CHAPTER XIII
VERDI AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES

I

One can hardly imagine the art of music being what it is to-day without Bach or Mozart or Beethoven, without Monteverdi or Gluck or Wagner. It has been said that great men sum up an epoch and inaugurate one. Janus-like, they look at once behind and before, with glances that survey comprehensively all that is past and pierce prophetically the dim mists of the future. Unmistakably they point the way to the seekers of new paths; down through the ages rings the echo of their guiding voice in the ears of those who follow. So much is this so that the world has come to measure a man’s greatness by the extent of his influence on succeeding generations. The test has been applied to Wagner and stamps him unequivocally as one of the great; but a rigid application of the same test would seem to exclude from the immortal ranks the commanding figure of his distinguished contemporary, Giuseppe Verdi.

Yet, while it is still perhaps too early to ascertain Verdi’s ultimate place in musical history, there are few to-day who would deny to him the title of great. Undoubtedly he is the most prominent figure in Italian music since Palestrina. The musical history of his country for half a century is almost exclusively the narrative of his remarkable individual achievement. Nevertheless, when he passed away, leaving to an admiring world a splendid record of artistic accomplishment, there remained on the musical soil of Italy no appreciable traces of his passage. He founded no school; he left no disciples, no imitators. Of all the younger Italians who aspired to inherit his honored mantle there is not one in whom we can point to any specific signs of his influence. Even his close friend and collaborator, Boïto, was drawn from his side by the compelling magnetism of the creator of Tristan. Some influence, of course, must inevitably have emanated from him; but it was no greater apparently than that exercised even by mediocre artistic personalities upon those with whom they come immediately in contact. It is curious to note, in contrast, the influence on the younger Italians of Ponchielli, a lesser genius, and one is inclined to wonder why ‘the noblest Roman of them all’ inspired no one to follow in his footsteps.

The reason, however, is not far to seek. Verdi was no innovator, no explorer of fresh fields. He had not the passionate desire that Wagner had for a new and more adequate form of expression. The fierce contempt for conventional limitations so common to genius in all ages was unknown to him. Verdi was temperamentally the most bourgeois of great artists. He was conservative, prudent, practical, and self-contained. The appearance of eccentricity was distasteful to him. He had a proper respect for established traditions and no ambition to overturn them. The art forms he inherited appeared to him quite adequate to his purposes, and in the beginning of his career he seems to have had no greater desire than to imitate the dramatic successes of Rossini, Mercadante, and Bellini. His growth was perfectly natural, spontaneous, unconscious. He towered above his predecessors because he was altogether a bigger man—more intelligent, more intense, more sincere, and more vital. He was not conscious of the need for a more logical art form than the Italian opera of his time, and unquestioningly he poured his inspiration into the conventional molds; but as time went on his sure dramatic instinct unconsciously shaped these into a vehicle suitable to the expression of his genius. It thus became the real mission of Verdi to develop and synthesize into a homogeneous art form the various contradictory musical and dramatic influences to which he fell heir; and, having done that, his work was finished, nor was there anything left for another to add.

The influences which Verdi inherited were sufficiently complex. The ideals of Gluck and Mozart were strangely diluted by Rossini with the inanities of the concert-opera school, of which Sacchini, Paesiello, Jommelli, and Cimarosa were leading exponents. Il Barbiere, it is true, is refreshingly Mozartian and Tell is infused with the romantic spirit of Weber and Auber; but even these are not entirely free from the vapidity of the Neapolitans. With Rossini’s followers, Bellini, Donizetti, and Mercadante, Italian opera shows retrogression rather than advance, though Norma is obviously inspired by Tell and La Favorita is not lacking in traces of Meyerbeer. The truth is that Italian opera during the first few decades of the nineteenth century was suffering from an epidemic of anæmia. It was not devoid of spontaneity, of inspiration, of facile grace; but it was languid and lackadaisical; it was like the drooping society belle of the period, with her hothouse pallor, her tight corsets and fainting spells and smelling salts. To save it from degenerating into imbecility there was necessary the advent of an unsophisticated personality dowered with robust sincerity, with full-blooded force and virility. And fortunately just such a savior appeared in the person of Giuseppe Verdi.

