7
THE GALLEY YEARS
No other opera by Verdi is so beset with legend as Nabucco. It is easy to understand why. Verdi was little known before that fateful opening night. None of his acquaintances were reminiscing about him at this stage; that came later. Had Nabucco failed, and Verdi carried out his threat to give up composing, we would be hard pushed to establish more than a few concrete facts about his early life and works.
We know relatively little about the compositional process of the opera itself, and what we do know comes from Verdi himself many decades later. It was therefore inevitable, given what a turning point it represented for the composer, that the story of Nabucco’s origins would become ever more embellished.
The most potent of these, and one that persists to this day, is the place Nabucco holds – and the fundamental role it played – in the struggle for Italian independence. There is some truth in the legend, but it is both overstated and chronologically incorrect.
Put simply, the plot of Nabucco – the yearning of the Israelites held captive in Babylon for their native land – could be seen with very little stretch of the imagination to represent the longing of Italians to be free of Austrian domination. In writing Nabucco, Verdi gave voice to an oppressed people (two oppressed peoples, one biblical, one very contemporary), and in so doing became the figurehead of Italy’s struggle for independence.
In particular it was ‘The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’ – those words at which the libretto fell open so fortuitously when Verdi threw the pages down on the kitchen table – that symbolised the struggle.
Legend has it that on the opening-night the audience, immediately recognising the import of that chorus and the direct relevance of the words to their own situation, stood as it was sung, and immediately demanded an encore.
This is not true, but it was to become true at later performances. At the time Verdi was writing Nabucco, there was no such country as Italy. It was a hodgepodge of kingdoms, duchies and states, ruled first by the French, and then after the Congress of Vienna by Austria.* Discontent there certainly was. Milan was in effect an Austrian city, with the authorities imposing absolute rule from the Habsburg capital of Vienna. The emperor was a supreme monarch, appointed by God. But a coherent campaign for Italian independence was still twenty years in the future.
We have to add to this the fact that Verdi himself did not select the plot of Nabucco; it was chosen for him. Once the fight for independence had been won, it was very easy to look back and see the opera as crystallising the desire for Italian independence, but this was not at the forefront of Verdi’s mind while he was working on it – not least because the man himself was hardly the political firebrand he was later made out to be.
Giuseppe Verdi was most certainly a patriot. He had believed in Italian independence from a young age, even if it was no more than an idealised vision of a barely attainable future. I have described how he and his wife deliberately eschewed Habsburg influences in their early years in Milan. They wore Italian fashion. Verdi, as soon as he was mature enough to do so, grew a full beard.
Officially such beards were frowned upon (there were even attempts to ban them) and the Habsburg authorities instructed men to grow elaborate moustaches and military whiskers, in keeping with the Habsburg style that was prevalent in Vienna, despite being an impossible order to enforce. Verdi kept a full beard all his life, but certainly in these early years that was as far as his anti-Habsburg protests went.
That said, I do not want to underestimate the impact of ‘Va, pensiero’. It is a remarkable piece of writing. The melody is disarmingly simple and for the most part it is sung in unison, which gives great power and emotion to the words of longing expressed by the Israelites. It is also not an exaggeration to say that for the first time in any opera the chorus plays as important a role as any of the lead singers.
No less a figure than Rossini (who correctly predicted that Verdi would soon equal, and then eclipse, him) described ‘Va, pensiero’ as not so much a chorus, more an aria for sopranos, altos, tenors and basses. Perhaps the boldest stroke of originality is that it ends quietly, with a long note fading away. No wonder that, in later years, the Habsburg authorities had such trouble banning it; it is hardly a rousing call to arms.
I described at the end of the last chapter how Verdi was now a changed man, a man who ‘seemed to have turned into stone’, in Giuseppina’s memorable words, following the deaths of his wife and children, and the fiasco of Un giorno. He was in fact changing in more ways than he could have imagined.
