the comfort of baptism is an irrelevance, that afforded by the last rites is not. After Gaston's condemnation the responsibility for administering the rites is given to Roger, while the crusading army makes its way towards Jeru- salem. And that, of course, is the irony that necessitates a quite different resolution at the end of the scene. For the crime for which Gaston is condemned is that which Roger had committed. While Pagano in / Lombardi could offer the lovers only a heavenly consolation, Roger is more immediate and tangible. God is merciful to the innocent, he assures them; he gives Gaston a new sword, releases him, and sends him to Jerusalem to fight for the Lord. Despite the simplification of the action in the last act, it cannot be denied that the final scene of Jerusalem, Act IV scene 2, is marred by the Parisian tendency to hurry through the denouement with maxi- mum despatch. The action does not differ essentially from that in the matching scene of / Lombardi: victory is celebrated, the hermit reveals his identity and is reconciled with his brother before dying. In fact, though, the situation in the final scene is more, not less, complicated than in the original. The count had never realised that it was his

14 brother who had instigated the attempt on his life; and Gaston has survived to play a distinguished part in the conquest of Jerusalem. And yet every ingredient in the scene is abbreviated rather than ampli- fied. All these matters are disposed of with a perfunctory vagueness that suggests that Royer and Vaez were wearying of their task : Un instant me reste encore; Pour Gaston ma voix t'implore; Oh ! qu'il soit sauv6 par toi. Le remords ici m'amene;

Seul je dois subir la peine Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 Du forfait commis par moi. The final hymn, too, is a mere sketch compared with the already eco- nomically proportioned finale of / Lombardi. Nevertheless Royer and Vaez should be given their due. Compared with Solera's indiscriminately rugged and often bizarre language theirs may be indiscriminately bland, but they have improved the dramatic structure of the libretto beyond recognition. Of the eleven loosely linked episodes of the original libretto, three are eliminated, two more fused into one, and the rest more fully integrated with one another. A number of minor characters—Viclinda, Acciano and Sofia—are discarded without being missed. The love story of Gaston and H61ene becomes an integral part of the central action, and the two brothers are altogether more convincingly portrayed : the count less prone to arbitrary fits of derangement, Roger's downfall in Act I more credibly motivated. Even the Parisian panoply of tableau, procession, spectacle and dance seem to spring naturally from the subject, with little of that air of contrived shockingness that is so repellent a feature of the Meyer- beer/Scribe operas. All in all Royer and Vaez had done a good job. The extent to which the score of Jerusalem draws on material from / Lombardi is shown in Table I.7 Two types of relationship are distinguished : borrowings and reworkings. It goes without saying that the distinction between these categories is not always absolutely clear. For example, although I have used the term 'borrowing', there is not in fact a single moment in Jerusalem to which some adjustment, however slight, has not been made. Nevertheless, imprecise as it may be, the chosen terminology does at least suggest that there was a range of options of which Verdi availed himself in this rijacimento. Some movements have been transferred without essential modification; others have been adapted either to a new dramatic context or because Verdi felt that they could be improved; whilst others again, though they may make some use of material from / Lombardi, arc virtually new com- positions. : The numbering of Jerusalem follows the numbering of the movements in the Escudier vocal score, that of / Lombardi the numbering of Verdi's autograph score. Small Roman numerals indicate the sub-sections—recitative, cantabile, tempo di mezzo &c.—into which the 'numbers' are divided. There is no No.'6 in the French

15 TABLE I

JERUSALEM I LOMBAKSI

Introduction 13.U Terzetto (elementi)

ACTS I l.i Recit et ii Duo iii Ave Maria 3.ii Preghiera 'Salve Maria' (borrowed)

iv Le Lever du soldi Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 1 2. Choeur 1 .ii Introduiione 'Oh nobile esempio (borrowed) 3. Stxtuor et Choeur i Recit ii Cantabile, Andante l.iv Introduzione Tassale'(borrowed) iii Transition iv Stretta, Allegro vivo l.vi Introduzione'All'empio' (borrowed) 4. Chotia de Ftmmts i Choeur 2.i Coro'A te nell'ora infausta' (borrowed) ii Recit 2.ii Scena (reworked) iii Air, Andante sostenuto 2.iii Cantabile 'Sciagurato' (reworked) iv Traniition 5. Chotur de Buoeurs i Choeur 2.iv Coro'Niun periglio'(borrowed) ii Air, Allegro giusto — (but stretta borrowed from 2.v) 7. Final it ltr Acte i Allegro agitato ii Cantabile, Andante sostenuto 4.ii Finale primo, Cantabile (reworked) iii Traniition iv Stretta, Prestissimo 4.iv Finale primo, Stretta (reworked)

