Si ridesti il leon

Speranza

Verdi, "Ernani"


Role -- Voice type -- Premiere Cast, 9 March 1844[3]
(Conductor: - Gaetano Mares)
Ernani, the bandittenorCarlo Guasco
Don Carlo, later Charles V, Holy Roman EmperorbaritoneAntonio Superchi
Don Ruy Gomez de SilvabassAntonio Selva
Elvira, his niece and fiancéesopranoSophie Loewe
Giovanna, her nursesopranoLaura Saini
Don Riccardo, Don Carlo's equerrytenorGiovanni Lanner
Jago, Don Ruy's equerrybassAndrea Bellini
Rebels, brigands, attendants, knights, servant, nobles, ladies - Chorus
Ernani, Don Giovanni di Aragona, il bandito (tenore)
Carlo, re di Spagna (baritono)
Elvira, nipote e fidanzata di Don Ruy Gomez (soprano)
Don Ruy Gomez de Silva, grande di Spagna (basso)
Giovanna, nutrice di Elvira (soprano)
don Riccardo, scudiero del re (tenore)
Jago, scudiero di Don Ruy Gomez (basso)
Banditi, Cavalieri, Vassalli, Cortigiani, Principi elettori, Paggi e Dame di corte.

Year Cast
(Ernani, Elvira, Don Carlo, Silva) Conductor,
Opera House and Orchestra Label[5]
1930 Antonio Melandri,
Iva Pacetti,
Gino Vanelli,
Corrado Zambelli Lorenzo Molajoli,
Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano 78 rpm: Columbia GQX 10069-10073
LP: Cat: 4407
1950 Gino Penno,
Caterina Mancini,
Giuseppe Taddei,
Giacomo Vaghi Fernando Previtali,
Orchestra Sinfonica e Coro di Roma della Rai Audio CD: Warner Fonit
Cat: 8573 82650-2
1957 Mario del Monaco,
Anita Cerquetti,
Ettore Bastianini
Boris Christoff Dimitri Mitropoulos,
Orchestra e Coro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Audio CD: Hr 4400
Cat: HR 4400/01
1967 Carlo Bergonzi,
Leontyne Price,
Mario Sereni,
Ezio Flagello Thomas Schippers,
RCA Italiana Opera Chorus and Orchestra Audio CD: RCA Victor
Cat: GD 86503 (UK); 6503-2 (USA)
1969 Plácido Domingo
Raina Kabaivanska
Carlo Meliciani
Nicolai Ghiaurov Antonino Votto,
Teatro alla Scala Orchestra and Chorus Audio CD: Opera D'Oro
Cat: ODO 1468
1983 Luciano Pavarotti
Leona Mitchell
Sherrill Milnes
Ruggero Raimondi James Levine,
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
(Recorded live on 12 and 17 December)[6] DVD: Pioneer Classics
Cat: PC-99-102-D
1983 Plácido Domingo
Mirella Freni
Renato Bruson
Nicolai Ghiaurov Riccardo Muti,
Teatro alla Scala Orchestra and Chorus
(Production by Luca Ronconi)
(Recording of a performance in the Teatro alla Scala, 4 January) DVD: Kultur Video
Cat: D72913
1987 Luciano Pavarotti
Joan Sutherland
Leo Nucci
Paata Burchuladze Richard Bonynge,
Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera CD: Decca/London
2005 Marco Berti
Susan Neves
Carlo Guelfi
Giacomo Prestia Antonello Allemandi,
Teatro Regio di Parma
(Production by Pier' Alli, Video direction by Matteo Ricchetti)
(Audio and video recordings of a performance(s) May) DVD: Dynamic 33496
University of Chicago Critical Edition

Brani famosi
--> Come rugiada al cespite, Ernani
--> Si ridesti il leon di Castiglia, coro

Come rugiada al cespite - Cavatina
from Act I, Scene 1 of the Italian opera, Ernani by Giuseppe Verdi
Libretto : Francesco Maria Piave

Role : Ernani, a bandit
Voice Part : tenor Fach : spinto
Setting : A deserted area in the mountains of Saragossa, Spain, 1519
Range : G3 to A5. Tessitura : G3 to G4
Synopsis : Ernani discloses his love for Elvira to his bandits and says that if he cannot have her, he will not be able to continue living.
Sound file : none
Translation and/or Aria Text : Libretto originally entered by G. Christen from OperaGlass.
Recordings : Complete Opera Excerpts from Opera
Where to Find It : Score of opera - Classical Vocal Reprints, 1-800-298-7474. Catalog #50098 (Ricordi).


Recit.:

Mercè, diletti amici;
o tanto amor, mercè...
Udite or tutti del mio cor gli affanni;
e se voi negherete il vostro aiuto,
forse per sempre Ernani fia perduto...

Aria:

Come rugiada al cespite
d'un appassito fiore,
d'aragonese vergine
scendeami voce al core:
fu quello il primo palpito
d'amor che mi beò.
Il vecchio Silva stendere
osa su lei la mano...
domani trarla al talamo
confida l'inumano...
Ah, s'ella m'è tolta, ah misero!
d'affanno morirò!
Si rapisca...


---

Mercé, diletti amici…
Come rugiada al cespite…
Dell'esilio nel dolore
ERNANI

Mercé, diletti amici,
a tanto amor, mercé.
Udite or tutti del mio cor gli affanni;
e se voi negherete il vostra aiuto,
forse per sempre Ernani fia perduto.

Come rugiada al cespite
D’un appassito fiore,
D’aragonese vergine
Scendeami voce al core;
Fu quello il primo palpito,
il primo palpito
D’amor, d’amor che mi beò
Il vecchio Silva stendere
Osa su lei la mano
Domani trarla al talamo
Confida l’inumano.
Ah, s’ella m’è tolta, ahi, misero!
D’affanno morirò!
S’ella m’è tolta, ahi, misero!
D’affanno morirò!
D’affanno, d’affanno, d’affanno morirò!
D’affanno morirò!
D’affanno morirò!

Si rapisca ...

Sia rapita,
me in seguirci sarà ardita?

Me ‘l giurò.

Dunque verremo,
al castel ti seguiremo.
Quando notte il cielo copra
tu ne avrai compagni all'opra,
dagli sgherri d'un rivale
ti fia scudo ogni pugnale.
Vieni, Ernani, la tua bella
de' banditi fia la stella.
Saran premio al tuo valore
Saran premio al tuo valore
le dolcezze dell'amor dell'amor.
Saran premio al tuo valore
Saran premio al tuo valore
le dolcezze dell'amor dell'amor.
le dolcezze dell'amor
sì, dell'amor.
le dolcezze dell'amor
sì, dell'amor.
Saran premio al tuo valore
le dolcezze dell'amor.

Dell'esilio nel dolore
angiol fia, angiol fia consolator.

Oh tu che l'alma adora,
vien, vien, la mia vita infiora;
per noi d'ogni altro bene
il loco amor terrà, amor terrà.
Purché sul tuo bel viso
vegga brillar il riso,
gli stenti suoi, le pene
Ernani scorderà.
Oh, gli stenti suoi, le pene
Ernani scorderà.

Vieni, Ernani, la tua bella
de' banditi fia la stella.
Saran premio al tuo valore
le dolcezze dell'amor.
Saran premio al tuo valore
le dolcezze dell'amor.
Sì, le dolcezze dell'amor.

Oh tu che l'alma adora,
vien, vien, la mia vita infiora;
per noi d'ogni altro bene
il loco amor terrà, amor terrà.
Purché sul tuo bel viso
vegga brillar il riso,
gli stenti suoi, le pene
Ernani scorderà.
Oh, gli stenti suoi, le pene
Ernani, Ernani scorderà.

Ernani scorderà!…ecc.





Thank you, my dear friends,
thank you for your great affection.
Now all listen to the trouble in my heart
and if you will not help me,
perhaps Ernani will be lost forever.

Like dew
to a dying flower,
the voice of an Aragon maiden
touched my heart;
that was the first throb,
the first throb
of love, of love to bring me happiness.
Old Silva dared
to put his hands on her;
tomorrow the monster hopes
to drag her to the altar.
Oh, if she is taken from me, in misery
Of worry I shall die!
If she is taken from me, in misery
Of worry I shall die!
Of worry, of worry, of worry I shall die!
Of worry I shall die!
Of worry I shall die!

Let us abduct her …

She shall be abducted,
but will she dare to come with us?

She has sworn it to me.

Then we shall come,
we shall follow you to the castle.
When the sky turns dark you will have
companions for your adventure;
all our daggers will shield you
from your rival's ruffians.
Come, Ernani, let your beloved
be the bandits' lucky star.
The reward for your courage,
the reward for your courage
will be the delights of love, of love.
The reward for your courage,
the reward for your courage
will be the delights of love, of love.
It will be the delights of love,
yes, of love.
It will be the delights of love,
yes, of love.
The reward for your courage
will be the delights of love.

In the grief of exile
let her be my consoling angel.

Oh you, whom my heart adores,
come, fill my life with flowers;
love for us will take the place
of all other blessings.
If he can see
the laughter shining in your face,
then Ernani will forget
his troubles and his pain.
Oh, then Ernani will forget
his troubles and his pain.