The success of Nabucco opened doors for Verdi. Suddenly he found he had friends everywhere: ‘They needed to tell him how they had always loved him. They all wanted to press his hand, to walk arm in arm with him, to address him as Tu.’35
The nineteenth-century Viennese fashion for salon culture had spread south to Milan, but whereas in Vienna this had largely been musical (the likes of Mozart and Beethoven owed their careers to successful salon matinées and soirées), in Milan there was a political edge. Aristocratic salons were the meeting places of intellectuals – poets, playwrights, authors, thinkers, artists, musicians – and the talk over card games and billiards was of a united Italy, free of Austrian domination.
The most prestigious of these salons was held in the home of Countess Clara Maffei. The countess was herself a radical thinker – more so than her more conservative husband – and she encouraged free-thinking intellectuals of the day to gather in her salon.
Before Nabucco Verdi could not have hoped for entry into Countess Maffei’s salon. After it, the countess was in open competition with other aristocrats to secure Verdi as a regular visitor. Here, Verdi found himself lauded, his head filled with revolutionary ideals.
Most evenings after a day’s work, he would call in at the Maffei salon, though it is interesting that the only documented comment about this period is how it was noted that Verdi would fight hard to win at cards, and argue over disputed points. Verdi the political revolutionary was still some way off.
It is at about this time that Verdi’s relationship with Giuseppina Strepponi developed further. We cannot be entirely sure when. Given the extraordinary lengths both went to in later years to discourage or actively mislead biographers, and even friends, we will probably never be able to state with absolute certainty when they began to live together.
The success of Nabucco undoubtedly went a considerable way to cementing their relationship. Verdi, as we have seen, was deeply worried about Giuseppina’s ability to carry off the role of Abigaille. In fact she not only did so, but did so with considerable aplomb.
Her performances in the initial run earned positive reviews as much for her efforts as for the quality of her singing. One critic said she ‘worked miracles’, although her voice was weak and she was in need of a rest. She herself was under no illusion. ‘I sang, or rather, I dragged myself to the end of the performances,’ she wrote in a letter.
Giuseppina did not take part when the opera was revived later in the year. Verdi made substantial changes to accommodate the new soprano. He also cut the scene of Abigaille’s death, the first part of the opera he wrote. It is this revised version of the opera that is performed to this day.
One might expect Giuseppina’s professional problems – the fact that her singing voice was now in decline, which would inevitably lead to the end of her stage career – to spill over into her relationship with Verdi, and it is possible that to an extent they did. Mary Jane Phillips-Matz suggests that Verdi might have fallen in love at this stage with another patroness of the arts, Donna Emilia Morosini.
Several of his letters to Donna Emilia have survived, and the language is intense and intimate, in contrast to the words he uses to describe Giuseppina:
What is the lovable Peppina doing? and my dear Bigettina? A kiss to the second and nothing to the first. I have some important accounts to settle with Peppina. She won’t get away from me.
There is tantalisingly little information about Verdi’s relationship with Donna Emilia, which, given what we know of Verdi’s methods, should not surprise us. However deep, or brief, the relationship might have been, though, it was to Giuseppina that he turned when he wanted advice, on all matters from the artistic to the financial. If there is a hint in those letters that the relationship might not have been entirely plain sailing, certainly there was no major fracture, and it was to survive the many vicissitudes that lay ahead.
For the immediate future, Verdi had work to do. From struggling to persuade Merelli to stage his operas, suddenly he could hardly keep up with demand. As early as the day of the third performance of Nabucco, Merelli summoned Verdi to his office and told him he was commissioning him to write a new opera as the centrepiece of the next season at La Scala. The terms? ‘Here is a blank contract. After a success like yours I cannot dictate conditions; it is up to you to set them. Fill out this contract; whatever you write in will be yours.’36
After just two performances of his third opera, Verdi had overtaken Italy’s two greatest living operatic composers, Rossini and Donizetti, to become the most in-demand composer of opera in Italy.
Evidence, though, that he was still a provincial at heart, unused to negotiating at this exalted level, comes from his decision (as reported to Pougin) to consult Giuseppina over what to do. How much money should he demand?