ACTE n 8. Invocation i Recit 7.i Scena (reworked) ii Cantabile, Adagio 7.ii Cantabile 'Ma quando un suon' (reworked) iii Scene 9. Air, Allegro 14.iv Aria 'Non fu sogno' (borrowed) 10. Choeur de Pilerins 15 Coro 'O Signore' (borrowed) ll.i Marche ii Seine 12. Chotur dt Croish 13. Air i Recit ii Air, Andante 6.ii Cantabile 'La mia letizia' (borrowed) iii Seine 14. Duo i Scene ll.i Scena (reworked) ii Allegro vivo (Prirno tempo) 11 .ii Primo tempo (borrowed) iii Cantabile, Andante 11.iii Cantabile 'O belle a quota' (borrowed) iv Traniition 11 .iii Link (reworked) v Stretta, Allegro 11 .iv Stretta 'Vieni, sol morte' (reworked)

ACTE m 15. Chotar dansi 8 Coro nclPHarcm (borrowed) 16. Quoin Airs dt Ballet i Pas de quatre ii Pai de deux iii Pai solo iv Pai d'cnsemble

16 17. Seine et Air i Seine ii Recit 9.i Rondo Scena (reworked) iii Cantabile, Andante 9.ii Cantabile 'Se vano e' (borrowed) iv Transition 9.iii Tempo di mezzo (reworked) v Allegro assai 9.iv Cabaletta 'No! giusta causa' (reworked) 18. Marchi FunUne 19. Grand* Scent et Air i Recit ii Air, Andante mosso iii Transition iv Air, Allegro Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 ACTE rv 20. Choeur de la Procession i Recit ii Choeur 10 Coro (reworked) iii Recit 21. Trio i Primo tempo, Andante mosso & c. 13.ii Scena (reworked) ii Cantabile, Adagio 13.iii Cantabile 'Qual volutta' (reworked) iii Stretta, Allegro 22. La Bataille 16.iii BattagUa (reworked) 23. Final du IVt Acte i Seine ii Andante mosjo 16.v Terzettino (reworked) iii Maestoso 16.vi Inno (reworked)

The following movements of / Lombardi are not used at all in Jerusalem:

Sinfonia 1. Introduzione iii Recitative v Tempo di mezzo 2. Coro id Aria iv Tempo di mezzo (except chorus) v Cabaletta (except stretta) 3. Rariiatum ed Act Maria i Recitative 4. Finale Primo i Scena iii Tempo di mezzo 5. Coro di TurcM 6. Cavatina i Recitative iii Tempo di mezzo iv Cabaletta 7. Scena, Mania di Crociati, Inno ii Tempo di mezzo iv Marcia v Duettino vi Inno 12. Scena ed Aria Arvino 13. Scena e Terzetto Finale III i Preludio 14 Vision* i Chorus with solo ii Cantabile iii Tempo di mezzo 16. Finals ultimo i Scena ii Inno di Guerra iv Scena

17 In the category of borrowings we find four solo numbers (of which, significantly, only one is a cabaletta), four ensemble movements and five choruses. It is the last group which are taken over most nearly in their original form. Indeed in three of them, the Choeur de Buveurs, the Choeur de Pelerins, and the Choeur DansS the only real difference is to be found in the new introductions, and only that to the Choeur de Pelerins can be regarded as a significant contribution to the score. Being based on the best loved single number of / Lorn bardi, this chorus, 'O mon Dieu ta parole est done vaine', could hardly be expected to depart noticeably from its model, though Verdi does add cornets to the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 orchestra as a concession to Parisian taste. Royer and Vaez paraphrase Solera closely in the latter part of the text, so that the rippling and trilling textures that had been conceived as a musical image of the 'fresch'aure volanti sui vaghi Ruscelletti de'prati lombardi' fall equally happily upon the 'cristal si pur des sources lointains'. But librettists and composer alike felt that it was possible to tighten up the movement a little at the start. The librettists did so by relating the distress of the pilgrims quite specifically to the terrible thirst from which they suffer; Verdi by discarding the old introduction, with its distinct aura of a Sunday morning church parade, and writing a new one of a much more expressively congruous kind. With its unaccompanied, intoned exclamation of distress, its chromatic harmonies, and its sighing orchestral texture, this is altogether more evocative of desolation and las- situde. The Choeur de femmes, 'Viens, 6 pe'eheur rebelle', is a movement in which this kind of tightening up goes a little further. To begin with, the librettists have contrived a better context for it. The nuns' music is not simply background colour to render the bloodthirsty foreground the more sensational; it is woven into the plot. For their song greets Gaston and his fellow crusader, the Count of Toulouse, as they enter the church, and it is in the church that the murder is to be done. While every bar of the original chorus can be recognised instantly in the rifacimento, its form has been spruced up. In Jerusalem it consists of one verse only; on the other hand a short coda has been added. Other modest improvements may be observed too. As the Paris Opera could provide a real organ, there was no need to make do with the 'istromenti d'armonia che davranno immitarc il suono dell'organo' of / Lombardi. The introduction is more consistent with the linear chromatic style of the chorus, and furthermore provides the material for the new coda (Ex. 1). Certain harmonic details have been refined too : at 'II t'offre un saint pardon', for example, Verdi prefers to use a second inversion chord to ameliorate the abrupt E major/C major juxtaposition.