Come, Ernani, let your beloved
be the bandits' lucky star.
The reward for your courage,
will be the delights of love.
The reward for your courage,
will be the delights of love.
Yes, the delights of love.

Oh you, whom my heart adores,
come, fill my life with flowers;
love for us will take the place
of all other blessings.
If he can see
the laughter shining in your face,
then Ernani will forget
his troubles and his pain.
Oh, then Ernani will forget
his troubles and his pain.

Ernani will forget!…etc.




Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia
e d'Iberia ogni monte, ogni lito
eco formi al tremendo ruggito,
come un dì contro i Mori oppressor.
Siamo tutti una sola famiglia,
pugnerem colle braccia, co' petti;
schiavi inulti più a lungo e negletti
non sarem finché vita abbia il cor.
Morte colga o n'arrida vittoria,
pugnerem, ed il sangue de' spenti
nuovo ardir ai figliuoli viventi,
forze nuove al pugnare darà.
Sorga alfine radiante di gloria,
sorga un giomo a brillare su noi...
sarà Iberia feconda d'eroi,
dal servaggio redenta sarà.

Becoming a Citizen: The Chorus in "Risorgimento" Operawww.jstor.org/stable/823791 - Traducir esta página
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16 A list is provided by Marcello Conati in his '"Ernani" di Verdi: le critiche del tempo. ..... In the standard Italian translation (disseminated by the music publisher Ricordi) ..... The four-strophe text that begins with the verse 'Si ridesti il Leon di. Castiglia' ['Let the Lion of Castille reawaken'] proclaims a brotherhood among ...





Numeri musicali [modifica] Atto I [modifica]1 Preludio
2 Introduzione
Coro Evviva!... beviamo (Ribelli e Banditi) Scena I-II
3 Recitativo e Cavatina di Ernani
Recitativo Ernani pensoso! - Mercé, diletti amici (Coro, Ernani) Scena II
Cavatina Come rugiada al cespite (Ernani) Scena II
Tempo di mezzo Si rapisca... (Ernani, Coro) Scena II
Cabaletta O tu, che l'alma adora (Ernani, Coro) Scena II
4 Cavatina di Elvira
Scena Surta è la notte (Elvira) Scena III
Cavatina Ernani!... Ernani, involami (Elvira) Scena III
Tempo di mezzo Quante d'Iberia giovani (Ancelle, Elvira) Scena IV
Cavatina Tutto sprezzo, che d'Ernani (Elvira, Ancelle) Scena IV
5 Scena, Duetto, Terzetto
Scena Fa' che a me venga... (Carlo, Giovanna, Elvira) Scena V-VI-VII
Duetto Da quel dì che t'ho veduta (Carlo, Elvira) Scena VII
Scena Non t'ascolto... mia sarai... (Carlo, Elvira, Ernani) Scena VII-VIII
Terzetto Tu se' Ernani!... mel dice lo sdegno (Carlo, Ernani, Elvira) Scena VIII
6 Finale I
Scena Che mai vegg'io! (Silva) Scena IX
Cavatina Infelice!... e tuo credevi (Silva) Scena IX
Tempo di mezzo L'offeso onor, signori (Silva) Scena IX
Cabaletta Infin che un brando vindice (Silva) Scena IX
Scena Uscite... - Ma, signore... (Silva, Ernani, Carlo, Jago, Riccardo, Elvira) Scena IX-X
Settimino Vedi come il buon vegliardo (Carlo, Riccardo, Silva, Ernani, Elvira, Jago, Giovanna, Coro) Scena X
Seguito del Finale I Mio signor, dolente io sono... (Silva, Carlo, Elvira, Ernani) Scena X
Stretta del Finale I Io tuo fido?... (Ernani, Elvira, Carlo, Silva, Riccardo, Giovanna, Jago, Coro) Scena X
Atto II [modifica]7 Introduzione
Coro Esultiamo!... Letizia ne innondi... (Coro) Scena I
8 Recitativo e Terzetto
Recitativo Jago, qui tosto il pellegrin adduci (Silva, Ernani, Elvira) Scena II-III
Terzetto Oro, quant'oro ogni avido (Ernani, Elvira, Silva) Scena III
Scena In queste mura ogn'ospite (Silva) Scena III
Duettino Tu perfida... Come fissarmi ardisci? (Ernani, Elvira) Scena IV
Seguito del Terzetto Scellerati, il mio furore (Silva, Jago, Ernani) Scena V-VI-VII
Stretta del Terzetto No, vendetta più tremenda (Silva, Ernani, Elvira) Scena VII
9 Gran Scena e Aria di Carlo
Gran Scena Cugino, a che munito (Carlo, Silva, Riccardo) Scena VIII
Aria Lo vedremo, veglio audace (Carlo, Silva) Scena IX
Tempo di mezzo Fu esplorata del castello (Coro, Carlo, Elvira, Silva) Scena X-XI
Cabaletta Vieni meco, sol di rose (Carlo, Elvira, Giovanna, Riccardo, Silva, Coro) Scena XI
10 Duetto di Ernani e Silva. Finale II
Scena Vigili pure il ciel sempre su te (Silva) Scena XII
Duetto Esci... a te... scegli... seguimi (Silva, Ernani) Scena XIII-XIV
Finale In arcion, in arcion cavalieri (Silva, Ernani, Cavalieri) Scena XIV
Atto III [modifica]11 Scena a Aria di Carlo
Scena È questo il loco?... (Carlo, Riccardo) Scena I
Recitativo Gran Dio! costor sui sepolcrali marmi (Carlo) Scena II
Aria Oh de' verd'anni miei (Carlo) Scena II
12 Congiura
Scena «Ad augusta!» - Chi va là? (Coro, Silva, Ernani, Jago) Scena III-IV
Inno Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia (Ernani, Jago, Silva, Coro) Scena IV
13 Finale III
Scena Qual rumore!! (Coro, Carlo, Riccardo, Ernani) Scena V-VI
Finale III Io son conte, duca sono (Ernani, Carlo, Elvira) Scena VI
Settimino O sommo Carlo (Carlo, Silva, Elvira, Ernani, Giovanna, Jago, Riccardo, Coro) Scena VI
Atto IV [modifica]14 Festa da Ballo
Coro Oh, come felici gioiscon gli sposi! (Coro) Scena I-II-III
15 Gran Scena e Terzetto finale
Gran Scena Cessaro i suoni, disparì ogni face (Ernani, Elvira, Silva) Scena IV-V
Terzetto Ferma, crudele, estinguere (Elvira, Silva, Ernani) Scena VI

Just as politics can be analysed as a cultural and symbolic enterprise (that is, as theatre in the broadest sense), so too can theatre or opera (in a narrower sense) be analysed as political.'

Jonathan Dollimore identifies various conflicting processes at work in Renaissance English theatre:

1. the 'consolidation' of power by a dominant order.
2. the 'subversion of that order'; and
3. the 'containment of ostensibly subversive pressures'.

2

We need not accept Dollimore's essentially Marxist analysis of these processes in order to recognise the validity of his assertion that 'the theatre [is] a prime location for the representation and legitimation of power'.3

But the way such power is consolidated, subverted or contained depends on the political and social systems in which the theatre operates.

The issues are complex enough when one focuses on plays produced in Elizabethan or Jacobean London.

They become even more difficult to sort out when single works or groups of related works are performed over a period of time in various locations, each with its own societal configuration, as in the different political entities that comprised the Italian peninsula during the first half of the nineteenth century (to which might be added the other European and even American audiences to which they were played).

Under such circumstances, how can we measure the political implications of these works?

Where does their meaning reside? How does that meaning change as a function of time or geography?

It is a commonplace of music history that in the choruses of nineteenth-century Italian opera, particularly those of Giuseppe Verdi, a people found its voice.

There is ample evidence that this perception was widespread among contemporaries.

In his Filosofia della musica of 1836, Giuseppe Mazzini, patriot, founder

----

A version of this paper was delivered at the Gauss seminar, The Theatre of Politics in Europe: 1789 and After, at Princeton University in the spring of 1989. Other versions were earlier presented at Reed College and Mount Holyoke College. I am grateful to Gabriel Dotto and Roger Parker for helpful readings and suggestions.
See his introduction to Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield, eds., Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism (Ithaca and London, 1985), 10.
Dollimore, 3.

---

Characteristic and important studies that emphasise this viewpoint are Raffaello Monterosso, La musica nel Risorgimento (Milan, 1948) and George Martin, 'Verdi and
the Risorgimento', in Aspects of Verdi (New York, 1988), 3-28. For an extended discussion of Verdi's use of the chorus in his early operas, see Markus Engelhardt, Die Chore in den friihen Opern Giuseppe Verdis (Tutzing, 1988).

--

of the secret society 'La Giovine Italia' (Young Italy), and leader of the shortlived
Roman republic of 1848-49, laid out a programme for the future of Italian
opera.

In it, he imagined that the chorus:

'a collective individuality [. . .] would,
like the people of whom it is a born interpreter, gain a life of its own, independent,
spontaneous'.5

Of what would such a chorus sing?