The career of Verdi is in many ways the most remarkable in musical history. None other covers such an extended period of productive activity; none other shows such a very gradual and constant development; none other delayed so long its full fruition. Had Verdi died or stopped writing at the same age as did Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, or Schumann—to mention only a few—his name would be to us merely that of a delightful melodist whose genius reached its fullest expression in Rigoletto and the Traviata. He would rank perhaps with Rossini and Donizetti—certainly not higher. But at an age which is usually considered beyond the limit of actual achievement he gave to the world the crowning masterpieces which as far surpass the creations of his prime as Tristan and Die Meistersinger surpass Das Liebesverbot and Rienzi.

II

Giuseppe Fortunino Verdi was born on October 10, 1813, in the little village of Le Roncole, about three miles from Busseto. His parents were Carlo Verdi and Luigia Utini, peasants and innkeepers of Le Roncole.

Happily, the narrative of Verdi’s early years is comparatively free from the wealth of strange and wonderful legends that cluster like barnacles around the childhood of nearly every genius. There was something exceptional, however, in the sympathetic readiness with which the untutored innkeeper encouraged his son’s taste for music by the gift of a spinet and in the eager assiduity with which the child devoted himself to the instrument. In encouraging his son’s taste for music it was the far-fetched dream of Carlo Verdi that the boy might some day become organist of the church of Le Roncole. At the age of eleven Verdi justified his father’s hopes. Meantime he went to school at Busseto and subsequently became an office boy in the wholesale grocery house of one Antonio Barezzi.

Barezzi was a cultivated man. He played with skill upon the flute, clarinet, French horn, and ophicleide, and he was president of the local Philharmonic Society, which held its meetings and rehearsals at his house. There Verdi’s talent was recognized by the conductor Provesi, who after a few years put the young man in his place as conductor of the Philharmonic Society and frequently used him as his substitute at the organ of the cathedral.

Eventually, however, Verdi exhausted the musical possibilities of Busseto, and his loyal friends, Barezzi and Provesi, decided that he should go to Milan. Through the influence of Barezzi he was awarded one of the bursaries of the Monte di Pietà,[120] and, as this was not sufficient to cover all his expenses, the good Barezzi advanced him money out of his own pocket.

Verdi arrived in Milan in June, 1832, and at once made application in writing for admission as a paying pupil at the Conservatory. He also went through what he afterward called ‘a sort of examination.’ One learns without surprise that he was not admitted. The reason for his rejection is one of those profound academic secrets about which the world is perfectly unconcerned. He was simply advised by Provesi’s friend, Rolla, a master at the Conservatory, to choose a teacher in the town, and accordingly he chose Vincenzo Lavigna. With him Verdi made rapid progress and gained a valuable practical familiarity with the technique of dramatic composition. From this period date many forgotten compositions, including pianoforte pieces, marches, overtures, serenades, cantatas, a Stabat Mater and other efforts. Some of these were written for the Philharmonic Society of Busseto and some were performed at La Scala at the benefit concerts for the Pio Istituto Teatrale. Several of them were utilized by Verdi in the scores of his earlier operas.

From 1833-36 Verdi was maestro di musica of Busseto. During that time he wrote a large amount of church music, besides marches for the banda (town band) and overtures for the orchestra of the Philharmonic. Except as preparatory exercises, none of these has any particular value. The most important event of those three years was Verdi’s marriage to Margarita Barezzi, daughter of the enlightened grocer who so ably deputized Providence in shaping the great composer’s career. This marriage seems to have kindled a new ambition in Verdi, and as soon as the conditions of his contract with the municipality of Busseto were fulfilled he returned to Milan, taking with him his wife, two young children and the completed score of a musical melodrama, entitled Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, of which he had copied all the parts, both vocal and instrumental, with his own hand.

Verdi returned to Milan under most promising auspices, having already attracted the favorable notice of some of the leading social and artistic factors of that musical city. A few years before, when he was studying in Milan, there existed a society of rich musical dilettanti, called the Società Filodrammatica, which included such exalted personages as Count Renato Borromeo, the Duke Visconti, and Count Pompeo Belgiojoso, and was directed by a maestro named Masini. The society held weekly artistic meetings in the hall of the Teatro Filodrammatico, which it owned, and, at the time we speak of, was engaged in preparing Haydn’s ‘Creation’ for performance. Verdi distinguished himself by conducting the performance of that work, in place of the absent maestri. Soon afterward Count Borromeo commissioned Verdi to write the music for a cantata for voice and orchestra on the occasion of the marriage of some member of his family, and this commission was followed by an invitation to write an opera for the Philodramatic Theatre. The libretto furnished by Masini was altered by Temistocle Solera—a very remarkable young poet, with whom Verdi had cultivated a close friendship—and became Oberto di San Bonifacio.