18 Ex. I (a) '-argo

I $ Organ T

(b) / = Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

toi chrt -tien fi - de

P W=t-

Orgin

Revision is still more obvious in the last of these choruses, 'Enfin voici le jour propice' (No. 2). When it is compared with the Intro- duzione of / Lombardi, we find that it has been shortened by the omission of two substantial episodes, its colour is new, since the banda has been removed and the whole thing orchestrated, and certain details of texture have been modified—for example, the central A flat episode is now for full choir in unison, not just for the men. However, no new material has been added, and Verdi's task really entailed nothing more creative than revising the splashes of vocal colour to match the new French text. Two of the solo arias, the lAve Maria' and 'Mes plaintes sont vaines' (No. 17) are as literally dependent upon their Italian originals as any of the choruses. The other two, 'Je veux encore' (No. 13) and 'Quelle ivresse' (No. 9), inexplicably entitled 'Polonaise' in the Escu- dier vocal score, raise more interesting issues. The 'polonaise' is in fact the best example in Jerusalem of what might be called the French variant of the cabaletta. In Paris, according to Donizetti, 'there is always poetry that intensifies the action between one statement of the cabaletta and the other'. The aria itself is neither transposed, as many of the arias are, nor altered in any significant way; but in place of the mere noise that separated the verses in / Lombardi Verdi composes a transition in which the action is continued. This links into the repeat by a deftly-worked, unwinding orchestral phrase which really sounds as if it were meant to be analogous to the unwinding arioso that had led into the first verse (Ex. 2). Ex.2 la) H£L£NE Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

Allegro brillante

'I rI 1 IN'I port 0 res • pi - re & Inns • port! Quclle i- vr« - »e.

R* be HI

HELENE

c'est mon i-poux de • vanl Dieu qui m'en - tend.

~ =

•T—-•• • - - - J ^ J J 'Je veux encore' has also been the subject of some small revisions Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 that reflect the Parisian environment; or rather, to be more precise, the fact that it was to be sung, not by some normal principal tenor like Guasco, but by Gilbert Louis Duprez, one of the most awe-inspir- ing freaks of nineteenth-century opera. To provide a pretext for the exercising of his notorious 'ut-de-poitrine' Verdi inserted between the culminating and cadence phrases of his original design an optional eight-bar coda phrase ending with a cadenza-like flourish incorporat- ing the top C. Duprez was unleashed again at the very end, where the exquisite cadence of 'La mia letizia' is replaced by a commonplace morendo on tonic harmony. These revisions seem regrettable, particularly since, in the rest of the aria, Verdi has made one or two tiny revisions that further enhance the beauty of an already masterly movement. Once or twice, nuances in the melody are changed; some harmonic details are refined. Most importantly, the orchestra is handled more deftly : more air is let into the palpitating chord-patterns from 'ange vers qui s'envole' onwards; the trombones and timpani are restrained at the climaxes. Two of the opera's ensemble scenes include movements taken over with only the slightest revisions from / Lombardi: the cantabile and the stretta from the Sextuor (No. 3) and the primo tempo and cantabile from the Duo (No. 14). The Duo is really remarkably untouched. It has been transposed down a semitone, like so many of the movements, and in the primo tempo the new dramatic context has led to changes in the distribution of the phrases between the voices. It is typical of this period, when Verdi was becoming so much more par- ticular about the art of musical continuity, that a four-bar link should have been added to lead into the cantabile. Only one feature in this cantabile seems worth remarking on, a positive improvement that appears to arise from a less than ideal piece of versification. The phrase 'en vain il attend le retour' lacks a feminine ending and could only be fitted to the original phrase with somewhat clumsy effect. So Verdi lops off the phrase on the strong beat, and fills up the hiatus in the music instrumtntally, an idea which he develops a little further at the next interstice in the song (Ex. 3). Far from plodding, as it might have done, the revised version actually moves more fluently than the original.

21 Ex.3 G1SELDA (a) dim.

qua - si di ciel, di ciel na • ti a ti it

J i f Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

en vain i) at-tend le re-tour

toi qu'elle af-fli-ge en ce jour

Of the two movements of the Sextuor the cantabile is in substance unaltered. Helene replaces Giselda, Isaure Viclinda, Gaston Arvino, Roger Pagano and the count Pirro. The sixth voice, that of the esquire, enjoys no independence, simply filling out the harmony and joining in some phrases in unison or at the octave. Occasionally the vocal music is redistributed, but the only such redistribution of any substance involves the count, who clearly needs to be more generously provided for than Pirro had been. Sometimes, as in his first phrases, Verdi has added a new part for the bass to support various groupings of higher voices; sometimes, where Pagano's music had not been obviously and specifically villainous^—for example in the six bars preceding the entry

22 <<•> PAGANO declamalo Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

Andante sostenulo ROGER (adimimix)

somewhat square delivery of melody and text, he does let more air into the texture by suspending the orchestral figuration at phrase ends. At the coda the revision becomes more thorough-going, and the climactic phrase of the original aria is rewritten, not at first sight yielding any- thing obviously superior. But the advantage of the lyrical restraint of this new phrase becomes apparent in due course. It enables the cadenza, which runs through the whole gamut of the bass voice, to become the climax of the aria. In / Lombardi it had seemed a somewhat apo- logetic afterthought. In 'O jour fatale' (No. 8) too the newly inserted cadenza is one of the arresting features of the revision. Again it rises to the heights and plumbs the depths of the bass voice; if hardly expressive, the flam- boyant rhetoric of these cadenzas is decidedly more marked in Jeru- salem than in / Lombardi. The other point of interest in this reworking is fully discussed by Julian Budden.8 In 'Ma quando un suon terribile', the line 'Dio lo vuole', a pervading motif in Grossi's poem, had promp- " The Operas of Verdi, i. 350.