After the première of Verdi's Macbeth
in 1847, the poet Giuseppe Giusti urged the composer to avoid the 'fantastic'
genre, and instead to express with his notes 'that sweet sadness in which you
have shown you can achieve so much' ['quella dolce mestizia nella quale hai
dimostrato di poter tanto']. Giusti's message was precise:

The kind of pain that now fills the souls of us Italians is the pain of a people who
feel the need of a better fate; of one who has fallen and wishes to rise again; of one who repents, and awaits and wills his regeneration. Accompany, my Verdi, this lofty
and solemn pain with your noble harmonies; nourish it, fortify it, direct it to its goal.6


Far from being offended by this advice, Verdi promised to take Giusti's words
to heart.

The next year, during the 1848 revolution and at the request of Mazzini,'
he set to music (for male chorus) a patriotic poeril by Goffredo Mameli. In
his accompanying letter to Mazzini, Verdi wrote: 'May this hymn soon be
sung, along with the music of the cannon, in the Lombard plains'.8

All this is well known, and would scarcely bear repeating were it not that
recent historical and literary studies have suggested that the interactions between
works of art and their culture are more complex than such naive formulations
imagine.

Musical scholars have too often been content with, on the one hand,
formalistic or analytical studies that isolate the individual art work (or group
of works) within a cultural and historical vacuum, or, on the other hand, historical
narratives in which works of art are little more than exemplary detail^.^

Both kinds of studies remain valid within their self-imposed limits, but the
so-called 'New Historicism', particularly in the field of Renaissance English
literary studies, has suggested more vital and problematic ways in which works
of art determine and are determined by their historical, political and sociological
context.

As Jean Howard has put it:

---

Giuseppe Mazzini, Filosofia della musica, with an introduction by Adriano Lualdi (Rome
and Milan, 1954), 169. Mazzini actually couches his opinion in a rhetorical question, but
one that admits a single response:

'Or, perchi il coro, individualita collettiva, non otterrebbe
come il popolo di ch'esso e interprete nato, vita propria, indipendente, spontanea?'
Letter of 19 March 1847, printed in Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio, eds., I
copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi (Milan, 1913), 449-50: 'La specie di dolore che occupa ora
gli animi di noi Italiani, e il dolore d'una gente che si sente bisognosa di destini migliori;
e il dolore di chi e caduto e desidera rialzarsi; e il dolore di chi si pente e aspetta e vuole
la sua rigenerazione. Accompagna, Verdi mio, colle tue nobili armonie questo dolore alto
e solenne; fa di nutrirlo, di fortificarlo, d'indirizzarlo a1 suo scopo.' ' Verdi had met Mazzini in London in July 1847, during preparations for the premiere of
I masnadieri.
Letter of 18 October 1848, printed in I copialettere, 469: 'Possa quest'inno, fra la musica
del cannone, essere presto cantato nelle pianure lombarde'.
Foremost among the critics of traditional methodologies was, of course, Carl Dahlhaus.
See in particular his Foundations of Music History, trans. J . B. Robinson (Cambridge, 1983).
The chorus in Risorgimento opera 43


---


A major feature of a new historical criticism [. . .]must be a suspicion about an unproblematic
binarism between literature and history and a willingness to explore the ways
in which literature does more than reflect a context outside itself and instead constitutes
one of the creative forces of history. l o

In opera this interaction takes place in both literary and musical terms.

One
must resist the temptation to judge operatic meanings solely by a work's libretto,
a recurring problem with writings on opera by literary scholars or philosophers."
Nor must the words be undervalued, as they are in many technical
studies by musicologists.12 Scorn for Italian operatic librettos is unjustified on
several levels. First, the apparently artificial language of these librettos is hardly
unique to opera: indeed, the linguistic characteristics of Italian librettos and
of contemporary drama in Italy are highly similar.13 Second, the supposed
incomprehensibility of the text reflects more the singing styles of some of today's
divas - and the barn-like opera houses in which they ply their trade - than
it does the art form itself.14 Finally, even should individual words be difficult
to discern, they determine dramatic tone: singers who neglect words are often
singers who pay no attention to drama.

Nonetheless, opera communicates
primarily through the way its text is set to music.

It is the multiplicity of ways
such communication can be effected, subverted or rendered problematic that
concerns me here.

From 1815 through 1860 Italy, as always a geographical reality (bounded on
the north by the Alps and on all other sides by water), remained a political
fiction.

Each region had different rulers: Austrians in the north and northeast;
the House of Savoy in the northwest; the Bourbon dynasty in the south; the
Pope in Rome and. the Papal States; various Duchies br shbrt-lived Republics
in Tuscany, Parma and so on. Though actual boundaries within the peninsula
l 3 Jean E. Howard, 'The New Historicism in Renaissance Studies', in Arthur F. Kinney
and Dan S. Collins, eds., Renaissance Historicism (Amherst, 1987), 16.
Among recent books the problem is particularly manifest in Catherine Clement, Opera,
or the Undoing of Women, trans. Betsy Wing (Minneapolis, 1988). A beautiful and moving
book in its own way, it nonetheless assumes the extraordinary viewpoint that words,
librettos, plots are 'the forgotten part of opera' (12). But the situation is quite the opposite:
popular literature about opera focuses almost exclusively on these matters (though not
from the feminist viewpoint that informs Clement's analysis).

'* Have we really left behind the static periods of Lorenz's Das Geheimnzs der Form bei
Richard Wagner, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1924-33), only to throw ourselves head-long into the
Schenkerian voice-leading graphs of Matthew Brown, 'Isolde's Narrative: From
Hauptmotiv to Tonal Model', in Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker, eds., Analyzing
Opera: Verdi and Wagner (Berkeley, 1989), 180-201 ? Recent Wagnerian studies by Abbate
and Anthony Newcomb offer encouraging alternatives.
l 3 This point was made brilliantly by Piero Weiss in his article "'Sacred Bronzes":
Paralipomena to an Essay by Dallapiccola', Nineteenth-Century Mustc, 9 (1985), 42-9.
l 4 The complaint, however, does resonate throughout the history of opera: see the words
of Ludovico Antonio Muratori, from his 1706 treatise, Dellaperfettapoesia italtdno,
quoted in Enrico Fubini, Musica e cultura nel Settecento Europeo (Turin, 1986), 45-6.
44 Philip Gossett
underwent various changes during the Napoleonic period and its aftermath,
internal divisions and the foreign presence (particularly in the north) remained
a constant.

No less significant than the political and military battles fought in the quest
for Italian unity and statehood were fundamental cultural struggles, struggles
which have not ceased even today: the leaders of the Risorgimento sought to
encourage and nurture feelings that would give substance to a people, a citizenry
to live in that state. An important task was accomplished in literature: joined
indissolubly to the narrative qualities of Alessandro Manzoni's historical novel,
I promessi sposi, were the author's continuing efforts to recast his work in a
universal Italian shaped from the Florentine dialect, the principal literary and
cultivated language of the peninsula. l5

In another sense, Italy already had what was perceived to be a universal
idiom, the language of music, particularly Italian opera.

There were differences
and rivalries from one section to another, of course, and elements of so-called
'Neapolitan', 'Venetian' or 'Roman' schools can be identified in seventeenthand
eighteenth-century opera. Although a few differentiating characteristics
continued to exist even in the first half of the nineteenth century, many Italian
composers plied their trade from north to south, writing in one season for
Milan, in the next for Palermo. A successful opera such as Verdi's Ernani had
been given at over thirty Italian theatres within a year of its spectacularly
successful Venetian premiere on 9 March 1844. l6
Among the many developments in Italian opera between the 1810s, when
Rossini was hailed the 'Napoleon of music',17 and the Kingdom of Italy was
proclaimed in 1861 to the slogan 'Viva Verdi', an acronym for 'Viva Vittorio
Emanuele, Re d'ltalia', none is so culturally important as the change in the
conception of the chorus. In most eighteenth-century Italian opera, the chorus
was insignificant. Even early in the nineteenth century, choruses were decorative,
subsidiary, musically neutral, with a function analogous to the stage set. l8
'I know the value of a kindly chorus', sings Ralph Rackstraw in Gilbert
and Sullivan's HMSPinafore, and the choruses of Rossini and his contemporaries
were at first little but 'kindly': they hailed the approaching hero, wiped the
tears from the heroine's eyes, rejoiced at her good fortune.
l5 For a fascinating discussion of the various versions of Manzoni's novel and the circle in
which he worked, see the book by the distinguished Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg, La
famiglia Manzoni (Turin, 1983).

l6

A list is provided by Marcello Conati in his "'Ernani" di Verdi: le critiche del tempo.

Alcune considerazioni', in Ernani ieri e oggi: Atti del convegno internazionale di studi,
Modena, Teatro Sun Carlo, 9-10 dicembre 1984, published as Verdi: Bollettino dell'Istituto
di studi verdiani, 10 (1987), 207-72; see in particular 261-3.

I' The comparison is best known from the opening words of the Preface (dated 1823) to
Stendhal's Vie de Rossini, ed. V. del Litto (Lausarlne, 1960), 27: 'Depuis la mort de
NapolCon, il s'est trouvi un autre homme duquel on parle tous les jours a Moscou comme a Naples, a Londres comme a Vienne, a Paris comme a Calcutta' ['Since the death of Napoleon, another man has arisen who is spoken of every day from Moscow to Naples,
from London to Vienna, from Paris to Calcutta'].

l8 I owe that last, rather neat formulation to Roger Parker.

