BEST VERDI OPERA HOW TO
It is as if, having learnt how to explore emotions in such depth and expansiveness in Don Carlos, he wanted to purge most of the French extravagance of that opera and address the issues that mattered most to him in a compact, highly charged, wholly Italian form. In Aida he returned to these favourite themes one last time, but on a more lofty scale than before and summoning all the artistic and technical expertise he had accumulated over his career.
A more credible explanation is that Mariette’s scenario brought together in one story a number of the themes that had engaged Verdi most deeply throughout his creative life: patriotism and duty, the oppression of a people, the clash of church and state, and – always a painful personal memory – the relationship between a father and his daughter. Why did Verdi agree so readily? It seems unlikely that the payment, though large, was enough by itself, and the composer had recently dismissed ancient Egypt as ‘a civilisation…I could never bring myself to admire’. An Aida by Gounod is fairly easy to imagine but one by Wagner? Hardly.) (It is amusing to note that if Verdi had said no, Mariette was authorised to offer the project to Gounod or Wagner instead. Mariette presented a scenario of his own and Verdi immediately accepted. Then came an approach from Egyptologist Auguste Mariette on behalf of the Khedive of Egypt, who wanted a new opera to mark the opening of his opera house in Cairo. One idea that kept coming round was an opera about the emperor Nero, but what Verdi really wanted was a comedy, with Molière’s Tartuffe being a possibility (and this was years before the creation of Falstaff).
The search to identify a new subject after Don Carlos was long and frustrating. But it was Aida that was to be the culmination of this central period of Verdi’s career. Don Carlos is the most important in pushing the composer in new directions, thanks to its grand opera scale, the customary Parisian demand for spectacle, and the sophistication of the orchestral writing. The three works that resulted are as ambitious as any that Verdi ever tackled and each in its own way is unique. ‘Dispatches arrive from every corner of the civilised world’, he says, ‘begging for operas, offering incredible sums of money, promising honours and triumphs.’ Having spent his life writing largely for the opera houses of his native Italy, Verdi had now risen to a position whereby he would accept three major commissions from different corners of the globe: St Petersburg ( La forza del destino), Paris ( Don Carlos) and Cairo ( Aida).Ĭommissions of this stature demanded imposing operas. Ghislanzoni offers another telling observation. The great operas of this period – Simon Boccanegra, Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlos and Aida – each occupied Verdi for several years of painstaking work.
Instead of coming off the conveyor belt, each opera could be crafted at a relatively leisurely pace. Now, success had brought him not only financial security, but time to breathe. The composer is described as being genial and contented: ‘When I met him for the first time 20 years ago…his frail frame, pale face, sunken cheeks and deep-set eyes aroused ominous fears, today you find nothing in that countenance but glowing health and stability.’Īt the time of their previous meeting Verdi had been in the grip of his ‘galley years’, when the pressure of earning a living meant he had to deliver new operas at the rate of two or three a year. In his memoir of the visit Ghislanzoni paints a picture of middle-class ease and affluence. To find the perfect subscription for you, simply visit: .uk/subscribeĭuring the summer of 1868 Antonio Ghislanzoni, a writer and former baritone, was taken to visit Verdi at home on his estate at Sant’ Agata.
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