24 of the chorus—it is shared freely between the count and Roger. Des- pite such deft touches, the sextet is a less effective movement than the quintet. It lacks the precise dramatic aptness of the original version, in which the conspiratorial mutterings of the two basses had provided a dark undercurrent to the lyrical rapture of the other voices. As one of the basses is now the presiding dignitary of the reconciliation, the layering of the musical texture no longer serves a dramatic purpose. It is indeed contrary to dramatic sense. In the stretta, on the other hand, a number of slight but telling improvements have been made. It is characteristic of this opera that Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 the most important of them are found not in the lyrical substance of the movement but in the craftsmanship of the framing. The bars Unk- ing into the repeat have been made a little more spacious and teasing, as if Verdi had recently been browsing through some Beethoven rondos; and at the end he composes a new orchestral postlude—not a mere reprise of the march, but a real coda, developing rhythmic figures from the march through a whole series of modulatory harmonies.

Reworkings comprise the most interesting and substantial group of movements: three arias, seven ensembles, a chorus, the battle sinfonia, and a number of recitatives and transitions. Both Roger's cantabiles belong to this group. The first, 'Oh dans l'ombre' (No. 4) is the first of the many movements in Jerusalem to have been transposed. In most cases the transposition is of a semitone downwards, in this case, exceptionally, of a full tone. Why this was done is far from clear; it certainly has nothing to do with an absolute ideal of pitch, since French pitch was somewhat lower than Italian at this period. The most interesting aspect of the reworking is the simplification of the accompaniment figuration. In the late 1840s Verdi did generally seek to avoid the radier stiff and complex accompaniment patterns of his earlier years. But in the present case it is not simply a question of clarification. The Lombardi figuration had expressed the idea of a frenzy of rage, and the continued agitation of chords setting up appog- giatura dissonances with the voice virtually throughout the aria was thus perfectly appropriate (Ex. 4a). In Jerusalem, on the other hand, the emphasis is on a secret passion; so it is wholly fitting that the sur- face of the texture should be smoothed, the intimations of dark thoughts reduced to an undercurrent (Ex. 4b). With the elimination of Solera's bizarre imagery from the second quatrain, Verdi is prompted to simplify the texture still further. Save for the biting acciaccature, it has become a quite conventional pattern. Modifications in the vocal line are trifling until the coda. Verdi handles the French text with less freedom than the Italian, allowing himself nothing of the impassioned reduplications of words that one finds at 'te nel colmo del contento'. But, as if to compensate for the

23 ted a bombastic blaze of sound at a too early stage in the musical design. Verdi took the opportunity provided by the rewritten text to eliminate this premature climax and fashion the material into a better balanced whole. 'Non, votre rage' (No. 17) is the most substantially reworked aria. To start with, die design is quite different. After the B flat major 'allegro risoluto' section, the count contributes an extended solo phrase which deflects the music to F major instead of G major for the final con slancio. Moreover there is no cabaletta-like repetition here, the con slancio leading directly to the final tutti. Besides this simplification Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 of design, the expressive details have been much revised, especially in the opening G minor section. The more notable features of the revision include fluctuations in the basic tempo. What in / Lombardi had been a single, expressively adjusted Allegro moderate is replaced by a suc- cession of 'allegro assai moderate', 'allegro' and 'adagio'. As in several other movements in Jerusalem the accompaniment texture is better aerated, so that H61ene's broken declamatory phrases speak more tell- ingly. Finally there are a number of affective refinements: the Nea- politan harmony at 'et le martyre', the con dolore melodic turn a bar later, the rumbling pedal bass at 'le Ciel s'entrouvre', are all new. Of the ensemble reworkings quite the most interesting is that of the cantabile and stretta of the Act I finale. The rewriting of the plot has complicated the situation at this point without really intensifying it. Indeed Pagano's guilt, his confrontation with his accusers and the consternation in his own mind had formed the ingredients of a stronger situation than the wrongful accusation and Roger's private sense of guilt can do here. In the Andante the quite considerable reworking has been prompted largely by this change in the dramatic situation. The lighter solo episodes that interspace the tutti blocks cannot be built so firmly upon Roger as they had been upon Pagano. Indeed in the opening fifteen bars the rondo-like tutti/concertino alternation of which Pagano had been dramatically and musically the focal point is rewritten to form a largely tutti section, with a brief contrasting episode in the middle in which all the principals turn in on themselves in soliloquy. At the end of the minore too, the music has been simplified with a view to removing Roger from the centre of attention. In / Lombardi the ensuing maggiore had been a rather palpable anticlimax; in JSrusalem it is made more spacious, less sing-song. For the strain sung by the principals is not simply reduplicated at phrase- ends by the chorus; the interchange of principals and chorus is punctuated by solo phrases for Gaston, so that he is established as the other protagonist in the scene. The coda remains the same until the actual cadences, where the mere repeated closes of the original are replaced by a richly elaborated second coda, starting from concertino phrases and proceeding with much harmonic resource through a crescendo to the final tutti. Another of the feebler moments of / Lombardi is thus