III

This was the opera with which Verdi landed in Milan in 1838. Masini, unfortunately, was no longer director of the Philodramatic Theatre, but he promised to obtain for Oberto a representation at La Scala. In this he was assured the support of Count Borromeo and other influential members of the Philodramatic, but, beyond a few commonplace words of recommendation—as Verdi afterward remarked—the noble gentlemen did not exert themselves. Masini, however, succeeded in making arrangements to have Oberto produced in the spring of 1839. The illness of one of the principal singers set all his plans awry; but Bartolomeo Merelli, who was then impresario of La Scala, was so much impressed with the possibilities of the opera that he decided to put it on at his own expense, agreeing to divide with Verdi whatever price the latter might realize from the sale of the score.[121] Oberto was produced on the seventeenth of November, 1839, and met with a modest success. Merelli then commissioned Verdi to write within two years three operas which were to be produced at La Scala or at the Imperial Theatre of Vienna. None of the librettos supplied by Merelli appealed to Verdi; but finally he chose what appeared to him the best of a bad lot. This was a work in the comic vein, called Il Finto Stanislao and renamed by Verdi Un Giorno di Regno.

It was the supreme irony of fate that set Verdi just then to the composition of a comic opera. Poverty, sickness, and death in rapid succession darkened that period of his life. Between April and June, 1840, he lost, one after the other, his baby boy, his little girl, and his beloved wife. And he was supposed to write a comic opera! Un Giorno di Regno naturally did not succeed, and, feeling thoroughly disheartened by his successive misfortunes, Verdi resolved to abandon a musical career. From this slough of despond he was finally drawn some months later by the attraction of a libretto, written by his friend Solera, which Merelli had succeeded in inducing him to read. It was Nabucco.[122]

The opera Nabucco was finished in the fall of 1841 and was produced at La Scala on March 9, 1842. Its success was unprecedented. The first performance was attended by scenes of the wildest and most fervent enthusiasm. So unusually vociferous was the demonstration, even for an Italian theatre, that Verdi at first thought the audience was making fun of him. Nabucco, however, was a real sensation. It had a dramatic fire and energy, a massiveness of treatment, a richness of orchestral and choral color that were new to the Italians. The chorus of the Scala had to be specially augmented to achieve its magnificent effects. Somewhat crude it was, no doubt, but it possessed life and force—qualities of which the Italian stage was then sorely in need. One is amused at this date to read the complaints of an eminent English critic—Henry Fothergill Chorley of the Athenæeum, to wit—touching its noisiness, its ‘immoderate employment of brass instruments,’ and its lack of melody. Familiar charges! To the Italians Nabucco was the ideal of what a tragic music drama should be, and certainly it approached that ideal more nearly than any opera that had appeared in years.[123]

The great success of Nabucco placed Verdi at once on an equal footing with Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, Ricci, and the other musical idols of contemporary Italy. The management of La Scala commissioned him to write the opera d’obbligo[124] for the grand season of the Carnival, and Merelli gave him a blank contract to sign upon his own terms. Verdi’s demands were sufficiently moderate, and within eleven months he had handed to the management of La Scala the completed score of a new opera, I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata.