Giuseppina’s advice was not to undersell himself, but at the same time not to make too extravagant a demand. She suggested he should ask for the same amount Bellini had been paid for Norma more than a decade earlier, namely 8,000 Austrian lire (at the time the most ever paid for an opera). Verdi upped the figure slightly and wrote 9,000 lire† in the blank space.37
Verdi himself chose the subject: I Lombardi alla prima crociata (‘The Lombards on the First Crusade’), a tale of jealousy and revenge, wrapped up in the First Crusade to liberate Jerusalem. The parallels with Nabucco are obvious. In the earlier opera the Israelites are being held captive in Babylon; in I Lombardi the Lombards intend to liberate Jerusalem from the infidels. Again Verdi gives a crucial role to the chorus; the almost hymn-like ‘O signore, dal tetto natio’ (‘O Lord, who in our native home’) is clearly modelled on ‘Va, pensiero’.
In almost every respect Verdi is consciously setting out to repeat the successful formula of Nabucco. Once again he chose Solera to write the libretto, and once again, when he wasn’t satisfied with a certain passage, he subjected the writer to the same disciplinary tactic he had used previously. Solera has left a captivating account of what a taskmaster Verdi had become:
‘Here I need a warm phrase.’ [Verdi told him.] ‘You find it. Sit down and think and write. I’ll run over to the theatre and come back later.’ And he took his hat and left, turning the key in the lock from the outside. His idea of locking me in the room was a real fixation with him.
But Solera now had the measure of Verdi. After jotting down half a line, and then another half, he got up and opened a cupboard. Half a dozen bottles of wine stood inside –
seeming to invite me to taste them. I took one and opened it. Getting back to work, I toasted every line I wrote, welcoming it with a good swig of wine.38
Solera recounts how Verdi, on returning, noticed how his eyes were shining brightly and put it down to inspiration rather than alcohol. Together the two of them completed the aria, where the dying crusader promises his lover they will be reunited in heaven – Verdi improvising the lines and ‘gesturing like an actor in a cheap theatre’.
Even if we allow Solera a measure of poetic licence (would Verdi really not have noticed the open bottle of wine and its effect on his librettist?), the anecdote offers a fascinating insight into how Verdi worked, coming up with words as well as notes when the moment demanded and inspiration struck. Perhaps we should not be surprised that Solera, twice locked into a room by the impatient composer, gave Verdi the nickname ‘The Tyrant’ and would not collaborate with him again after I Lombardi.
The premiere of I Lombardi was set for 11 February 1843, a mere five months after the end of the phenomenally successful run of Nabucco. Verdi – as with Nabucco, and in a pattern repeated throughout his life – was tense, irritable, argumentative, his health teetering on the brink of serious illness during the compositional process.
But this, as I have intimated, was a different Verdi. He had the success of Nabucco behind him. He had lived through the inestimable sorrow of losing his wife and two infant children. He was now a ‘man of stone’. He knew his art, and he alone knew it; no one else would be allowed to trespass on his territory.
That resolve was about to be tested. As was customary with every new public production, the Austrian censors – Austrian, not Italian, since northern Italy was governed from Vienna (in itself certain to offend Verdi) – demanded to see the libretto of I Lombardi. They rejected it on numerous grounds.
The senior censor, the Austrian Archbishop of Milan, objected to the staging of Christian processions, the depiction of crusaders, the scene showing the baptism of an infidel, and above all to the singing of an aria beginning with the sacred words ‘Ave Maria’. All these were sacrilegious, and he wrote to the Milan chief of police ordering him to ban the opera. For good measure he wrote directly to the Emperor too, denouncing Merelli and La Scala for ‘licentiousness’ and ‘failure to show respect for the faith’.
Verdi’s opera, it seems, was doomed. But the Archbishop had reckoned without the single-minded and determined man that Verdi had become. The chief of police – Italian-born, but a protégé of Chancellor Metternich and an Austrian sympathiser to his fingertips – summoned Merelli, Verdi and Solera to his office. Verdi said no. He simply refused to go.