25 transformed into a thing of delight. The stretta is likewise a strikingly modified adaptation of the equi- valent movement of / Lombardi. What Verdi on mature reflection seems to have disliked here was the superimposition of lyrical phrases interchanged between the principals, and the declamatory symphonic style of the accompanying voices and instruments. In Jerusalem he creates a more menacing, concentrated effect by eliminating the lyrical phrases altogether, restricting the whole scope of the music to a rhythmic pounding of voices and instruments. On the other hand, before the subtle Beethovenian link into the maggiore, he inserts a new lyrical Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 episode in A flat, dominated by He'lene and Gaston. One cannot look, in such a stretta, for a very close synthesis of words and music, especially since everyone is singing virtually all the time. Nevertheless this new way of setting out the ingredients of the finale does seem to give fuller expressive force both to the idea of anathema—dominated by choral and orchestral elements—and the idea of tender despair— dominated by H£lene and Gaston. Only minor points of interest arise from the other movements. Indeed the stretta of the duet, 'Viens, viens, je t'aime' (No. 14), and the cantabile of the trio 'Dieu .IOUS separe' (No. 21) are so little affec- ted by the reworking that it is a nice point whether they might not belong rather in the category of borrowing. The only material difference in the former is the extension of the design by the undemand- ing device of a further repetition of the principal theme, this time by both singers in octaves; while 'Dieu nous separe' differs from 'Qual volutta' by little more than the omission of the violin obbligato. More points of interest arise from the primo tempo of the trio. The frequent redistribution of the voices is of course inevitable with a different text, and another purely functional change is found in the inter- rupted cadence at 'paraitre encore', where the original diatonic submediant is replaced by a flattened submediant to enable a semitonal transposition to be made for the cantabile (cf. Ex. 7 below). In other cases the changes bear witness to Verdi's sensitivity to a changed mood or changed dramatic context. A phrase which in / Lombardi had been expressive of astonished terror (Ex. 5a) is transformed by octave dis- placement, rescoring and a smoothing away of the rough edges of the

Ex.5 (a) GISELDA (altonlla) sp mQuil mi jcai - de ll cuor ft • vcl-U1 i

26 (b) HfiLfeNE

i IT T r Douxa - poir, pt- ro-lem ef - fa- Me f*P m m f rhythm into an expression of serene hope (Ex. 5b). Where the com- Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 plexity of the stage action accompanying the rite of baptism had called for a breathing space in the dialogue which is provided by an instrumental prelude for divided cellos, the simpler rite in Jerusalem requires none. Other alterations reflect Verdi's growing maturity. One is a palpable improvement. In / Lombardi the transition into this same baptis- mal Lento had been rough and unconvincing; in Jerusalem repetitions and hopeful leaps have alike been abandoned in favour of a systematic progression over a chromatically rising bass (Ex. 6).

Ex"6 LTenpo <<•) EREMTTA

27 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

(b) ADefro L'ERMITE

Lugo

A change in the Allegro at 'O bonheur' is a less clear gain. But it is characteristic of Verdi's growing tendency to smooth out the rhythm of his lyrical ideas, especially in moments of inward rapture. The mood and the underlying harmony are unaltered; but the melodic line has been made less physical, more intense (Ex. 7). In the case of the Act IV finale the revision has been largely a work of clarification and simplification. What had been drama in the Andante of / Lombardi has become tableau in Jirusalem. Apart from Roger, no individual is characterised : he, dying and repentant, is set off against a tutti of bystanders. His solo, which in the original had been answered by an emotionally complex trio compounded of com- passion, entreaty and noble resolve, is answered here by a simple un- differentiated tutti. If the music reflects the sense of the text less vividly it is also less scrappy. It was, for example, a positive contribution to the coherence of the whole to bring back the style of the opening for 'Que je vois &c.' rather than embark on a transition in yet another style. The only expressive point to have been enhanced in the reworking is the fact of Roger's exhaustion. Those little flurries of rhythmic

28 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

(I IP p p [I p lo 6 de - Ut - to, * - de - Bt - to II DO» - tro t(mor)

(bl Allegro

T i T 0 bon heur, ton m - no - cen-ce petit au jour pa-raHxe en - (cor)

and melodic exuberance that the young Verdi found it so difficult to suppress have been removed to create a more sombre, energy-conserv- ing kind of song. The phrase 'pour Gaston ma voix t'implore &c.' set against 'O fratello ... a Dio davante &c.' shows the contrast clearly :

Ex.8 (a) Andjntc PACANO (con toco fioca)

