18
VERDI, GENTLEMAN FARMER
In the space of a little over two years, Verdi had composed his three most enduring works. Especially given the short time in which he composed them, his trilogy ranks as one of the greatest achievements in all opera. Incredible, too, is the fact that he had composed eighteen operas in just eleven frenetic years. When La traviata had its premiere, Verdi was not yet forty years of age.
His achievement is all the more remarkable given that Verdi was in constant dispute with meddling censors, arguing with theatre managements, having to tolerate singers who were not up to the task forced on him, dealing with frequent bouts of ill-health, battling with his librettists to make them write and rewrite until he got exactly what he wanted, all at the same time as coping with domestic crises.
It really is little surprise, given the hurdles that lay between composition and production, that he held his own profession in such contempt, and that he had a constant yearning to devote himself to other, more relaxing pursuits. Now, after the strain of the last few years, was exactly the time to indulge them.
In October 1853, as he turned forty years of age, the most lauded opera composer in Europe owned forty-six animals and large stores of grain. Three tenants to whom he let smallholdings on the Sant’Agata estate farmed the land, but Verdi took control of every aspect of his estate.
He experimented with breeding cattle and horses; he worked on developing new strains of grapes, wheat and corn. He had his own slaughterhouse on the estate, and began selling pork products on the open market, where he had a reputation for driving a hard bargain. He demanded weekly reports from his farm managers, which he would sign off only when satisfied.
He became interested in ever more exotic strains of flowers and trees.* A tradition handed down within the family is that he planted a sycamore for Rigoletto, an oak for Il trovatore and a weeping willow for La traviata.
As he reached the milestone age of forty, Verdi was in better health than he had been for years. The fresh air, and the sheer physical effort of farming, had done wonders for his constitution – and, indeed, for that creative mind. Alone in the fields he had time to think, to plot, to create.
Verdi the farmer he might have become, but Verdi the operatic composer he remained at heart. There was no denying it; it was part of his very being. And so, as soon as he had decided to give up composing once and for all, he began … to compose.
To begin with, his long-held desire to set Shakespeare’s King Lear revolved in his mind as he tended his plants and livestock. It was the one ambition that accompanied him, that weighed on him, for all his adult years. Cammarano had already provided large swathes of libretto, when Verdi had previously worked on the idea; following his untimely death in July 1852, Verdi brought in another librettist, Antonio Somma.
Somma completed what Cammarano had left unfinished. Verdi was satisfied, sending him payment for the work he had done. He told Somma he had to set it aside temporarily, but would get down to it as soon as he had finished another project he was working on. He kept saying that for the next two years, and for decades beyond that. Lear would remain his dream, with never a note being written.
So what was that ‘other project’ occupying his time? Hadn’t he given up composing to concentrate on his farm? Yes, but he had a prior commitment with the Paris Opéra to compose a new work, and he was under pressure to honour it.
As had become his custom, he raised objections – the promised libretto had not arrived, the management had kept him in the dark about their plans, and as well as that he was angry that they had staged a production of one of his earlier operas, Luisa Miller, without his permission, and had made a mess of it.
The real reason he wanted to be released from his commitment, he hid from them. He wanted to get away from Sant’Agata during the winter of 1853–4, and he wanted to take Giuseppina with him.
Aware of the potential problems of being seen in public with his mistress, he tried to cloak the proposed trip in secrecy. Despite his past problems in Naples, it would at least be warm there, plus it was away from the opera ‘powerhouse’ cities of the north so it would be easier to hide themselves away.
He wrote to a friend in Naples, asking him to find a comfortable apartment by the sea, ideally with two servants or, failing that, just one, and asking him whether he thought he would be subjected to any bother from the police, and whether ‘a lady companion with a regular passport would have to endure the same trouble’. And he added, ‘I repeat: it must be a secret.’
His final stipulation was a rather endearing one, that despite his fame he wanted to be seen as just an ordinary man on holiday:
If I do come, in Naples I shall be Signor Giuseppe Verdi and not Maestro Verdi, which is as much as to say I do not want to hear operas, nor propositions for operas, etc., addio and silence!71
Endearing, but at the same time rather unrealistic. Signor Verdi, the moment he was recognised, would be just as much an object of veneration as Maestro Verdi, and he must have known that.
In the event, the visit to Naples failed to materialise. Paris was calling, and he was in no position to resist. He was under contract; he had no choice. And so he and Giuseppina packed their bags and prepared to leave, once more, for the French capital.
The couple expected to be away for just as long as it took to complete the new opera and see it onto the stage. Given past experience, that should not have taken longer than six months. In fact they were in Paris for a full two years.
Given that they were away for such a long time, with no evidence that either returned to Sant’Agata for even the briefest of visits, it is worth pausing for a moment to consider why they stayed away so long from home and whether, despite past words from both of them, they really were happy there.
Winters in the Po valley can be cold and very, very wet. I have already quoted Muzio moaning about the constant downpours. In letter after letter Verdi complained about conditions at Sant’Agata – cold, damp, overrun with workmen – yet he also wrote about how much he missed it and how he longed to be home.