With I Lombardi began Verdi’s long and troublesome experience with the Austrian censorship. The time was almost ripe for the political awakening of Lombardo-Venetia, and some of the patriotic feeling which Verdi, consciously or unconsciously, expressed in Nabucco had touched an answering chord in the spirit of the Milanese which was partly responsible for the enthusiasm with which the opera was received. Such demonstrations were little to the taste of the Austrians, and when I Lombardi was announced they were prepared to edit it into complete political innocuousness. Accordingly, in response to an ill-tempered letter from Cardinal Gaisruk, Archbishop of Milan, drawing attention to the supposed presence in I Lombardi of several objectionable and sacrilegious incidents, the director of police, Torresani, notified the management of La Scala that the opera could not be produced without important changes. After much discussion Torresani finally announced that, as he was ‘never a person to cut the wings of a young artist,’ the opera might go on provided the words Salve Maria were substituted for Ave Maria.[125]

I Lombardi was produced in February, 1843, and met with a reception rivalling that which greeted Nabucco. As in the case of the latter opera a certain amount of this excitement was political—the audiences reading into many of the passages a patriotic meaning which may or may not have been intended. The chorus, O Signore, dal tetto natio, was the signal for a tremendous demonstration similar to that which had been aroused by the words, O, mia patria, si bella e perduta in Nabucco. Additional political significance was lent to the occasion by the interference of the police to prevent the repetition of the quintet. In truth, Verdi owed much of his extraordinary success of his early operas to his lucky coincidence with the awakening patriotic and revolutionary sentiment of the Italian people. He put into fervent, blood-stirring music the thoughts and aspirations which they dared not as yet express in words and deeds. We cannot believe that he did this altogether unconsciously, for he was much too near the soil and the hearts of the people of Italy not to feel with them and in a measure express them. Indeed, as he himself acknowledged, it was among the common people that his work first met with sympathy and understanding.

After the success of I Lombardi Verdi was beset with requests for a new work from all the leading opera houses in Italy. He finally made a contract with the Fenice in Venice and chose for his subject Victor Hugo’s drama Ernani, from which a mediocre libretto was arranged at his request by a mediocre poet named Francesco Maria Piave. The subject appealed strongly to Verdi and resulted in a score that was a decided advance on Nabucco and I Lombardi. It brought Verdi again into collision with the Austrian police, who insisted on certain modifications; but, in spite of careful censorship, it still furnished an opportunity for patriotic demonstrations on the part of the Venetians, who read a political significance into the chorus, Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia. Under the circumstances one cannot say to what extent, if any, the artistic appeal of Ernani was responsible for the enthusiasm which greeted its première at La Fenice on March 9, 1844. Some of the other Italian cities—notably Florence—received it coolly enough; but, on the whole it was very successful in Italy. Abroad the impression it produced was less favorable. It was the first Verdi opera to be given in London, where Lumley opened the season of 1845 with it at Her Majesty’s Theatre. The manner of its reception may be described in the words of a contemporary wag, who declared after the performance: ‘Well, the “I don’t knows” have it.’ In Paris it was presented at the Théâtre Italien, in January, 1846, but, owing to the excusably strenuous objections of Victor Hugo, its name was changed to Il Proscritto and the name of its characters were also altered. Hugo did not admire Piave’s version of his drama; neither did it succeed with the Parisian public.

Verdi’s next effort was I due Foscari, a long-winded melodrama constructed by Piave, which was produced in 1844, and received without enthusiasm. Its merit is far below that of its three immediate predecessors; nor was its successor, Giovanna d’Arco, of much more value, though it had the advantage of a good poem written by Solera. Giovanna d’Arco was followed, respectively, by Alzira and Attila, neither of which attained or deserved much success. Great enthusiasm, it is true, marked the reception of Attila in Italy, but it is attributable almost solely to the susceptible patriotic fervor of the people, who were aroused to almost frantic demonstrations by such lines as Avrai tu l’universo, resti l’Italia me. In London Attila attracted to the box-office the magnificent sum of forty dollars, though in Paris a fragment of the work produced what was described as ‘a startling effect,’ through the medium of the statuesque Sophie Cruvelli.[126]

Yet during all this time Verdi was advancing, as it were, under cover. His failures were not the result of any decline in his powers. They showed no loss of the vigor and vitality that gave life to Nabucco, I Lombardi, and Ernani. Simply, they were less felicitous, but no less the crude and forceful efforts of a strong man not yet trained to the effective use of his own strength. Some of their defects, too, were no doubt due to the poverty of the libretti, for Verdi was essentially a dramatic genius, dependent for inspiration largely upon the situations with which he was supplied. Certainly the quality of his works seems to vary precisely with the quality of their libretti. Thus, Macbeth, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, made by Piave, proved a distinct advance on its immediate predecessor, Attila—even though Piave did not improve on Shakespeare. It was produced at La Pergola, Florence, on March 14, 1847, with complete success. Like so many other Verdi operas, ‘Macbeth’ provided an excuse for patriotic demonstrations, and in Venice the Austrian soldiery had to be summoned to quell the riotous and seditious excitement aroused by Palma’s singing of the verse:

‘Macbeth’ was followed by I Masnadieri, which was written for the stage of Her Majesty’s Theatre, London. It was originally intended that Verdi should write an opera for the English stage on the subject of King Lear, and it is to be regretted that circumstances prevented him from carrying out his project, for he seems to have found a special inspiration in the Shakespearean drama. The libretto of I Masnadieri was written by Andrea Maffei, but that excellent poet had the bad judgment to single out for treatment Die Räuber of Schiller, which had already been shamefully mauled and mangled by other librettists. It was a complete failure in London, where Verdi himself conducted it; it also was a complete failure everywhere else.

Notwithstanding this Verdi was offered the post of chef d’orchestre at Her Majesty’s Theatre, but had to refuse because of contract engagements. His next two operas were mere hack work—Il Corsaro and La Battaglia di Legnano. The latter, being a deliberate attempt to dramatize a revolution rather than to express the feelings that underlie revolutions, was an artistic failure.

IV

With Luisa Miller begins what is usually known as Verdi’s second period—the period in which he shook himself free from the grandiose bombast, from which none of his earlier works is entirely free. In this so-called second period he becomes more restrained, more coherent, more net; he leans somewhat more to the suave cantabile of Bellini and Donizetti, a little more—if the truth be told—to the trite and mawkish. Cammarano fashioned the libretto of Luisa Miller from Schiller’s immature Kabale und Liebe. It was a moderately good libretto and moderately good, perhaps, sufficiently describes the music which Verdi wrote to it. Stiffelio, a work of little merit, with a poem by Piave, was the next product of Verdi’s second manner. It was given without success at the Grand Theatre, Trieste, in November, 1850.

After Stiffelio, however, there came in rapid succession from Verdi’s pen three works whose enormous success consummated his fame and whose melodiousness has since reëchoed continuously from every opera stage and street organ in the universe. When Stiffelio was produced he was under contract with the impresario Lasina to write an opera for the Fenice of Venice. At his request Piave again made free with Victor Hugo, choosing this time the unsavory melodrama, Le roi s’amuse, which he adopted under the title of La Maledizione. When the Italian police got wind of the project, however, there was serious trouble. Le roi s’amuse contains some implied animadversions on the morals of royalty, and the censorship absolutely forbade the appearance in Italy of such an iniquitous trifling with a sacrosanct subject. Verdi, who possessed a generous share of obstinacy, refused to write an opera on any other subject, to the despair of the Fenice management who had promised the Venetians a new opera by the illustrious maestro. A way out of the impasse was finally found by a commissary of police named Martello, who advised some substitution in the names of the characters—such as the duke of Mantua for the king—and also suggested the title Rigoletto, Buffone di Corte. These suggestions proved acceptable to Verdi and within forty days the score of Rigoletto was written and orchestrated from first note to last. Its première, on March 11, 1851, was an unqualified success. The too famous canzone, ‘La donna e mobile,’ caused a sensation which was so accurately foreseen by the composer that he would not put it to paper until a few hours before the performance. Rigoletto was presented at the Italian Opera, Covent Garden, London, in the season of 1853 and at the Théâtre Italien, Paris, on January 17, 1857. Its London reception was very cordial.

Certainly Rigoletto marks a decided advance on its predecessors. It is simpler in design, more economical of material, more logically developed and dramatically more legitimate—notwithstanding such puerilities as Gilda’s eccentric and irrelevant aria in the garden scene. There are present also signs which seem to indicate the influence of Meyerbeer; but it is difficult to trace specific influences in the work of a man of such absorbing individuality as Verdi.