O fn-td-lo! • Dio d»-»m te deeque- tt-'tl-mi com - pa-rirl

ROGER =£= pour Gil -ton ma roix t'lm-ptorc oh qu'O Bit tame par toL

29 The final hymn has been much shortened. It consists now of the first eight and last ten bars of the original, with a newly-composed three-bar episode in the middle; and that is all. The one significant transformation comes in the orchestral texture, which has been Frenchified. Verdi has replaced the celestial arpeggios of the original by a simpler, more workmanlike texture, in which the basic block chords are propelled by a Meyerbeerian bass-line, blustering about in self-important counterpoint. As we have seen, the great majority of the choruses from / Lom- bardi have been taken over without essential modification. The Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 Coro della Processione, on the other hand, has undergone a number of notable changes, mostly prompted by dramatic considerations of one kind or another. Where the original had been pure tableau, the Paris revision adds a new dimension expressive of private emotions and sym- pathies. The chorus proper is preceded by a recitative for Roger, and its opening phrases are punctuated and overlaid by his commentary. In the middle of the movement the design is broadened by a poignant cantabile interlude for the oboe, which, as Budden has suggested, is perhaps to be seen as a reflection of Helene's 'private grief amid so much pious exaltation'.9 A further novelty comes at the close, where the movement culminates in a series of chromatic dissonances debouch- ing into trumpet fanfares. Clearly these are intended as a musical analogy to the idea of the Last Judgement, one of the theological details contributed by Royer and Vaez. Apart from these dramatically stimulated changes the movement is only lightly revised. The OpeYa divided its female voices into three, which necessitated some trifling adjustments; the section for basses has been rewritten to give a less disjointed and erratic effect; the already Meyerbeerian bass of the for- tissimo reprise has been worked over again. A certain perfunctoriness, already commented on in the Act IV finale of Jerusalem, is to be sensed in the prececding BattaiUe too. There are two obvious changes in this movement compared with the Bat- taglia of / Lombardi. First, in the rifacimento there are no representative themes either for the crusaders or for the Saracens, so that part of the original sinfonia that had consisted of a series of orchestra/ banda exchanges based on the crusaders' march and the ambassadors' chorus is simply removed. On the other hand, in the new libretto the sinfonia leads, not directly into the death scene, but into the announce- ment of victory for the crusaders. Consequently its final phrases are rewritten to modulate to C major and end in a blaze of fanfares. In place of the discarded thematic material Verdi has composed a new eight-bar theme—which is repeated—of a quite brutish dullness. After this he simply works over the original sinfonia, compressing all its elements into a tighter time-scale. In the process, such modest merit as the original did possess, notably a carefully controlled sense of timing, • Op. cit., i. 357.

30 is rather lost than enhanced. The chromatic chords veer up the scale with mechanical regularity; later, amid the music's expiring moans, there are no deathly silences for the drum to rumble through. The reworked recitatives and scene give few new insights into Verdi's methods. Straightforward borrowing, transformations of the material to fit the new text, adjustment of the scheme of modulation to facilitate the transposition of the cantabiles, a smoothing out of the lyricism in arioso sections, more telling exploitation of the affective moments are all to be found. The most interesting rijacimento in this category is the tempo di mezzo preceding Helene's 'Non, votre rage'. Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 Raw material for a vivid vignette of carnage in the harem was already available in / Lombardi. Here the turbulent figurations are much more comprehensively developed; and twice they are suspended by newly- composed cantabile episodes to focus the attention on the plight of the principals, Gaston and Helene.

The scenes of / Lombardi that have been omitted entirely, Nos. 5 and 12, are both episodes rather loosely attached to the central plot. With the virtual elimination of the Saracen element from the cast list there is clearly no place for the chorus of ambassadors. As for Arvino's scene, it is difficult to see how it found its way into / Lombardi except as the necessary solo for a comprimario. It is feebly linked to something we have already witnessed in a more vivid form, namely the flight of Giselda and Oronte; and it anticipates something that will appear subsequently in a more vivid form, the reappearance of Pagano as the Hermit. It is, in other words, otiose even in / Lombardi. Of the other score or so sections of the opera that play no part in Jerusalem the great majority are recitatives or tempi di mezzo. Most have been discarded because the dialogue has been rewritten, has therefore assumed different proportions, and in most cases could be adapted to the Lombardi material only with considerable difficulty. The tally of non-recitative scenes is modest: one cantabile and its pre- fatory chorus (14. i, ii); two solo cabalettas (2. v, 6. iv); one duettino (7. v); one chorus—the hymn of the crusaders, which appears twice in / Lombardi (7. vi, 16. ii); three instrumental pieces (Sinfonia, March 7. iv, Preludio 13. i). Some of these were surely discarded simply because there was no place for them in the rifacimento. Oronte's cabaletta 'Come poteva un angelo', for example, concerns the logic of conversion from Mohammedanism to Christianity and can play no useful part in an opera whose hero is a Christian to begin with. The duettino certainly could have been accommodated, but is omitted seem- ingly because the scenes in the hermit's cave are to be put to different dramatic purposes: to reveal that Gaston still lives, and especially to bring together thirsting pilgrims and sprightly crusaders in a splendid Parisian tableau. The preludio presumably owed its origin to an elab- orate scene-change in the middle of the act. As this purely technical