The chorus in Risorgimento opera 45

In his early operas, Rossini rarely assigned his most expressive music to the
chorus.

Indeed, choral movements are easily moved, without loss or gain, from
one opera to another. Sicilians celebrating the nuptials of Amenaide and Orbazzano
in Rossini's neo-classical Tancredi (Venice, Teatro La Fenice, 6 February
1813), derived from Voltaire, employ the same music (see Ex. 1) as feasting
Babylonians before the fiery handwriting appears on the wall, in his sacred
drama Ciro in Babilonia (Ferrara, Teatro Comunale, 14 [?I March 1812).
Ex. I
Tancredi, Coro di Nobili
Coro
. ,
A - mo - ri scen - de - te, scen - de - te o pia - ce - ri,
Ciro in Babilonia, Coro del Convito
Coro
In - tor - no fu - mi - no gl'a - ra - bi o - do - ri,
Ex. 1

It is not only that the music is generic in its expression: there is often selfborrowing
in Rossini's soloistic music without a sacrifice of expressivity. Rather,
the union of generic music and limited dramatic function results in a nameless
choral presence, a 'collective individuality' more aptly described as 'collective
anonymity', the situation Mazzini deplored.

Still, it was possible for a composer to subvert or at least render problematic
the ostensible content of this choral presence. The all-male chorus in Rossini's
L'Italiana in Algeri (Venice, Teatro San Benedetto, 22 May 1813) assumes
diverse roles: eunuchs in the Bey's seraglio, Algerian corsairs, Italian slaves.
The composer makes little effort to 'characterise' these groups through particular
melodic or even orchestral devices.19 Nor does the situation appear to change
when the heroine, Isabella, rallies the slaves to flee. The libretto provides a
text Rossini himself referred to in a letter of 1864, affirming his life-long support
for the principles of the R i ~ o r ~ i r n e n t o : ~ ~
Pronti abbiamo e ferri e mani
Per fuggir con voi di qua.
Quanto vaglian gl'Italiani
Nel cimento si vedra.

19 Only in the case of a comic chorus of Turks towards the beginning of the second act,

'Viva il grande Kaimakan', can some hint of 'Turkish' colour be heard, with music that
recalls passages in Mozart's Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail. (The subject of Rossini's
indebtedness to Mozart remains to be addressed in a comprehensive fashion.)
20 The letter, dated from 'Passy de Paris' on 12 June 1864, is addressed to Filippo Santocanale.
It is reprinted in Lettere di G. Rossini, raccolte e annotate per cura di G. Mazzatini -
F. e G. Manis (Florence, 1902), 270-2.
46 Philip Gossett

[We have ready our weapons and hands / To fly with you from here. / You'll see
what Italians are worth / In the moment of danger.]
The music at first is little more than blustery. Even when Rossini reaches the
crucial verses, 'You'll see what Italians are worth in the moment of danger',
the choral melody remains simple, neutral. Its meaning is subverted, however,
by an orchestral tune assigned to the first violins and flute (see Ex. 2). It is
Ex.2
L'ItaIiana in Algeri, Coro di Schiavi
Coro
1 quan-to va-gliangl.1-ta - Iia - - ni, quan-to "a-gIianpl'1-ta - 1ia - - ni
hard not to discern the parody of a melody Rossini could presume his audiences
would know well (see Ex. 3). Though no contemporary critic acknowledges
this parodistic quotation of 'La Marseillaise', there is evidence concerning its
reception. In two manuscripts of L'Italiana the chorus alone (and not Isabella's
following Rondo, 'Pensa alla patria') is replaced by new music (not by Rossini)
to the same word^.^' However seditious textual reference to the worth of Italians
might have been, the musical reference, for some contemporaries, was more
troubling. Pre-performance censorship of opera (or at least pre-dress rehearsal
censorship), after all, even in the most restrictive circumstances, was limited
to words.22

What significance should we assign to this musical quotation?

What did it
mean to Venetian audiences in 18132 On one level it is a mere witticism, an
ironic glance backwards at the unpopular French, who had sacrificed the
2' For further information, see the critical edition of the opera, ed. Azio Corghi, in Edizione
critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossi~zis, ezione prima, vol. 11 (Pesaro, 1981). The
manuscripts are Venezia, Biblioteca del Conservatorio, Busta 89 and Vicenza, Biblioteca
Civica, FF 2-6-5, 6. When Rossini presented the opera in Naples in October 1815, he
was compelled to replace Isabella's Rondo with a new, politically neutral aria, 'Sullo stil
de' viaggiatori' (see the critical edition, 751-81); the censors, however, appear to have
been untroubled by the opening chorus.
22 I have discussed this example before, with a rather different emphasis, in my 'The Tragic
Finale of Tancredi', Bollettino del centro rossiniano di studi (1976), 5-79; see particularly
72-7.
T h e chorus in Risorgimento opera
Ex. 3
'La Marseillaise'
Ex.3
Venetian Republic to their own ~ol i t icalin terests, ceding it to Austria in the
Peace of Campo Formio of 1797. At the same time, we should not undervalue
the impact of French Revolutionary ideals on Italian patriots, even those with
bitter memories of Napoleon's invasion. 'La Marseillaise' existed both as a specific
reference to Revolutionary France and as a reminder of its ideals. The meaning
communicated by Rossini's quotation was not absolute, but rather a function
of the changing audience to which its message would be addressed and the
changing moments when that message would be received.
'Pronti abbiamo e ferri e mani' does not alter substantively the choral presence
in L71taliana in Algeri, which remains essentially secondary. In Rossini's mature
Italian operas, however, particularly those first performed in Naples, where
he was musical director of the opera houses from 1815 through 1822, the composer
and his librettists conjure up an operatic world in which the chorus begins
to emerge as a force in its own right. Often these works feature politically
oppressed peoples whose identity is defined historically, dramaturgically and
musically; but the plots usually avoid any apparent threat to the restored Bourbon
rulers of the Kingdom of the Two Si~ilies.'~
Operas with a biblical setting, such as Rossini's Mose in Egitto (Naples, Teatro
San Carlo, 5 March 1818), were primarily centred on the emotions of individuals
- in this case, the love between an Israelite woman and the son of the Egyptian
Pharaoh. Their tragedy is played out against the story of their respective nations,
each portrayed in striking music. We suffer with the Egyptians under the plagues
of darkness and fire; we pray with the Hebrews at the Red Sea, Mose's voice
(see Ex. 4) immediately joined by the entire chorus. In this case, the hymn-like
quality of Rossini's setting (with its harp accompaniment) establishes a generically
religious tone; the words are a prayer for peace and mercy. Despite the
forceful presence of the chorus, nothing obviously points the meaning in a politically
suspect direction.
Choral parts are not only more extensive in these operas, they are more
23 Bruno Cagli has pointed out one significant exception, in ,Maornetto 11(Naples, Teatro
San Carlo, 3 December 1820). See his 'Le ionti letterarie dei libretti di Rossini: .llaometto
II', in Bollettino del centro rossiniano distudi (1972), no. 2, 10-32. The political
disturbances in Naples of 1820-21 surely influenced Rossini's decision to eliminate Anna's
final speech, whose test nonetheless remains in the original printed libretto:
E tu che Italia . . . conquistar . . . presumi
Impara or tu . . . da un'itala donzella
Che ancora degli eroi la patria e quella.
[And you who presume. . . to conquer. . . Italy / Learn now. . . from an Italian maiden I
That this is still the homeland of heroes.]
Philip Gossett
Ex.4
Mod in Egirto, Preghiera
Mose
Dal tuo stel-la - - to so - glio, Si -
Harp
Most
te]
-
Y + t
Ex.4
'characteristic', ~ o r t r a ~ i ndigff erent dramatic groups in different musical terms.
So, in Rossini's La donna del lago (Naples, Teatro San Carlo, 24 October
1819), based on the narrative poem by Sir Walter Scott, a chorus of Scottish
women features an accompaniment dominated by rhythmic figures traditionally
known as 'Scotch snaps' (see Ex. 5). The chorus, a clan in revolt against the
Scottish King, James V, is prominently featured in the first-act finale, when
Scottish bards lead the assembled populace in a vow to defend their rights
or die. What gives the piece its character is both the accompaniment for harp
and lower strings, Rossini's imagining of the sound of the lyre, and a simple,
repetitive melody, which suggests a tune used for intoning bardic poetry (see
Ex. 6). In Rossini, as in Scott, the clan is defeated by the army of James V,
but the King proves an enlightened ruler. What begins as a revolt against tyranny
develops into an apology for benevolent monarchy. Although Rossini's rebels
become acquiescent subjects before La donna del lago concludes, the chorus
has nonetheless developed a musical personality, has acquired a dramatic force,
has become, in short, a people. Significantly, in 1846 Rossini revised this hymn
as an encomium for the new Pope, Pius IX, whose apparently liberal convictions
were greeted with hope by Italian patriots (a hope soon dashed when he formed
an alliance with France to destroy the Roman republic proclaimed in 1848).