After Rigoletto came Il Trovatore, which was produced at the Apollo Theatre, Rome, on January 19, 1853, and was received with extraordinary enthusiasm. From Rome it spread like wildfire throughout Italy, everywhere achieving an overwhelming success. In Naples three houses gave the opera at about the same time. Soon all the capitals in Europe were humming its ingratiating melodies. Paris saw it at the Théâtre Italien in December, 1854; London at Covent Garden in May, 1855—even Germany extended to it a warm and smiling welcome. Truly, Il Trovatore is, to an extent, unique in operatic annals. It probably enjoys the distinction of being the most popular and least intelligible opera ever written. The rambling and inchoate libretto was made by Cammarano from El Trovador of the Spanish dramatist, Antonio Garcia Gultierez, and nobody has ever lived who could give a succinct and lucid exposition of its story. For that reason probably the work as a whole is such as to deserve the name of ‘a concert in costume,’ which someone has aptly applied to it. Verdi could not possibly have woven a dramatic score of consistent texture round such a literary nightmare. What he did do was to write a number of very pleasing solos, duets, and trios, together with some theatrical and ingratiating orchestral music. Anyone inclined to question the theatricalism of the score may be interested in comparing the ‘Anvil Chorus’ of Il Trovatore with the ‘Forging of the Sword’ episode in Siegfried. Still, one cannot deny distinct merit to a work which has held a place in the affections of millions of people for more than half a century. Its amazing popularity when it first spread contagiously over Europe aroused a storm of critical comment which reads amusingly at this day. In the eyes of Verdi’s enthusiastic protagonists Il Trovatore naturally marked the zenith of operatic achievement, while his antagonists placed it unequivocally at the nadir of uninspired and commonplace triviality.

La Traviata sounds like a feminine counterpart of Il Trovatore, which it followed and with which it has been so often associated on operatic bills. The two works, however, are drawn from widely different sources and are about as dissimilar in every way as any other two operas of Verdi which might be mentioned. Piave made the libretto of La Traviata from La Dame aux Camélias of Alexandre Dumas, fils. The subject does not appear to be an ideal one for musical treatment; but it is of a style which seems to have a peculiar appeal to composers, as witness Bohème, Sappho, Manon, and many others. One is inclined to award to the Traviata a very high place among Verdi’s works. It stands alone among them, absolutely different in style and manner from anything else he has done. There is in it a simplicity, a sparkle, a grace, a feminine daintiness, an enticing languor, a spirit quite thoroughly Gallic, suggesting, as Barevi has observed, the style of the opéra comique (cf. Chap. I). La Traviata, produced at Venice in 1853, was a flat failure, partly owing to the general incapacity of the cast; about a year later, with some changes, it was reproduced in Venice and proved a brilliant success.

Two years of silence followed La Traviata. During that time Verdi was engaged on a work which the management of the Paris Opera—passing over Auber, Berlioz, and Halévy—had commissioned him to write for the Universal Exhibition of 1855. The libretto was made by Scribe and Duveyrier and dealt with the sanguinary episode of the French-Italian war of 1282, known as the Sicilian Vespers—a peculiar subject to select under the circumstances. After an amount of delay, caused by the eccentric disappearance of the beautiful Sophie Cruvelli, idol of contemporary Paris, Les Vêpres Siciliennes was produced at the Opéra in 1855. It was received with great enthusiasm, but did not outlive the popularity of its first prima donna. It was followed by Simon Boccanegra, composed to a poem adapted by Piave from Schiller’s Fieschi, which, produced at the Fenice, Venice, in 1857, with little success, was later revised by that excellent poet, Arrigo Boïto, and, with the music recast by Verdi, was received at La Scala, Milan, in 1881 with distinct favor.