31 problem no longer arises and as there is a higher proportion of necessary instrumental music in Jerusalem anyway, Verdi felt that it too could be dispensed with. There remain four pieces which Verdi obviously discarded because he thought they were not good enough, and which he replaced with newly-composed pieces serving the same function : (a) the cabaletta 'O speranza di vendetta', replaced by 'Ah! viens, demon esprit du mal';

(b) the hymn 'Stolto Allah'/'Guerra! guerra!', replaced by 'Le Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 Seigneur nous promet'; (c) the Marcia, replaced by the Marche; (d) the Sinfonia, replaced by the Introduction. Compared to 'O speranza di vendetta', the text of 'Ah! viens, d£mon esprit du mal' is given a more diabolical emphasis. It is also in a different metre, the trochaic four-foot line of the Italian replaced in the French by an iambic four-foot line. So one presumes Verdi gave Royer and Vaez carte blanche here and never had any intention of using 'O speranza'. The objection to it was presumably the primitive- ness of its design. It is in the hardest-driven cabaletta manner, very square in its phrasing, and with an obvious reprise—made even more crass by the contribution of the chorus—of a mere four bars. The energy of the style leads to no filling out of the proportions, no over- flow of lyrical ideas into a coda, no creative elaboration of the reprise. If the new cabaletta is scarcely more distinguished, these faults at least have been emended. The principal theme has more rhythmic variety than the original; at the reprise a mere hint of the initial theme leads into a new culminating phrase, and this into a distinct coda theme and cadenza. Altogether the effect is more spacious. Nonetheless how close in spirit we are to 'O speranza' becomes clear when Verdi plucks the stretta from that aria without perceptible modification. The substitution of 'Le Seigneur nous promet' for 'Stolto Allah' is more puzzling. And this time it may have been something of an afterthought; for the French text could be fitted to the Italian music without the least difficulty. But certain features must have deterred Verdi from such a straightforward contrafactum : the maggiore conclusion, for example, is very dependent upon strong and distinctive rhythmic accents which he may have felt would have been offensive applied to the French language. Also, of course, the whole movement is surpass- ingly vulgar, both in melodic and rhythmic character, and in texture —not at all the thing for the sophisticates of the Ope"ra. In the new version, the text is accentuated unexceptionably; the crude brashness of the original is bowdlerised. But nothing has taken its place. 'Le Seigneur nous promet' is a sonorous and civilised vacuity, without a glimmer of ardour in its melodic line or of imagination in its harmony. In the Marche too the pattern resembles that in / Lombardi, which

32 makes it look as if it was assumed at first that the Lombardi music would be employed—for the march is played complete before the chorus of crusaders, and then recurs in abbreviated form after it is over. So the rejection of this movement may again have been due to the character of the material. In JSrusalem the music is more majestic in style and is laid out on a vastly more expansive scale: there are well over twice as many bars at half the speed, and each thematic unit is longer-breathed than in the original. Verdi, or his advisers, perhaps felt that the Lombardi march was too short and too scrappy for the Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 opulent spectacle to which Op6ra audiences were accustomed. And again probably some of the textures were felt to be too vulgar; this new march has an almost Tannhduser-Wkc gravity. The prelude to / Lombardi would not do for Paris either. Unable to distinguish significant themes or a pervading atmosphere in the teeming confusion of incident in that opera, Verdi had contented himself with stringing out a series of sonorous, but hardly meaningful, musical epigrams. For Paris he apparently felt that he should replace this with a sustained musical discourse. But the working-out of that idea proves to be an enigma. JSrusalem is one of the very few Verdi works to end triumphantly: the action is not about the tragic destiny of some individuals; it is about the winning through to triumph of a chosen community. Yet the themes Verdi chooses to work are associ- ated with the most terrible private anguishes of the opera: the litur- gical theme 'Cum judicatur' (19. iii) and the theme accompanying Gaston's request for the last rites (21. i) from those scenes in Acts III and IV where he appears doomed to execution. As an introduction to JSrusalem it is really no more appropriate than the discarded introduction to / Lombardi. But it provides another colour, another mood, largely distinct from that of the rest of the opera. Knowing the reper- toire, Verdi cannot have supposed that consistency of atmosphere, or the sustaining of the dramatic idea, were factors relevant to winning favour in Paris.