The most fully developed choral presence in Rossini's works is found in his
final opera, Guillaume Tell, written in French for the AcadCmie Royale de
Musique and first performed in 1829, near the end of the reign of Charles X,
The chorus in Risorgimento opera
Ex. 5
La d 0 n d~el lago, Coro di Donne
Ex.5
Ex.6
La donna del lago, Coro dei Bardi
Moderato
I Gij il rag - - gio fo - rier d'im - men - - so splen -
Coro
I ad - di - ta il sen - tier di glo - ria, e d'o - nor! - dor
the last Restoration monarch in France. Although an opera in which a people
rebels against an oppressive monarchy might seem a peculiar subject for a state
theatre of the Restoration, Jane Fulcher has argued compellingly that the staging
of works such as Tell or Auber's La Muette de Portici in 1828 (which deals
with a Neapolitan revolt against Spanish rulers) served a precise political function.
These works provided 'a sympathetic representation of revolutionary emotion
but in the specific context of political domination by a distinctly foreign
5 0 Philip Gossett
power'.24 The reception of Auber's opera, according to Fulcher, had overtones
quite different from those anticipated by the government; indeed, its political
meaning was interpreted in kaleidoscopically changing ways over the course
of its Parisian revivals during the next half century.
The history of Italian performances of Guillaume Tell is equally fascinating.
The struggle of the Swiss for liberty against Austrian tyrants, after all, was
a topic from which French patriots might be able to distance themselves, but
its implications could not be ignored by northern Italians, themselves subject
to the Austrians. For almost two decades the opera was performed in northern
Italy in censored versions, with titles such as Vallace or Rodolfo di Sterlinga,
the action g-enerally set in Scotland. What resulted was a startling dissociation
between the text and Rossini's music, which uses extensively and imaginatively
typical Swiss melodies (the so-called 'ranz des vaches') (see Ex. 7). Rossini
not only states these themes directly: he weaves them into melodic strains that
dominate the entire opera.
Ex.7
Guillaume Tell, 'ram des vaches'
(a) Andantino
Corni
(b) Allegretto
Corni
Ex.7
Even when the work was performed as Guglielmo Tell, in sections of Italy
not dominated by Austria, contemporary translations softened the semantic
meaning of Rossini's opera, avoiding altogether the politically charged language
of the original.25 To take a non-choral example from the opening scene of
the opera, when a Fisherman sings of the beauty of the day and of his happiness,
Tell comments aside, in the original French (see Ex. 8): 'il chante, et lYHelvetie
pleure sa libertCY ['He sings, while Switzerland weeps over its lost liberty'].
In the standard Italian translation (disseminated by the music publisher Ricordi)
the text became: 'Ei canta, e Elvezia intanto, ahi! quanto piangeri' ['He sings,
while Switzerland, ah! weeps'].26 Not only do the words 'ahi! quanto' fail
24 Jane Fulcher, The Nation's Image: French Grand Opera as Politics and Politicized Art
(Cambridge, 1987), 24.
25 The history of these performances is traced by Alberto Cametti, 'I1 "Guglielmo Tell"
e le sue prime rappresentazioni in Italia', Rivista musicale italiana, 6 (1899), 580.
26 The translation was finally brought closer to the original meaning in December 1988,
when the critical edition of the opera, edited by Elizabeth Bartlet for the Fondazione
Rossini of Pesaro, was unveiled at the Teatro alla Scala. in the Italian translation revised
by Paolo Cattelan. The new text of this passage reads: ' ~cai n ta, e Elvezia intanto piange
la liberti'.
The chorus in Risorgimento opera 5 1
utterly to capture the expression of the original 'pleure, pleure', but missing,
of course, is the crucial word, 'liberti'.*'
Ex.8
Guillaume Tell, Introduction
Tell
il chan - te, et I'Hel - v i - ti - e pleu - re, pleu - re sa li - ber - te.
Ex. 8
More striking still is the final scene, that remarkable tone portrait of a people
united and free, to the text:
Liberte, redescends des cieux!
Et que ton rkgne recommence,
Liberte redescends des cieux!
[Liberty, descend again from the heavens! / And may your reign begin anew, / Liberty
descend again from the heavens!]
That Rossini was aware of the importance of the text is apparent in this phrase
from his letter to Santocanale of 12 June 1864, previously cited: ' [. . .] I set
the words of liberty in my Guglielmo Tell in such a way as to demonstrate how
enthusiastic I am for my homeland and for the noble feelings that fill
Rossini's compatriots, however, would have had little sense of the composer's
meaning, since in this concluding scene the contemporary Italian translation
reduces the words to supreme banality:
Quel contento che in me sento
Non puo l'anima spiegar.
[I cannot express the happiness I feel.]
Here, though, the problem of reception and perceived meaning exists on multiple
levels. As fragments from the 'ranz des vaches' motif (see Ex. 9) wind their
way from key to key, and finally return to a radiant C major for the conclusion,
27 This problem affected other composers. Well known is the situation of Bellini's I Puritani,
originally written for the Thiitre Italien of Paris. When Bellini prepared a version for
Naples, he felt compelled to omit the duet that concludes the second act, with its text:
Suoni la tromba. e intreoido
Io pugnero da forte.
Bello e affrontar la morte
Gridando liberta.
[Let the trumpet sound, and, intrepidly, / I will fight with courage. / It is a fine thing
to face death / Crying 'liberty'.]
See my introduction to the facsimile edition of both versions of I Puritani, published
in Early Romantic Opera (New York and London, 1983).
28 Lettere (see n. 20), 271: '[. . .] ho vestito le parole di liberta nel mio Guglielmo Tell a
mod0 di far conoscere quanto io sia caldo per lamia patria e pei nobili sentimenti che
la investono'.
Philip Gossett
Ex.g
GuiIIaume Tell, Finale
the voices declaim the French text in a hymn-like setting of grandiose power.
The Italian words, while not patently inappropriate, give no substance to the
sense of exaltation that pervades Rossini's music.29 On the other hand, the
Swiss character of the music cannot be disguised: Scottish huntsmen do not
express themselves in the language of the 'ranz des vaches'. Thus, the efforts
of the Austrians to blanch away the meaning of Tell by changing its locale
were doomed from the outset, doomed because the music unmistakably
provides a level of meaning that subverts the sense of the new words.
It is not difficult to see in Verdi's treatment of the chorus a development of
these tendencies in Rossini's later operas. Though the gypsies in I1 trovatore
of 1853 and the Egyptian priestesses in Aida of 1871 are not central to the
action, Verdi defines them with care. Neither the Anvil Chorus nor its succeeding
solo for Azucena, 'Stride la vampa', could easily find a place in another operatic
setting: their violent changes of mood, strident orchestration and rhythmic elan
are directly tied to the exotic world of the gypsy camp. Nor could the orientalism
of the consecration scene and its priests and priestesses of Ftha in Aida, with
its modal scales, repetitive motivic schemes and non-traditional harmonic patterns,
be confused with other religious choruses in Verdi's music, such as the
monks who intone the 'Miserere' in the last act of I1 trovatore. In these instances
Verdi has fulfilled Mazzini's dictum of creating a 'collective individuality', without,
however, rising to Giusti's challenge of providing a musical setting for
'the kind of pain that now fills the souls of us Italians'.
But crucial for Verdi as an artist and for that creation of a national culture
integral to the ideological programme of the Risorgimento are instances in which
his chorus achieves not merely individuality but dramatic stature. This occurs
most frequently when the choral representation has a political basis, one that
could be reinterpreted by contemporary audiences: the lament of the Hebrew
slaves in Nabucco, the fiery chorus of rebellion in Ernani, the poignant chorus
of Scottish exiles in Macbeth. It was presumably in these passages that Giusti
identified the Verdi whom he urged to sing of 'the pain of a people who feel
the need of a better future'.
29 The new translation (see n. 26), 'Di tuo regno fia l'avvento / Sulla terra, o liberta', is
more faithful to Rossini's meaning.
The chorus in Risovgimento opera 53

As with Rossini, the dramatic setting of these compositions ostensibly removes
them from political actuality.

Indeed, Verdi's "Nabucco" and "Ernani" are similar, respectively, to Rossini's "Mose in Egitto" and "La donna del lago".

Nabucco is a biblical drama
(the Babylonian captivity) in which a chorus of Hebrew slaves laments its fate,
but its plot is largely centred on the emotions of individuals.

In "Ernani", the chorus in the third act plots against the King of Spain, Don Carlos (the future Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V).

As in La donna del lago, the conspiracy is defeated and Charles V, heir to the throne of Charlemagne, promises a benevolent
reign on the model of his illustrious predecessor.

The tragedy is reserved
for the protagonists.

Significantly, the chorus is all but absent from the concluding
act of the opera.