Verdi’s next opera, Un Ballo in Maschera, has a peculiar history, turning on the curious interaction of art and politics which is such a feature of Verdi’s career. It was adapted from the ‘Gustave III’ of Scribe, which Auber had already set to music for the Paris Opera, and was at first entitled La Vendetta in Domino. Written for the San Carlo Theatre, Naples, it was about to be put into rehearsal when word arrived of the attempted assassination of Napoleon III by Orsini. The Italian police, morbidly sensitive in such matters, at once forbade the representation of Un Ballo in Maschera without radical modifications, and Verdi, with his customary obstinacy, emphatically refused to make any alteration whatsoever. Even when the San Carlo management instituted a civil action against him for two hundred thousand francs Verdi declined to budge. He was openly supported in his attitude by the entire population of Naples, which greeted his appearance everywhere with enthusiastic shouts of Viva Verdi!. Eventually, feeling that the affair would create a revolution on its own account, the authorities requested Verdi to take himself and his opera out of Naples. The opera was then secured by Jacovacci, the famous impresario of the Apollo Theatre in Rome, who swore he would present it in that city at any cost. ‘I shall arrange with the censure, with the cardinal-governor, with St. Peter if necessary,’ he said. ‘Within a week, my dear maestro, you shall have the libretto, with all the visas and all the buon per la scena possible.’ Nevertheless the papal government did not prove so tractable, and, before Un Ballo in Maschera could appear in Rome the scene of the action had to be shifted from Sweden to America and the character of Gustave III transmogrified into the Earl of Warwick, Governor of Boston! Indifferent to historic accuracy, however, Rome received the opera with enthusiasm, when it was produced in February, 1859. Upon the occasion of its presentation at the Théâtre Italien, Paris, on January 13, 1861, the scene was shifted to the kingdom of Naples—where it still remains—because Mario refused to wear the costume of a New England Puritan at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Un Ballo in Maschera was given in London in 1861 and was received very cordially.

It is, in effect, one of the most mature works of Verdi’s second manner. Still more mature and suggestive of what was to come is La Forza del Destino, which was written for the Imperial Theatre of St. Petersburg, and was produced there on November 10, 1862, encountering merely a succès d’estime. Repellantly gloomy and gruesome is the story of La Forza del Destino, adapted by Piave from Don Alvar, a tragedy in the exaggerated French romantic vein by Don Angel de Saavedra. The oppressive libretto perhaps accounted in large measure for the lack of success which attended the opera, not only in St. Petersburg, but in Milan, where it was produced at La Scala in 1869, and in Paris where the Théâtre Italien staged it in 1876. Yet La Forza del Destino contains some of the most powerful, passionate and poignant music that Verdi ever wrote, and one can see in it more clearly than in any of his other works suggestions of that complete maturity of genius which was to blossom forth in Aïda, Otello, and Falstaff.[127]

Notwithstanding the indifferent reception accorded Les Vêpres Siciliennes in Paris, the management of the opera again approached Verdi when a new gala piece was needed for the Universal Exhibition of 1866. The opera management was singularly unfortunate in its experience with Verdi. For this occasion the composer was supplied by Méry and Camille du Locle with an indifferent libretto called Don Carlos, and he was unable to rise above its level.

V

Don Carlos, however, was but the darkness before the dawn of a new period more brilliant and glorious than was dreamed of even by those of Verdi’s admirers who did him highest reverence. At that time Wagner had not yet come into his own, and, in the eyes of the world at large Verdi stood absolutely without peer among living composers. Consequently, when Ismaïl Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, wished to add lustre to the beautiful opera houses he had built in Cairo he could think of nothing more desirable for the purpose than a new work from the pen of the great Italian. That nothing might be wanting to make such an event a memorable triumph, Mariette Bey, the distinguished French Egyptologist, sketched out, as a subject for the proposed work, a stirring, colorful story, recalling vividly the picturesque glories of ancient Egypt. This story set fire to Verdi’s imagination. Under his direction a libretto in French prose was made from Mariette’s sketch by Camille du Locle and done into Italian verse by A. Ghislanzoni. So ardently did Verdi become enamoured of the work that within a few months he had handed to Ismaïl Pasha the completed score of Aïda. The opera was to be performed at the end of 1870, but owing to a number of causes—including the imprisonment of the scenery within the walls of Paris by the besieging Germans—its performance was delayed for a year. It was finally given on December 24, 1871, before a brilliant cosmopolitan audience and amid scenes of the most intense enthusiasm.[128] The success of Aïda was overwhelming; nor was it due, as in the case of so many other Verdi operas, to causes extraneous to the work itself. Milan, which heard Aïda on February 7, 1872, received it with an applause which rivalled in spontaneous fervor the enthusiasm of Cairo, and the verdict of Milan has been emphatically endorsed by every important opera house in the world. Within three years, beginning on April 22, 1876, the Théâtre Italien presented it sixty-eight times to appreciative Parisian audiences, and later, at the Opéra, its reception was still enthusiastic. England, hitherto characteristically somewhat cold to Verdi, greeted Aïda warmly when it was given at Covent Garden in 1876, and bestowed upon the work the full measure of its critical approval.