The greater number of the sections of additional new music in JSrusalem are recitatives, scene, transitions and so forth. For these parts of the opera obviously Royer and Vaez had had to write completely new words rather than translate or paraphrase Solera, so the question of reworking the original music can hardly have arisen. It is in these passages that we are most aware of how much Verdi has matured as a dramatic composer since 1843. There is not a great deal in them that can be attributed to the assimilation of the Parisian tradition, but much that reflects his growing realisation of the importance of expressiveness and fluency in the introductory and transitional sections of the opera. Compared with the rather stiff and functional transitions of / Lombardi, of which the tempo di mezzo linking 'Sciagurata! Hai tu creduta' to the assassins' chorus may be cited as a particularly coarse

33 example, those of JSrusalem are far more adroitly worked. The equi- valent passage in the n\acimento is a piece of sustained figure development, built up out of a furtive unison theme, intensified as the atmosphere of sinister plotting thickens, and halted in time to throw into relief the crucial recitative Tu vois ces deux guerriers'. Another masterly piece of craftsmanship is found in the scene in which Helene and her maid recognise Gaston's esquire, and the dissonant exclamatory cadence evolves through an orchestral linking passage into the sigh figuration against which Helene asks to be told Gaston's sad story: Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021

EJL9 Aflcjro

Menonwao i Jir» J Pn-Ie moi de too nui r tre

The greater expressiveness of the recitatives, their responsiveness to the dramatic situations, is just as noticeable. Arioso phrases are more numerous and generally more telling. Often they depend more upon strong, evocative harmonies than in the earlier work. Notable examples are found in the flexible harmonic rhythm underlying Tl t'attend ce matin' in the opening scene, and in the chromatic progres- sions over a dominant pedal against which Helene exclaims 'O trans- port, il respire' immediately before her 'polonaise' (cf. Ex. 2). Budden has remarked with justice that the fragments of pantomime music with which the recitatives are interspersed seem altogether more keenly visualised than hitherto. This mimetic vividness is probably one of the

34 qualities in the newly composed scene that do reflect the French in- fluence. Another might be those somewhat languid cantabUe sections— too long and insufficiently epigrammatic to be regarded as ariosi in the usual sense, too informal to be regarded as airs—which crop up in several recitatives. The best example is the 'et vous a qui je donne' episode in the tempo di mezzo of the Act I sextet. Apart from all this introductory and transitional material, the additional music consists of two instrumental movements—the 'sunrise' in Act I and the funeral march in Act III—the four 'Airs de Ballet' and two lyrical scenes—the duet for Helene and Gaston in Act Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 I and Gaston's Grand Scene et Air at the end of Act II. This latter scene was recognised from the start as being not only the most impres- sive of the new contributions to the score but one of the highlights of the opera altogether. In his review, Gautier remarked on the immense impression which Duprez created in it, especially in the central ritual. 'One would need ten columns to describe the ideas and sensations con- tained in the simple monosyllable ("Tu mens tu mens!") howled out by the great artist. Every time it recurred, a shudder of admiration ran through the auditorium... .'10 But for this new 'grand scene and air' Verdi retained the tradi- tional Italian double-aria form; he did not even give the link between the two statements of the cabaletta that expressive and dramatic function which was generally expected in Paris. Indeed the French in- fluence is apparent only in the formal flexibility of the cantabUe, a romance-like movement making characteristic use of contrasts of mode and texture. The duet in Act I on the other hand is obviously a direct imitation of one of Meyerbeer's favourite types of movement, in which the singing voices are supported by a single obbligato instrument But while Meyerbeer seems to write such movements simply as 'turns' of an arresting precariousness, selects his obbligato instruments with some whimsicality—viola d'amore in Raoul's romanza, bass clarinet in the trio from Act V of Les Huguenots—and protracts the movement to the same great lengths as the rest in the score, Verdi's adoption seems genuinely apt. He chooses a horn as his obbligato instrument, thus lend- ing an atmosphere of hushed romance to the movement, and the scale of its design, a mere sixteen bars, is perfectly matched to the dramatic context of a secret assignation in the last hour before dawn. The funeral march is strikingly different in facture from the awful triumphal marches of the previous act. Given a real dramatic situation on which his imagination could fasten, Verdi was no mean performer in the realm of incidental music. He builds his design on a favourite funereal rhythm, and the sombre, sour orchestral colouring, dominated by low clarinets, solo cornet and drums, and the emotional irregularity of the phrasing add up to an admirable tragic processional. " Loc. cit. (see note 5 above).

35 It was probably the lack of a dramatic focus that made the other additional instrumental movement so disappointing. Ostensibly the 'sunrise' is a miniature tone-poem; in reality it is nothing more than the musical accompaniment to a stage-effect. After the first few promis- ingly delicate bars it consists of little but a detestably synthetic harmonic sequence, modulating upwards by chromatic steps to end in a blaze of C major sunshine. The ballet was an obligatory, but not necessarily integral, part of a grand opera. Verdi himself conceded that the Jerusalem ballet-music was a non-essential when he authorised Ricordi to permit Italian opera Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/ml/article/60/1/1/1050316 by guest on 30 September 2021 houses to omit it. Indeed he might reasonably have hoped to see it omitted, for it is surely the most deplorable stuff he ever wrote. One wonders how he had the patience to write it down. It would be remarkable if in th"e 30-odd pages it occupies in the vocal score the occasional imaginative texture or happy turn of phrase did not occur : but Verdi comes close to avoiding even this. Presumably again it was the abstract non-expressive formalism of the task that defeated him, for as has been remarked, the snatches of mime music in his dramatic scenes are becoming admirable just at this period. At their best the 'airs de ballet' evoke faint memories and hazy adumbrations of some of the more fatuously ornamental of his opera choruses.