For a man who had seemed obsessed with every aspect of farming activity, he showed not the slightest interest (as far as we can tell) during those two years in Paris. There is no evidence he was in touch with his farmworkers, or that they forwarded any information to him.
As for Giuseppina, I have already quoted from that letter in which she complains of how the trees stand like desolate skeletons in winter, and how she covers the windows with flowered curtains.
However, even if at times it could feel rather like a prison that kept them enclosed and away from the world, it also remained a refuge for the couple, and was to continue to do so until the end of both their lives.
In October 1853, with Verdi just past his fortieth birthday, and before autumn had had a chance to take hold in the Po valley, Verdi and Giuseppina took up residence in the rue de Richter near the Opéra.
This was a very different Paris from the one they had left behind only four years before. A new emperor was on the throne, Napoléon III, and he had brought in a prefet by the name of Georges-Eugène Haussmann to redesign the city of Paris, to construct wide boulevards, lay out parks, improve sanitation and the water supply; in effect to bring Paris into the modern era.
Thousands of workers were about to turn the capital city into a building site, which did nothing to improve Verdi’s mood. He was in a city he did not especially want to be in, working on an opera he did not want to write. And sure enough, it told on his health. The usual symptoms returned – he had a sore throat, his digestion was playing up, and he had pain in his abdomen. At least he had his Peppina by his side; she spent a lot of time nursing him.
For Giuseppina herself, things were rather different. When she had lived in the city previously, she had been a single woman, with a small circle of friends, earning her living as a singing teacher. She was now accompanying the famous and revered Maestro Verdi, and neither she nor he made any attempt to hide it. This was not Italy, there were no family or friends to berate them, there was no tut-tutting in quiet corners. Here they could be as open as they liked.
According to Giuseppina’s biographer, Verdi referred to her in public as ‘my wife’, and she began to sign herself ‘Giuseppina’ or ‘Joséphine Verdi’. She had white handkerchiefs trimmed with lace with the initials ‘G.V.’ embroidered on them.
A measure, though, of how sensitive both of them were to the issue came when an old friend, Giuseppina Appiani, referred to her in a letter as Giuseppina Strepponi, causing Verdi to send a stinging reply, terminating the friendship.†
Giuseppina, in contrast to Verdi, was clearly enjoying being back in continental Europe’s most sophisticated city. A new emperor and empress brought with them a return of style and elegance, the emperor retaining a certain cachet as the nephew of Napoléon Bonaparte, even if his image was somewhat tarnished for having chosen as his new bride a Spanish woman of noble, rather than royal, heritage.
Giuseppina considered herself now to be a lady, and she behaved like one. She enjoyed shopping expeditions, accompanied by her English maid. She wore a silk dress, with a cashmere shawl in blue to match her hat, and beige shoes just visible beneath her dress when she walked.72
Inevitably an invitation came to call on the royal couple at Les Tuileries. One can imagine Giuseppina brimming with excitement, going to great lengths to dress for the occasion, and Verdi being rather less keen.
Giuseppina reported that the empress shone with beauty, if not charm, and that Spanish was spoken more openly at court than French. Small of stature, the emperor wore elaborately waxed moustaches, was the height of elegance in tight white garters and epaulettes, and sported a magnificent array of medals and decorations.73
Verdi, however, was more interested in the several visits that he and Giuseppina paid on Italy’s most famous composer of opera, until that accolade was taken from him by Verdi.
Gioachino Rossini, now in his early sixties, had inherited the crown from the recently deceased Donizetti, who in turn had lifted it from Bellini. Now it was the turn of the still relatively young man who had come to pay his respects to his forerunner in Paris.
It is unlikely Rossini minded too much about losing his crown. The composer of forty operas, including such masterful and popular works as Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, La gazza ladra and Semiramide, had not written an opera since Guillaume Tell nearly twenty-five years earlier, and would not write another in his remaining fifteen years.
Rossini had taken voluntary retirement to enjoy the good life, and it showed. A voracious appetite‡ had left him with a vast and rotund stomach, and that, together with a ‘ridiculous’ black wig on top of a bald head, made him an unprepossessing figure.
We know this because, on one of their visits, with Verdi in the next room playing billiards, Rossini seated himself on the sofa next to Giuseppina, when Verdi put his head round the door at just the right moment.
Rossini said to him, ‘Your wife is scolding me!’§
‘But why?’ asked Verdi.
Rossini shrugged his shoulders. ‘I was praising her beauty and her skill as an artist of our times.’
‘And I really can’t take that,’ said Giuseppina.74
On several occasions, when recounting the episode, Giuseppina was heard commenting on Rossini’s portliness and wig perched on his bald head.
On another visit, a baritone – actually King Louis of Portugal – offered to sing an aria from Il trovatore. Verdi got up to go to the piano, but Rossini – in an overt compliment to Verdi – said, ‘Leave it to me, this is music I understand.’75
The two men clearly got on, Rossini seemingly not jealous of the younger man who was taking his pre-eminent place in the world of Italian opera. On one occasion, Rossini flung his arms round Verdi, exclaiming, ‘Look what a Carnival you’ve got yourself into!’