As he told Pougin many years later, ‘My position is this: I will not change a word or a note. It will be performed as it is, or it will not be performed at all.’
So it was just Merelli and Solera who appeared before the chief of police. Merelli, clearly emboldened not only by Verdi’s resolve but also by the anticipation of the opera-going public for the new opera by Verdi, decided attack was the best form of defence.
He dismissed the Archbishop’s letter with a wave of the hand, then told the police chief the opera was beyond the point of no return. Rehearsals were almost over, the scenery painted, costumes ready. Cast and orchestra were united in their praise for the work, and the public had secured their tickets for what was certain to be a triumph. The composer, he said, refused to make any changes.
His final argument contained an implied threat. If the opera were to be cancelled, the police chief alone would bear full responsibility for the consequences.
Merelli and Solera must have been dumbfounded by the police chief’s reaction. He listened, then stood, and stated clearly he would never be ‘the one to clip the wings of this young man, who promises so much to the art of music. Go ahead. I will take responsibility for what happens.’
If Merelli’s tactic had been to go on the attack, that of the police chief was to kill the impresario – and through him Verdi himself – with kindness. To save face, one minor change was asked for and agreed. Giselda’s heartfelt prayer in Act One should begin with the words ‘Salve Maria’, rather than ‘Ave Maria’. It was the smallest of concessions.
With the ever-present caveat that this is Verdi’s own account related forty years after the event, and describing a meeting at which he was not present, the composer had, in effect, seen off the censor. It was not the last time he would have to do so in his long career, but it was a very useful lesson in what could be achieved by a firm stance. ‘Intractability’ is a trait that henceforth can be accurately applied to Giuseppe Verdi.
I Lombardi opened on schedule and was the triumph Merelli had predicted. An audience that wanted a Nabucco Mark Two got exactly what it desired, right down to an emotional and patriotic chorus.
The opera remained in the repertory for years, even decades. Verdi substantially reworked it to be performed in French in Paris (with the new title Jérusalem), and it was the first of his operas to be performed in the United States. And so Verdi himself might be surprised to find that it is rarely performed today. But even in his day critics were less enthusiastic than the opera-going public and have remained so, pointing out its inconsistencies, even banalities of plot, and some lacklustre musical writing amid very few striking moments. Comparisons with Nabucco might have served it well at its birth, but cause it to suffer now.
Not that that impinged on Verdi at the time. He basked in praise and glory. A poet‡ published a paean extolling Nabucco and I Lombardi as the two tiers of Verdi’s ‘double crown’ that he would wear as he conquered the world.
Onward, O young man, on this difficult path. Fearless, you must dare to risk everything and hurry to climb the highest peak of fame, where immortality is found. Do not let unanimous acclaim make you proud. May you live in peace and happiness.
If there had remained the smallest shred of doubt, there was none now. Verdi had proved himself not once but twice. The road ahead was clear. More operas. Many more operas. In under a decade, beginning with Nabucco, he would compose thirteen operas. That is an extraordinary rate of more than one opera a year. But it would not be easy. There would be failures as well as successes. His health would suffer, even to the extent that his life would be in danger.
Verdi, many decades later, would describe these as his ‘galley years’ (anni di galera). One might expect the ageing and famous composer to look back with pride on his early achievements and capacity for hard work. But by then cynicism had taken over. He had never really liked his profession – or, more accurately, the myriad personalities he had to deal with to see one of his creations come to life. Symphonies would have been so much easier than operas.
There would be personal problems too. He was not yet thirty years of age, but it seemed he had already endured a lifetime of trauma and tragedy. If he hoped that now, with two major successes behind him, life would become altogether more congenial, he was to be much mistaken.
* We have seen how, technically, Verdi was born a Frenchman.
† Other accounts give the sums as 10,000 lire, increased by Verdi to 12,000.
‡ Count Ottavio Tasca.