Despite the dramaturgical neutralisation of the choral masses within these
operas, which by locating the stories in remote eras and circumstances rendered
the presence and actions of the chorus acceptable to Austrian censors, their
words and music were not neutral to an Italian public in the 1840s. This was
a public open to subversive messages, a public fully aware of the fate of the
Bandiera brothers in July 1844, a few months after the premiere of Ernani.
Sentenced to death for inciting rebellion in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies,
the brothers faced their executioners singing a chorus from an 1826 opera by
Saverio Mercadante, Donna Caritea: 'Chi per la patria muor, vissuto 2 assai'
['He who dies for his country, has lived long enough'].30 Thus, no Italian
in the audience of Milan's Teatro alla Scala in 1842 could have doubted that
when the Hebrew Slaves in Nabucco sang Temistocle Solera's verses 'Oh mia
patria si bella e perduta! Oh membranza si cara e fatal!' ['Oh my homeland
so beautiful and lost! Oh remembrance so sweet and fatal!'], they referred not
only to Palestine but to Italy.)'

Although in the emblematic 'Va pensiero' Verdi and his librettist avoided
censorial intervention, one of the most problematic moments in Nabucco occurs
in another chorus, near the end of the opera, when the Hebrew people, together
with the converted Nabucco, praise 'Immenso Jeovha' ['Great J e h ~ v a ' ]T. ~he~
'O The story is told at length by Raffaello Barbiera in his essay 'Crepuscoli di liberta nella
Venezia e la tragedia dei fratelli Bandiera', published in Voci e volti delpassato (1800-1900)
da archivi segreti di stato e da altre fonti (Milan, 1920), 11 7-63; see particularly 151-2.

Although there is some conflicting evidence as to whether the conspirators actually sang
the Mercadante chorus, Barbiera rightly insists that the event's significance lies in the
widespread popular acceptance of the anecdote.

31 Such reactions could be accentuated by the performers. Frank Walker, The Man Verdi
(London, 1962; rpt. Chicago, 1982), 151, reports an incident from the spring of 1847:
[. . .] the young Angelo Mariani, after conducting Nabucco at the Teatro Carcano,
Milan, was to be rebuked and threatened with arrest by Count Bolza, commissioner
of police, 'for having given to Verdi's music an expression too evidently rebellious
and hostile to the Imperial Government'.

32 I have discussed the textual problems surrounding this chorus in my article 'Censorship
and Self-censorship: Problems in Editing the Operas of Giuseppe Verdi', to be published

in the forthcoming (1990) Festschrift for Alvin Johnson. For fuller details, consult the
critical edition of the opera, Nabucodonosor, ed. Roger Parker, in The Works of Giuseppe
Verdi, Series I, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1987).
54 Philip Gossert

----

text is abstract (as in the Mose in Egitto prayer) and the unaccompanied musical
texture disembodied. An anomaly in the setting of the second quatrain, however,
cannot be ascribed to artistic nonchalance. The text reads:

Tu spandi un'iride? . . .
Tutto e ridente.
Tu vibri il fulmine?
L'uom piu non e.
[You spread a rainbow? . . . / Everything is joyous. / You launch a lightning bolt? /
Man is no more.]

There is a patently inappropriate match between the first two verses of this
quatrain and their musical setting (see Ex. Why might Verdi, normally
so attentive to such matters, allow his music to subvert the meaning of the
text?
Ex.10
Nabucco, Finale ,
Fenena
Ismaele
Nabucco
Zaccaria
Tu span - di u - n'i - ride? ... tut - to 6 ri - den - te.
Ex.10

As Roger Parker has shown in the new critical edition of Nabucco, Verdi's
autograph of this ensemble went through two stages. The second quatrain was
originally :

Spesso a1 tuo popolo
Donasti il pianto;
Ma i ceppi hai franto,
Se in te fido.

[Often you brought / Your people to tears; / But you broke their chains, / If they
trusted in you.]

This is a very different text, its God a very different God: he intervenes directly
in human affairs and will break the bonds of captive people who trust in him.
Verdi's setting of the second quatrain beautifully expresses its meaning precisely
33 Without entering into the complex aesthetic and philosophical issues raised by such an
assertion, suffice it to say that in Italian opera of the Ottocento, just as in Baroque opera,
it is possible to identify musical elements (orchestral, melodic, harmonic) whose dramatic
associations or affects are coloured by similar patterns and associations found throughout
the repertory to which they belong. These meanings may be in constant and subtle flux;
indeed, they may be received differently by different individuals or audiences. But they
cannot be ignored.


where the revised text is most inappropriate. Why did Verdi alter the original
version?
Verses referring to God breaking the chains of captive peoples may well have
been more than Verdi, his librettist or the impresario believed Austrian censors
would swallow; hence the text may have been self-censored. But there is important
evidence that the government was prepared to intervene directly in the
text of Nabucco. Renato Meucci has recently discovered a large number of
manuscripts that once belonged to the archives of the Teatro alla Scala. Several
document the practice of theatrical censorship of the period, and one is particularly
important for Nabucco: a letter ('N. 5548') dated 28 February 1842 (a
week and a half before the opera's premii.re on 9 March) from the 'Imperiale
Regia / Direzione Generale / della Polizia' to the 'Inclita Direzione degli 11.
RR. Teatri' of Milan.34 Here is the letter in its entirety:
Restituendo i libretti d'opera 'La Bella Celeste degli Spadari' 'Clemenza di Valoi[s]'
'I1 Colonello' ed il programma di Ballo 'Gabriella di Vergy', argomenti gii noti da
prodursi seconda l'intenzione dell'Impresa sulle scene della Scala nella ~r o s s imap rimaera,^^
colla riserva della prova generale,36 non faccio difficolti alla produzione parimenti
del Dramma 'Nabucco' composizione di Temistocle Solera, sul quale deve scrivere
la musica il Maestro Verdi.37
Per questo ultimo importeri che particolarmente cada la vigilanza di cot." Inclita
Direzione sul mod0 di farlo in iscena, onde nessuna sconveniente osservazione emerga
nella pub[b]lica esecuzione, massime per la comparsa del Sacerdote Zaccaria e del Protagonista.
Faccio con cio evasione a1 pregiato di Lei foglio 26 corr.' N." 62.
[Returning the opera librettos 'La Bella Celeste degli Spadari', 'Clemenza di Valois',
'I1 Colonello' and the synopsis for the ballet 'GabrielladiVergy', subjects whose intended
production by the Management on the stages of La Scala this coming Spring was already
known, reserving the right of the dress rehearsal,38 I likewise do not object to the production
of the drama 'Nabucco' by Temistocle Solera, which Maestro Verdi will set to music.
For the latter, it will be particularly important that the distinguished Management
is vigilant about how the opera is staged, so that no inappropriate reaction will take
place during the public performance, especially in appearances of the Priest Zaccaria
and of the protagonist.
With this I respond to your esteemed letter, N." 62 of the 26th.l
34 This document is found in the Biblioteca Trivulziana of Milan: spettacoli pubblici (1842).
Let me thank Roger Parker for bringing it to my attention.
35 All these works were actually performed during the Spring season at the Teatro alla Scala,
with the exception of I1 colonello, presumably the 1835 opera by the.brothers Federico
and Luigi Ricci. See Carlo Gatti, I1 Teatro alla Scala nella storia e nell'arte, 2 vols. (Milan,
1964), 11, Cronologia completa degli spettacoli e dei concerti, ed. Giampiero Tintori, 43
and 189.
36 Even after approving an opera for performance, the censors in Milan reserved the right
to witness the dress rehearsal, so as to guard against any difficulties that had gone
unobserved in the written materials submitted to them.
37 Although, as Roger Parker has pointed out, we have very little information about the
composition of Nabucco, there is no reason to believe that Verdi had not yet written
the score on 28 February 1842! The phrase means only that the libretto was to be performed
with new music by Verdi.
38 Seen. 36.
56 Philip Gossett

It is likely that changes in the text of 'Immenso Jeovha' were insisted upon
by the censor after the dress rehearsal. The particularly violent way in which
these changes were effected in Verdi's autograph suggests that this was more
than a simple substitution motivated by artistic consideration^.^^
But how could Verdi and Solera have allowed such a startling dissociation
between text and music in this final version? Might the subversion of the music
by the text signal an explicitly subversive political act? Rather than substituting
bland words that suited the original music, composer and librettist provided
a sign of their disaffection. The hypothesis that at least part of the public was
aware of the events that had taken place would help explain why, on the opera's
opening night, the audience demanded a reprise of 'Immenso Jeovha', not the
subsequently more popular 'Va pensiero'.40 Such reprises were often politically
motivated. Articles in the Milanese periodical Italia musicale, just before the
1848 revolution, mention that certain pieces (choruses from Verdi's I Lombardi
or from Bellini's Norma) were repeated 'for reasons that had nothing to do
with the music'.41
The difficulty with such a hypothesis is that, unlike the case of Rossini's
L'Italiana in Algeri, the sign is a private sign, the protest (if protest it was)
available only to the initiated.

And so, when Verdi faced a similar problem in "Ernani", he gave way, allowing words to be altered to avoid censorial objections.

The four-strophe text that begins with the verse

Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia'
'Let the Lion of Castille reawaken'

-- proclaims a brotherhood among the conspirators, ready to fight rather than be slaves.

But it was the _third_ strophe that caused the poet, Francesco Maria Piave, to write,

I am sending you a chorus of
Spanish conspirators, although I
do not know whether the censorship
will approve it.

The text reads:

Morte colga o n'arrida vittoria,
Pugneremo; e col sangue de' spenti
Scriveranno i figliuoli viventi:
Qui regnare sol dee liberti!

