This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Verdi Reception in Milan, 1859-1881 Memory, Progress and Italian Identity Vella, Francesca Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 11. Oct. 2021 Verdi Reception in Milan, 1859-1881: Memory, Progress and Italian Identity Francesca Vella King’s College London July 2014 A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Music. The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. Abstract This thesis explores Verdi reception in Milan during 1859-81, particularly in connection with contemporary notions of italianità . It seeks to shed light on specifically Milanese representations of ‘Italianness’, investigating how attitudes to music, and opera in particular, reflected attempts at constructing and negotiating both local and national identities. By placing Verdi within a larger urban picture, this thesis offers a cultural history – one focused on music and Italian identity – of Milan during the period. The thesis is comprised of four case studies. Chapter One addresses discourse about Verdi and Italian politics during 1859-61, further framing the discussion within a broader historical and historiographical purview. Chapter Two investigates the Milanese premiere of Don Carlo in 1868 in relation to the contemporary spread and perceptions of national monuments. Chapter Three considers the critical reception of Verdi’s Messa da Requiem for Alessandro Manzoni in 1874, suggesting that the binary rhetoric that underpinned the debates was a ‘political’ tool for negotiating musical notions of Italian identity. Finally, Chapter Four examines critical discourse about Verdi-Boito’s revised Simon Boccanegra and the revivals of various operas in Milan in 1881, discussing them in connection with that year’s National Industrial Exhibition and with the interpretative framework of the Operatic Museum. This study overall suggests a revised, more nuanced narrative about late- nineteenth-century Verdi, opera and Italy. If, on the one hand, Milan’s contemporary culture maintained a strong awareness of its past, on the other, it was increasingly concerned with defining itself by construing images of the future. Far from representing merely the last epigone of Italy’s past – vocal, ‘melodic’ – musical tradition, Verdi came, in the eyes of Milanese critics, to embody ideas of musical innovation. Concepts of progress and change were indeed as deeply embedded in the contemporary imagination as were concepts of crisis and nostalgia of the past. Contents List of Figures 5 List of Examples 5 Note on the Text 6 Acknowledgements 7 INTRODUCTION 11 CHAPTER ONE Verdi and Politics: Then and Now 24 Appendix 1 53 Appendix 2 56 CHAPTER TWO Don Carlo as Monument 64 CHAPTER THREE Bridging Divides: Verdi’s Requiem and ‘Italian Music’ 99 CHAPTER FOUR Simon Boccanegra , the 1881 Exhibition and the Operatic Museum 135 CONCLUSION Verdi and italianità : Towards a ‘Transnational Turn’ 166 Bibliography 176 Figures 1.1 Gazzetta musicale di Milano , 14 December 1890, 800. 2.1 Jean-Pierre Dantan, bust of Giuseppe Verdi; reproduced by permission of the Biblioteca Livia Simoni, Milan. 2.2 Two Verdi medals; reproduced from Giampiero Tintori, ‘Le medaglie verdiane nelle collezioni del Museo teatrale alla Scala’, in Atti del III° congresso internazionale di studi verdiani , ed. Mario Medici and Marcello Pavarani (Parma, 1974), 587-606. 2.3 The foyer of the Teatro alla Scala, with the new busts of Bellini and Verdi, drawing by Antonio Bonamore, L’illustrazione italiana , 27 November 1881, 349. 2.4 Statue of Verdi (by Barzaghi) in the foyer of La Scala; reproduced by permission of the Biblioteca Livia Simoni, Milan. 3.1 La prima esecuzione della Messa di Verdi nella Chiesa di San Marco, drawing by Pessina, L’illustrazione universale , 14 June 1874, 20. 4.1 Site plan of the Exhibition, Il pungolo , 5-6 May 1881, 1. Music Examples 3.1 Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem , Agnus Dei , bb. 1-13; reproduced from Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem per l’anniversario della morte di Manzoni 22 maggio 1874 , ed. David Rosen (Chicago and Milan, 1990). 3.2 Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem , Offertorio , bb. 9-25; reproduced from Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem per l’anniversario della morte di Manzoni 22 maggio 1874 , ed. David Rosen (Chicago and Milan, 1990). 3.3 Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem , Libera me , bb. 132-43; reproduced from Giuseppe Verdi, Messa da Requiem per l’anniversario della morte di Manzoni 22 maggio 1874 , ed. David Rosen (Chicago and Milan, 1990). 5 Note on the Text The thesis refers to many primary sources, most of which are in Italian. Nineteenth- century journal articles are anonymous unless stated otherwise. Long, indented quotations in the main text are given both in the original language and in English translation, which is my own unless otherwise indicated. Short quotations are given in English translation, while the original Italian (or, occasionally, French) is given in the footnotes. Whenever I draw significantly on primary sources without quoting them in the body of the text, I provide the excerpts in the original language only in the footnotes. Italics in all quotations are in the original. 6 Acknowledgments When three and a half years ago, at the height of a dissertation-tinged summer and facing little prospect of a musical job in Italy, I surrendered to supervisory pressures that I embark on a PhD, I was starting to foresee reasons for enjoyment, but could hardly imagine music ology would take me in. Even less could I suspect that Verdi – a composer of works in a genre I’d little appreciated until then – would become so enmeshed with my professional and personal life. It was not me who first proposed the subject of this thesis. But I’m glad I had enough faith to take the offer, and others enough initiative to make it. In reaching the final stage of my PhD, I feel fraught, perhaps unsurprisingly, with the sense of an end. More than a feeling of achievement, though, the completion of this project carries (for me) the redolence of fond moments from the past few years – and, somewhat more painfully, the whiff of possibilities, of opportunities that went wasted or that did not materialise. But perhaps in the latter lie this project’s promises for the future: its invitation to look forward to new paths in this very same research; to believe in refreshed encounters with people never met or not deeply enough understood. In many ways it was the people this PhD brought into my life that made the whole experience meaningful to me. Many have contributed to this research. I am grateful to King’s College London for funding my studies and supporting this project. Back in Italy, mille grazie to those who assisted me in libraries and archives: in Parma, to Daria Cantarelli at the CIRPeM, and Michela Crovi and Giuseppe Martini at the Istituto nazionale di studi verdiani; and in Milan, to Maria Pia Ferraris at the Archivio Ricordi, Roberto Gollo at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, and Matteo Sartorio at the Biblioteca Livia Simoni. Their enthusiasm and generosity, I’m pleased to say, made me feel proud (at moments of alienation in foreign lands) to be Italian, and discovering two cities in my own country that I hardly knew was one of the unexpected pleasures brought about by this PhD. Several people, at various stages, have read and commented on many drafts, and each of them has also enriched this experience in other ways. Thanks to Laura 7 Basini, for her encouragement while I was preparing my first article; to Andy Fry, for discussing the chapter of my upgrade; to Katherine Fry, for polishing my introduction and conclusions; to Katherine Hambridge, for a last-minute proofreading of ninety-six lengthy footnotes; to Matthew Head, for boosting the most philosophical chunk of this thesis; to Gundula Kreuzer, for her keen comments on a conference paper (and for saving me from an unpleasant situation); to Laura Protano-Biggs, for providing the most helpful feedback ever on my Requiem chapter; to David Rosen, for reading meticulously two early drafts, and for welcoming me in the Verdi year at Cornell; and to Gavin Williams, for putting up with endless drafts and research proposals. My deepest gratitude above all to Emanuele Senici: for his continuous support throughout this project; for his mixture of rigorous pickiness and sensible pragmatism; and for the comments of encouragement he never forgot to scatter alongside his criticisms in any of my drafts.