Verdi Forum Number 12 Article 4 1-1-1984 Text Setting in Verdi's Jérusalem and Don Carlos Jeffrey Langford Manhattan School of Music Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vf Part of the Musicology Commons Recommended Citation Langford, Jeffrey (1984) "Text Setting in Verdi's Jérusalem and Don Carlos," Verdi Forum: No. 12, Article 4. Available at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vf/vol1/iss12/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Verdi Forum by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Text Setting in Verdi's Jérusalem and Don Carlos Keywords Giuseppe Verdi, Jérusalem, Don Carlos This article is available in Verdi Forum: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/vf/vol1/iss12/4 Text Setting in Verdi's Jerusalem and Don Carlos Jeffrey Langford, Manhattan School of Music In the summer of 1847 Verdi went to Lon­ poor French was dealt with by the fact that don to supervise the premiere of I Masna­ while writing the opera he would be living dieri at Her Majesty's Theatre. This was in Paris where he could easily get help his first premiere outside of Italy, and his from friends like Strepponi or from his li­ second international trip of any kind . On brettists. 3 Another impediment, his busy returning home from London, Verdi schedule, was removed through an agree­ stopped in Paris to visit his French pub­ ment with the Opera allowing the com­ lisher, Leon Escudier, and Giuseppina poser to reset an earlier Italian opera to a Strepponi, who had been teaching voice new French libretto. I Lombardi was se­ there since the fall of 1846. During this lected for this transformation, and the job visit Verdi was approached by the Paris Op­ of adapting the drama and drafting the new era and asked to write a new work on a libretto was entrusted to Gustav Vaez and French text. Althouyh such requests had Alphonse Royer.4 Their work resulted in come to him before, he had always been much more than a simple translation of the forced to refuse them, for a variety of rea­ Italian libretto into French. While carefully sons. For one, he was busy fulfilling Ital­ designed to allow Verdi to reuse most of his ian commissions and had no time for for­ earlier music, the new libretto, entitled Je­ eign theaters. In addition, he was not fluent rusalem, actually involved major changes in French and undoubtedly had reserva­ in I Lombardi. s tions about composing a major work for Verdi's work on Jerusalem represented a Europe's leading opera house in a language venture into compositionally uncharted with which he was not completely secure. 2 waters. In Italy his exposure to French op­ In these circumstances, one wonders era could only have been minimal. The why, in the summer of 1847, he suddenly chronicles of such opera houses as La agreed to accept the Opera commission. Scala, La Fenice, and the Regio in Parma He was, after all, still busy with other Ital­ show that most French operas never ian commissions, and his French was no reached the theaters of major Italian cities; more fluent than before. The answer may and those few works that did (most notably involve a combination of factors . Verdi's Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable and Auber's 'See his letter of August 1846 to Vincenzio documentary evidence in the form of letters to Flauto in which he says, " If none other, the indicate that he ever actually approached them Grand Opera of Paris would not disdain to open for help. The presence of Strepponi in Paris al its doors to me , as I can show you with a letter that time may well have been the decisive factor from Pillet. " Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro in his decision to write Jerusalem (eds.). Luzio, eds., I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi 'Three of Verdi 's most successful early operas (Milan, 1913) 24 . (those predating 1846) had already been staged 2As of 1847 Verdi spoke French well enough to in Paris: Nabucco, 16 Oct. 1845; Emani, 6 Jan. get by in Paris, but not until the 1860s did he 1846; I due Foscari, 17 Dec. 1846. Only I Lom­ feel comfortable enough to write an occasional bardi had not yet been mounted there. A photo­ letter to Escudier or Du Locle in French. Even copy of Verdi 's contract for Jerusalem with the then most of his letters to French-speaking Opera may be found in the archive of the Ameri­ friends were still written in Italian. This practice can Institute for Verdi Studies at New York Uni­ contrasts markedly with that of Giuseppina versity . Strepponi, who, after she began living with sA lengthy discussion of the transformation of Verdi , always wrote to the composer's French I Lombardi into Jerusalem may be found in colleagues in their own language. David Kimbell, "Verdi's First Rifacimento: 'I 3Unfortunately, the fact that Verdi worked di­ Lombardi' and 'Jerusalem,' " Music & Letters, rectly with his librettists means that there is no VQI. 60, no . 