Let death strike or let victory smile,
We will fight; and with the blood of the dead
The living sons will write:
Here Liberty alone must reign!

Morte colga o n'arrida vittoria -- let death strike or let victory smile
pugneremo, e col sangue de' spentir -- we'll fight & with the blood of the dead
scriveranno i figliuoli viventi -- the living sons will write
qui regnare sol dee liberti. ------ here liberty alone must reign.

----
39 A sample page is reproduced as Plate 5 in the critical edition of the opera, cited in n.
29
JL.
40 See Roger Parker, 'The Critical Edition of Nabucco', in The Opera Quarterly, 5 (1987),
213, 91-8.
41 See Monterosso, (n. 4), 59-60. The articles he cites are dated 29 December 1847 (reporting

on a performance of I Lombardi in Cremona) and 9 February 1848 (Norma in the same
city).

42

Piave's letter (dated Venice, 13 November 1843) is to his Roman friend, the librettist Jacopo Ferretti:

----- Venezia, 13 novembre 1843.
Caro Jacopo [Ferreti],
Ti mando un coro di congiurati
Spagnuoli, che peraltro non so
se la Polizia vorri passarmi.

This fascinating document, and others of equal importance, were first brought to light by Bruno Cagli in his article '

"questo povero poeta esordiente":

Piave a Roma, un carteggio con Ferretti,
la genesi di "Ernani"', in
"Ernani ieri e oggi"
(see n. 1b), 3-1 8.

The words Verdi set are distinctly less provocative:

Morte colga, o n'arrida vittoria,
Pugnerem; ed il sangue de' spenti
Nuovo ardire ai figliuoli viventi,
Forze nuove al pugnare dari.

[Let death strike or let victory smile, / We will fight; and the blood of the dead /
Will give new ardour to the living sons, / New force in battle.]

morte colga o n'arrida vittoria -- let death strike or let victory smile
pugnerem ed il sangue de' spenti -- we'll fight & the blood of the dead
nuovo ardire ai figliuoli viventi -- will givenew ardour to the living sons
forze nuove al pugnare dari ---- new force in battle.

Unlike the "Nabucco" ensemble, text and music function well together (see Ex.
11).

There would be no reason for an audience to suspect that other words
were contemplated, nor is there anything in the story of "Ernani" to suggest
to the censorship that this chorus had meaning beyond its apparent one.

Ex. 11

Emni, Congiura Andante sostenuto
Tum

8

Mor - te col - ga, o n'ar - ti- da vit - to - - ria, pu - gne -

Tutti

- rem; -ed il san-gue dc' spen - ti nuo-vo at- di - re ai fi -gliuo- li vi -

Tutti

- ven - ti, for - ze nuo - - - ve a1 pu- gna - re da - rA.

Ex. 11

---

Yet it is certain that, despite the
_less provocatory_ text, the composition was
received by Italian audiences *as a patriotic hymn*.

Its grandiose accompaniment,
unison melody, strong martial rhythms and
the thrust of its dramatic function
were sufficient to guarantee such a reception.

Even the subsequent finale, in
which Charles V pardons the conspirators, was reinterpreted in contemporary
political terms.

According to Verdi's student Emanuele Muzio, after the coronation
of Pius IX as Pope on 16 June 1846 (the same Pius IX for whom Rossini
provided a hymn based on the chorus of the Bards from La donna del lago),
the "Ernani" finale was performed in Bologna, with 'the name of Carlo changed
to Pius, and there was such enthusiasm that it was repeated three times.

Then,
when the words "Pardon for all" were reached, the shouts and applause broke
out all over the theatre.'43

By 1844, Verdi had no need to render problematic
his choruses.

The public readily understood their political subtext.

Indeed, these
meanings were so palpable that in Naples, where censorship could be ferocious,

----


43 Letter of 13 August 1846, published in Luigi Agostino Garibaldi, ed., Giuseppe Verdi
nelle lettere di Emanuele Muzio ad Antonio Barezzi (Milan, 1931), 259:

--
vi si cambio il nome di Carlo in quello di Pio -e fu tanto I'entusiasmo che si ripe6 tre volte; quando poi erano alle parole "Perdono a tutti", scoppiarono gli evviva da tutte le parti'.

---

operas such as Nabucco or I Lombardi were ignored until 1848.

Only in the
wake of political concessions by the King were they finally performed.44

In the brief period of giddy hope that followed the revolutionary movements
of 1848, Verdi moved this subtext to the surface, in a work to a libretto by
Salvatore Cammarano that had its premiire in Rome on 27 January 1849, La
battaglid di Legnano.

The opera relates the successful battle of the Lombard
League in 11 76 against the German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa: no longer
Swiss fighting against Austrians or Hebrews longing for freedom. The first act
begins with an unaccompanied hymn the meaning of whose text is unequivocal:
Viva Italia! Sacro un patto
Tutti stringe i figli suoi:
Esso alfin di tanti ha fatto
Un sol pop010 d'eroi!
[Long live Italy! A sacred pact / Binds its sons together: / It has finally made of
them / A single people of heroes!]

In the third act the 'Knights of Death' vow before the tombs of their fathers,
in a subterranean vault of the church of Sant'Ambrogio in Milan (the patron
saint of the city), to defeat the invaders or die. The knights continue:
Se alcun fra no;, codardo in guerra,
Mostrarsi a1 voto potri rubello,
A1 mancatore nieghi la terra
Vivo un asilo, spento un avel.
[If anyone among us, cowardly in war, / Fails to live up to this oath, / May the
earth refuse him / A refuge in life, a tomb in death.]

What makes the passage fascinating is its relationship to the second-act finale
of Rossini's Guillaurne Tell, whose text (in the nineteenth-century Italian translation)
has the same poetic meter (doppi quinari), verbal images and general
meaning as the Verdian scene:
Se qualche vil v'ha mai tra noi,
Lo privi il sol de' raggi suoi,
Non oda il ciel la sua preghiera,
E giunto a1 fin di sua carriera
Gli neghi tomba la terra ancor.
[If there is a traitor among us, / May the sun hide its rays from him, / May heaven
be deaf to his prayer, / And, at the end of his days, / May the earth refuse him
a tomb.]
The dramaturgical similarity between the two scenes, of course, has been noted
before.45
44 I have discussed the interactions between political and musical events in Naples in this
period in my article 'La fine dell'Eti borbonica 1838-1860' in I1 Teatro di Sun Carlo,
2 vols. (Naples, 1987), I, 165-203.
45 By Julian Budden, for example, in The Operas of Verdi: From 'Oberto' to 'Rigoletto'
(London, 1973), 407, or by David R. B. Kimbell, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism
(Cambridge, 1981), 569 (where the Battaglia passage is, however, misidentified as the
'Act I11 finale').
The chorus in Risorgimento opera 59