There is a wonderful and legendary quote, which I have been unable to source, where Rossini says, clearly with a twinkle in his eye, ‘I am a rotten pianist, but Verdi is four times worse.’
Social visits apart, there was an opera to be written, and unsurprisingly Verdi was running into all kinds of problems. His contract was for a four- or even five-act opera, to a libretto written by the French dramatist Eugène Scribe.
Scribe was one of France’s greatest living dramatists, but he was not good enough for Verdi. Verdi rejected Scribe’s first suggestion, and then his second too. Scribe was not used to such criticism, especially from this foreign parvenu musician who was more than twenty years his junior.
Eventually a libretto was agreed on, with Scribe bringing in a colleague to help him mould it to Verdi’s liking. Verdi began work, but was unhappy from the start. Weeks became months, and months became years.
Throughout the process of composition, Verdi tried again and again to have his contract annulled, threatening to break it if he did not get his way. His longing to return to Sant’Agata intensified. He wrote to a friend, ‘I am insane to go home … I have a ferocious desire to return to my house.’ Yet there is no evidence he returned to Italy at any point, for however short a time.
This was, yet again, to be an opera unlike any of his previous works – for the simple reason that opera in Paris made different demands on a composer. There, it was customary for an opera to be long – as many as four or five acts – with huge crowd scenes and an obligatory ballet.
Given that his previous opera was the most intimate he had ever composed, this new one would inevitably prove a radical departure. That in itself was not as daunting for Verdi as it might have been for another composer. It seemed almost as though every opera he undertook stretched him in new directions.
The usual problems reared their heads: dissatisfaction with the libretto, constant demands on Verdi’s part for passages to be reworked and rewritten, problems with theatre management and frustration over the singers who were contracted to perform.
Only, in this case, it was frustration of a different kind. Rehearsals were well under way when the lead soprano, the German singer Sophie Cruvelli, suddenly disappeared. She simply vanished.
Verdi, surprisingly, found himself amused by this, and naturally used it as yet another reason to demand release from his contract. He wrote to Piave:
La Cruvelli has run off!! Where? The devil knows where. At first this news was like a kick in the crotch, but now I am laughing up my sleeve … This disappearance gives me the right to cancel my contract, and I did not let the occasion slip by. I formally demanded [my release].76
Cruvelli’s disappearance was a sensation. She was sought across Europe. Her apartment in Paris was put under lock and key, and her possessions confiscated. In London a new farce was staged, entitled Where’s Cruvelli?
The Paris Opéra was in a difficult position. If Verdi took the matter of his contract to court, he might win a case against them. A government minister, no less, came to negotiate with Verdi, offering him all sorts of emoluments on behalf of the Opéra, when, just as suddenly as she had disappeared, a month later La Cruvelli reappeared. She had, apparently, been on the Côte d’Azur with a certain Baron Vigier, a Parisian of immense fortune whom she was to marry a few months later.
The date for the premiere of Verdi’s new opera, now entitled Les vêpres siciliennes, was set for 13 June 1855. Problems pursued Verdi right up until opening night. No less a figure than the composer Hector Berlioz, a clear admirer of Verdi, wrote, ‘Verdi is at odds with all the Opéra people. Yesterday there was a terrible scene with him at the dress rehearsal. I feel for the poor fellow, for I put myself in his place. Verdi is a noble and honourable artist.’77
The opera, despite the vicissitudes that had dogged its creation, was a success, both with audiences and critics – all the more remarkable given the subject matter concerned an uprising of the people of Sicily against their French oppressors in the Middle Ages.
It ran for more than its allotted number of performances, which encouraged Verdi’s publisher Ricordi to have an Italian version prepared and put into production in Italy. Inevitably the Italian censors objected to the subject matter, and it was many years before I vespri siciliani was seen in Italy.
Given its reception in Paris, it is perhaps surprising that Les vêpres siciliennes never achieved the popularity of its famous predecessors, nor has it ever truly entered the repertory. Probably its sheer length and scale – a full five acts spanning several hours, as well as the complexity of the plot and demands made on the singers – was simply not what audiences expected from Verdi.¶
As for the composer himself, he was at least relieved that the little-lamented contract with the Paris Opéra was finally laid to rest, and he could move on, both professionally and personally.
It was time, at last, to return home. On New Year’s Eve 1855, Verdi and Giuseppina, and Muzio, saw in the New Year in the familiar surroundings of Sant’Agata.
* See Afterword for the banana tree that still thrives today (page 260).
† Servadio speculates that Verdi might have had an earlier affair with the woman, and that the tone of his rebuke suggests it was dictated by Giuseppina.
‡ Several dishes were named after him, including the best known, Tournedos Rossini, fillet steak topped with foie gras.
§ Note Rossini’s use of the word ‘wife’.
¶ Not until as recently as October 2013 was the full version staged for the first time at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and even then the ballet was dropped. Reception was mixed.