1 (January 1979) pp. 1-36. 19 la Muette de Portie!) were always given in line of verse. 8 Italian words show consider­ Italian translation. 6 So while Verdi may able variety in the location of their natural have known some of the music of major stresses. The usual rule is that multi­ French composers, he probably remained syllable words receive a stress on the pen­ unfamiliar with the exact correlation of that ultimate syllable, as in the word amore. music with its original French texts. The This is called the normal or piano ending. composition of Jerusalem raises the inter­ In many other words, however, the stress esting question of how Verdi dealt with the falls on the antipenultimate syllable, as in actual mechanics of French text setting the word virgine. This type of word is said early in his career, and gives us the oppor­ to have a sdrucciolo ending. Lastly, many tunity to discover what he thought about words in the Italian language have a stress the effect of language on musical style. Ul­ that falls on the last syllable, as in the word timately an investigation of the subject may belta or in words with a single syllable. lead to a better understanding of the exact These words have a tronco ending. relationship between Verdi and the French In all Italian poetry the final stress of a grand opera tradition. line (the penultimate syllable in a normal, piano ending) is called the primary accent, the heaviest stress, of that line. Other stresses are referred to as secondary accents. The difference between these two The primary concern of any composer levels of accent is shown in scansion as fol­ attempting to set a versified text to music lows: = marks the primary accent, - lies in the establishment of a system for the marks a secondary accent ( ~ marks an correlation of the stresses of poetic prosody elision). with the natural accents of musical meters. Stress within complete lines of Italian In order to understand how a composer like poetry is governed primarily by poetic me­ Verdi approaches this problem we must ters (pre-existing patterns of stressed and know something about the basic principles unstressed syllables) which, in turn, are of Italian and French versification. 7 determined by the number of syllables in a In Italian poetry, individual words have line. In opera librettos some of the most stressed and unstressed syllables which, common line lengths are quatemario (4 when taken in conjunction with the rules syllables), quinario (5), senario (6), set­ governing poetic meters, help to determine tenario (7), ottonario (8), decasillabo (IO), the placement of stress within a complete and endecasillabo ( 11) . Lines with an even 6See Pompeo Cambiasi, ed., Rappresentazioni 1973); Leon E. Kastner, A History of French date nei reali teatri di Milano, 1778-1872 (Mi­ Versification (Oxford, 1903); and Jean Suber­ lan, 1872); Paolo-Emilio Ferrari, ed., Spettacoli ville, Histoire et theorie de la versification fra­ dramatico-musicali e coreografici in Parma nfaise (Paris, n.d.). I would also like to thank dal/ 'anno 1628 al/ 'anno 1883 (Parma, 1884); professor Nicholas Granito of the Manhattan and Luigi Lianovosani (pseud. for Giovanni Sal­ School of Music for his generous advice on mat­ violi) ed., La Fenice: gran teatro di Venezia; ters concerning Italian and French prosody. serie degli spettacoli dalla primavera I '792 a 'The subject of stress in language is itself a very tutto ii camovale 1876 (Milan, 1878). complex one. Generally, stress results from the 7The following summary of the rules of Italian coordinated effect of three factors: the lengthen­ versification is digested from Luciana Castel­ ing of a vowel (agogic accent) , an increase in naovo, La metrica italiana (Milan: Vita e pen­ dynamic level (dynamic accent), and a rise of siero, 1979); Pier Enea Guarnerio, Manuale di pitch in the voice (pitch accent). The relative im­ versificazione italiana (Milan, 1913); and Rob­ portance of these elements in determining stress ert Moreen, "Integration of Text Forms and varies considerably from language to language. Musical Forms in Verdi's Early Operas," In classical Italian, stress is primarily the result (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1975). The of durational accent, while in French it is pitch rules of French versification are taken from accent that contributes most to the perception of Pierre Guiraud, La Versification , 2nd ed. (Paris, stress. 20 number of syllables tend to have more reg­ I~ cietCi,_ed ~rg~rn~i ular metric patterns than those with an un­ seceuu even syllable count.