The musical reference is equally precise. The Battaglid di Legnano passage
is in three parts: a quiet theme, with a strong upward gesture to the words
'guerra' and 'rubello'; a chromatic passage, pianissimo and partly unaccompanied,
at the reference to the earth's denying the traitor a tomb; finally, a soaring
lyrical phrase to conclude (see Ex. 12).
Ex. 12
La battaglia di Legnano, Giuramenro
Andante
Tutti
Se al-cun fra noi, se al-cun fra noi, co-dar - do in guer- ra, mo-strar-si a1 vo - to po-trb, po-trb ru -
be1 - lo, a1 man-ca - to - re nie-ghi la ter - ra vi-vo un a - si - 10,spenro un a -
Tutti
- vel: nie-ghi la ter - ra, nie-ghi un a - vel: sic - co - me
con voce
Tum
gli uo-mi-ni Dio l'ab-ban- do - ni, quan-do l'e - stre - rno suo di ver - rb: il vil sue
Tum
no - me in- fa - mia suo - ni ad o - gni gen- te, ad o - gni e - ti.
Ex. 12
Sections similar to all three are present in Rossini's original, though in a
different order. Even the ascending four notes to the tonic (with their dotted
rhythm) that initiate the lyrical phrase in La battaglia di Legnano are derived
from the opening of the Guillaume Tell passage (see Ex. 13). Notice too the
similar modulatory phrases in the accompaniment that fall between the second
and third elements in La battaglia di Legnano (moving from C sharp major
to a lyrical phrase in A major) and between the first two elements in Guillaume
Tell (moving from G major to a lyrical phrase in E flat major).
This is intertextuality with a vengeance. But what was the subtext in the
Philip Gossett
EX. I3
Guillaume Tell, Finale I1
Andantino maestoso
Tum
Se qual-che vil v'ha mai fra no - i, lo pri-vi il sol de' rag - gi suo - i, lo pri-vi il
Tum
sol rap - pi suoi,
Soloists
I - ghie - ra, e giun - to al fin di sua car - rie - ra
Chorus
o - da il ciel la sua pre- ghie - ra, e giun - to a1 fin di sua car -
Tum
- rie - ra gli ne- ghi tom - ba la ter- ra an-cor, ne - ghi tom - ba an - cor.
Ex. 13
reception of Rossini's opera in Italy during the Austrian occupation became
the text of Verdi's opera. Poet and composer made the reference so pointed
it could not be missed. By doing so they offer precious evidence of how Verdi
and Cammarano read RO-ssini, t-hat is, how they understood the function and
purpose of choral ensembles in earlier nineteenth-century Italian opera.
The cultural and political meaning of the chorus remained significant even after
the foundation of the Italian nation in 1859 and its gradual annexation of the
remaining independent states in the peninsula. If Nabucco looked forward to
independence, kida looked back on the experience and is virulent on the subject
of intolerance, especially religious intolerance. Here too Verdi's message can
be read politically - among the Italian government's most difficult problems
The chorus in Risorgimento opera 61
was achieving an accord with the Papal presence in Rome. Verdi's vengeful
chorus of priests leaves no doubt as to where his sympathies lay.
Though censorship was not a problem for operatic composers after the unification
of Italy, the theatre remained a focal point for political discourse of a different
kind. Italy was a constitutional monarchy, and many of its most ~rofound
problems were social. Little time was needed to expose the myth that a united
citizenry would follow close on a united Italy. Regional divisions, particularly
between north and south, have never been fully resolved, and as early as the
1840s and 1850s writers and patriots such as Carlo Pisacane and Giuseppe Ferrari
had sought to redefine the Risorgimento in terms of class struggle." Verdi
was a follower of Cavour, at whose behest he agreed to be a deputy in the
first Italian parliament. He feared populism and leftist politics, and could write
on 27 May 1881, shortly after the premii.re of the revised version of Simon
Boccanegra: 'I have a sad presentiment about our future! The Leftists will destroy
Italy .'47
One could read the treatment of the chorus in Simon Boccanegra in precisely
these terms. First performed with little popular success at the Teatro La Fenice
of Venice on 12 March 1857, to a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, Simon
Boccanegra was revised by Verdi (with additional text by Arrigo Boito) for
the Teatro alla Scala of Milan (24 March 1881). Through both textual and musical
means, Verdi makes a political statement in this opera that might appropriately
be labelled 'didactic'. Indeed he himself describes his generating idea for the
'council chamber' scene added in 1881 as 'political, not drama ti^'.^^ In the
definitive version of Simon Boccanegra there are no independent choruses, nor
can the chorus be considered a protagonist of the drama. It largely represents
the plebians of Genoa, whose conflicts with the patricians of the city underlie
much of the meaning of the work. After the 'council chamber' scene the chorus
all but disappears, yet its transformation from an unruly mass to a mature people
united under a just and strong- leader mirrors the view Verdi shared with many
Italian intellectuals and political leaders of the time.
In the Prologue of the opera, unscrupulous politicians seek to gain support
from the chorus for their choice of a new Doge. The tone in which the chorus
hears of the imprisonment of a young patrician woman (Maria) by her father,
because of her-love for the coisair Simon, is redolent of a ghost story told
46 For a discussion of these political currents in Italy during this period, see Stuart Woolf,
A History of Italy 1700-1860: The Social Constraints of Political Change (London and
New York, 1979), 418-24.
47 In a letter to Opprandino Arrivabene, published in Verdi intimo: carteggio di Giuseppe
Verdi con il Conte Opprandino Arrivabene [1861-18861, ed. Annibale Alberti (Milan,
1931), 288: 'Ho un tristo presentiment0 sul nostro avvenire! I Sinistri distruggeranno
1'Italia.'
48 The phrase comes from a letter to Giulio Ricordi of 20 November 1880. After describing
the two letters of Petrarch to the Doges of Genoa and Venice, in which the poet begs
them to avoid a fratricidal war, Verdi writes: 'Tutto cio 6politico non drammatico; ma
un'uomo d'ingegno potrebbe ben drammatizzare questo fatto' ['All of this is political,
not dramatic; but a man of imagination could successfully dramatise this event']. See
Pierluigi Petrobelli, Marisa Di Gregorio Casati and Carlo Matteo Mossa, eds., Carteggio
Verdi- Ricordi 1880-1881 (Parma, 1988), 70.
62 Philip Gossett
to children, complete with the appearance of 'fantasmi' (spectres). Verdi's music
even invokes rhythmic and melodic fragments from Fernando's tale about
witches, gypsies and haunted babies in I1 trovatore. When, at the end of the
scene, Simon learns of Maria's death, he cries out in torment. At that very
moment, music of jarring banality accompanies the choral expression of delight
at the political success of the candidate of the plebians (Simon) over the patricians
(see Ex. 14). Throughout the Prologue, Verdi establishes the chorus as a superstitious
mob, easily swayed by unscrupulous leaders and bound up in class
hatred that can tear apart the fabric of a society.
EX.I4
Simon Boccanegra, Finale of the Prologo
Allegro assai vivo
Ex.14
The 'council chamber' scene (the only complete scene added in 1881), on
the other hand, is about reconciliation and unity: between Genoa and Venice,
between the plebians and the patricians. Both political and social reconciliation
were needed to create a united Italy. As indicated above, it was Verdi's idea
to build this scene around Petrarch's impassioned plea to the council for the
cessation of war between Genoa and Venice. The Consiglieri cry for 'War',
while Simon responds with words that had enormous resonance for Verdi, and
which he sets over a sparse accompaniment so as to guarantee their audibility:
E con quest'urlo atroce
Fra due liti d'Italia erge Caino
La sua clava cruenta! Adria e Liguria
Hanno patria comune.
[And with that horrid cry / Cain raises between two Italian shores / His bloody
club! Adria and Liguria / Share a common fatherland.]
But the reaction of the Consiglieri remains 'E nostra patria Genova' ['Our
country is Genoa'].
Noise is heard from without, an uprising in the streets that results from
a conflict between plebians and patricians. Verdi builds up the agitation gradually,
with cries of 'Morte!' ['Death!'], then 'Morte ai patrizi!' ['Death to
the patricians!'] and finally 'Morte a1 Doge!' ['Death to the Doge!']. At the
gates of the palace the mob sings (see Ex. 15): 'Armi! saccheggio! / Fuoco
alle case!' ['Arms! plunder! / Set fire to the houses!']. Finally the chorus erupts
into the chamber demanding 'Vendetta!' ['Revenge!'].
To characterise this plebian mob, Verdi employs music that constantly invokes
the first section of the Dies i r m~ov ement from his Requiem Mass. In its furious
orchestration, its highly accentuated rhythmic patterns, its use of a held pitch
The chorus in Risovgirnento opera
Ex. 15
Simon Boccanegra, Council Chamber scene
Allegro moderato ,
11 Ar - mi! sac - cheg - gio! fuo - co a1 - le ca - se!
7 Ar - mi! sac - cheg - gio! fuo - co a1 - le ca - se!
in some vocal parts while other voices maintain active rhythmic patterns beneath,
its rapid and irregular shifting between musical ideas and its forceful syncopation,
the choral passage from Simon Boccanegra identifies itself with the announcement
of the day of judgment. Verdi's technique extends even further. The mob
is momentarily silenced by the herald's trumpets, divided between trumpets
in the orchestra and others in the wings (see Ex. 16). This is precisely the
pattern Verdi employs in the Dies ir& to introduce the 'Tuba mirum' section
that follows the opening 'Dies irz'. Even the pitch employed is the same in
the two works (E flat). The hostilities end only when Simon intones what
Verdi would have called a 'parola scenica' (a word with immediate and telling
impact on the audience) that sums up the emotional heart of the drama: 'Fratricidi!!!'
['Fratricides!!!']. The ensemble he !eads is one of the most beautiful
moments in all Verdi: a plea for unity, a plea to set aside political, geographical
and class differences, closing with words derived from Petrarch: 'E vo gridando:
pace! e vo gridando: amor!' ['I cry out: peace! I cry out: love!'] (see Ex. 17).
The music soars to ecstatic heights, then concludes dolcissimo, with the chorus
providing the melodic ground over which the solo voices are raised in short
phrases. The very last word, 'pace' ['peace'], is left for the heroine, Amelia,
in a trill that soars over the entire ensemble.
In this scene, Verdi and Boito project their social ideals on the story of fourteenth-
century Genoa: political unity between diverse Italian states, social unity
within the state. Before the act is over, the masses have become a people, under
the leadership of a strong but compassionate and wise ruler.
Simon Boccanegra exemplifies and apotheosises a traditional view of the Italian
opera chorus in the nineteenth century: from a neutral body in the early works
--
Philip Gossett
Ex.16
Simon Boccanegra, Council Chamber scene
Allegro moderato
Trombe in orchestra) (Tmmbe interne)
Ex. 16
Ex.17
Simon Boccanegra, Council Chamber scene
Simon
e vo gri - dan - do: pa - - ce! e vo gri -dan - do: a -
Simon
-mot,- e vo gri-dan - do: a - mot!
Ex.17
of Rossini, the chorus gradually emerges as a 'collective individuality' and finally
evolves into a citizenry. Yet it should be apparent that such a view is at best
partial. 'Becoming a citizen', after all, is hardly an unambiguous concept: what
kind of citizen, in what kind of state? Neither the politics of theatre nor the
theatre of politics could avoid addressing such issues, nor must we. By framing
our questions in ways that recognise the complexity of the historical processes
embodied under the banner of the Risorgimento, we may find that its principal
theatre, Italian opera, offers a broader range of responses to those questions
than we had suspected