Verdi the Man and Verdi the Dramatist

Author(s): Gerald A. Mendelsohn

Source: 19th-Century Music, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Nov., 1978), pp. 110-142
Published by: University of California Press
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Verdi

the

Man

and

Verdi

the

Dramatist

GERALD A. MENDELSOHN

Throughout his life, Giuseppe Verdi was an

intensely private man who deeply resented efforts to inquire into his personal affairs. He
regardedjournalists and would-be biographers,
as well as his neighbors in Busseto and the
operatic public at large, as an intrusive lot,
against whose prying attentions he needed
constantly to defend himself. Even in letters
to his closest friends, Verdi was quite reserved
about his private life; and though the gloomy
and pessimistic cast of his disposition is unmistakable, the correspondence is rarely revealing in a psychological sense. As faras correspondence goes, we can certainly gain a much
richer and a more intimate sense of Verdi's
character,personality, and emotional life from
his wife Giuseppina's letters than from his

0148-2076/78/1100-0110
$0.25 @ 1978 by The Regents
of the University of California.
110

own. He left no diaries, and save for a brief,

but significant, autobiographical account of
his early years as a composer, he wrote no
memoirs. Neither can we look to Verdi for explanations of the meaning of his work or of
how it related to the man Verdi.
This reticence--perhaps I should say secretiveness-makes any answers to the question of how Verdi's personal life affected
his choice and treatment of dramatic themes
most difficult to attain. The difficulty is increased by the character of his operas, for they
seem to be objective and impersonal, a setting
down, without self-consciousness, commentary, or moralizing, of how things are. Unlike
Wagner, born likewise in 1813, Verdi entertained no explicit philosophical programin his
work, and he sought no spiritual and artistic
reform. It is clear from even a casual acquaintance with Wagner'slife and writings that his
operas are on one level, at least, an extension

of his psyche: it is his ideas, his needs, his

conflicts, his wishes, his visions that form the
core of the drama. But where do we find Verdi
in his operas? In contrast to Wagner, a prototypical sentimentalisch artist, Isaiah Berlin
describes Verdi as a naif, as "perhaps the last
complete, self-fulfilled creator, absorbedin his
art, ... seeking to use it for no ulterior purpose, ... suspicious of anyone curious about

his inner life, wholly, even grimly, impersonal, drily objective, at one with his music. A
man who dissolved everything in his art, with
no more personal residue than Shakespeare or
Tintoretto. In Schiller's sense, the last great
naive poet of our time."' A naif Verdi surely
was, but it is my objective to show that a significant personal residue remains and that to
understand it illuminates his work and his
dramatic art.
I
Verdi's life was not in an outer sense a
dramatic one. Although he was deeply involved in the revolutionary political events of
his time, he was never a conspirator, a fugitive, or an exile. He had no flamboyant love
affairs, nor was he even a discreet womanizer.
Romantic posturing or melodramatic gestures
were unkown to him, and though he could be
hurt and angeredby criticism he shunned public controversy. Fundamentally, Verdi was a
very conservative man, more peasant, by far,
than artist in the nineteenth-century sense.
He was devoted to his work, his country, his
paese and to those people whose love and
friendship he treasured. In this, he could
scarcely seem more different from the characters and ambience of his operas, which are
generally regarded as the quintessence of the
romantic melodrama. That they abound in extreme and irrational passions, vendettas, conspiracies, exotic historic settings and the like
is obvious. But as important as these romantic
trappings were to Verdi, they constitute only
the surface of his work. The themes to which
he returned again and again are of a more intimate character, for the dramatic core of his

1I. Berlin, "The Naivete of Verdi," Hudson Review 21

(1968), pp. 140-41.

operas, as of his life, is to be found in the family drama, in those intense and enduring emotional relationships between people bound together by blood and marriage.
Perhaps the greatest mystery of Verdi's
career is how, given the circumstances into
which he was born, his musical interests and
ability developed and were encouraged. With
few exceptions, significant composers of the
nineteenth century had a parent of at least
some musical or intellectual attainment. Verdi's parents were unlettered, perhaps illiterate,
and, though the Verdi family had been property owners in the region of Le Roncole for several generations, his father, Carlo, was an impoverished tavern keeper and seller of wine
and groceries. Yet by the age of seven a spinet
had been provided for the young Verdi, and
soon thereafter he was substituting for his
first teacher and music master, the village organist Baistrocchi.2Upon the latter's death in
1823, Verdi was sent to live with a friend of
his father's in the neighboring town of Busseto
so that he could attend the ginnasio there. It is
clear, as Matz points out, that Carlo Verdi
recognized his son's talents and did, at considerable sacrifice, what was in his power to nurture them. It is also clear that Verdi received
as good an education as a provincial town like
Busseto could provide.
By 1825, he was officially the organist in
Le Roncole, and his earnings from this position helped pay the cost of his lodgings. We do
not know how Verdi reacted to his early independence and separation from his parents. He
later referred to these years as a "hard time"
but that probably refers more to the poverty
and work than to his emotional state; he did,
after all, see his parents regularly and such
separations for the future welfare of the first
son were probably not uncommon. What is
most significant, however, is that during the

2My account of Verdi's life is based primarily on Frank

Walker, The Man Verdi (New York, 1962; hereafter cited
as "Walker"), and to a lesser degree on Carlo Gatti, Verdi
(New York, 1955). Also, for the earliest period and the
background of the Verdi family the work of Mary Jane
Matz is indispensable. See especially "Verdi: The Roots of
the Tree," Bollettino dell' istituto di studi verdiani 3
(1969), pp. 333-64.

111

GERALD A.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

years in Busseto Verdi acquired a second

father, one who became more important in his
life than his biological father.
Antonio Barezzi was a prosperous merchant and a passionate amateur musician, the
founder and president of Busseto's Philharmonic Society. He became interested in Verdi
quite early on; according to Gatti, he was consulted about the boy's education. In 1831,
Verdi moved into Barezzi's house, where he
had long since become virtually a member of
the family. Shortly thereafter, it became
apparent that Verdi and Margherita Barezzi
had fallen in love (her father was pleased) and
that the educational possibilities in Busseto
were exhausted. During his eight years there,
Verdi had continued as organist at Le Roncole,
copied parts for and directed rehersals of the
Philharmonic Society, played in concerts,
taught younger students in the school of
music, and had written a great variety of
music for a great variety of occasions. He had,
in short, gained so much practical musical experience that his teacher Provesi could regard
him as an equal. With Barezzi's active help,
Verdi obtained a scholarship for further study
and applied to the Conservatory of Milan. To
his abiding bitterness, his application was rejected and he studied instead with a private
teacher, Lavigna. Most of his expenses at this
time were willingly borne by Barezzi, for the
scholarship covered only a small portion of
the costs. In both an emotional and a material
sense, Verdi owed much to Barezzi's generosity.
By twenty-one, Verdi had had his first
success in Milan, as a conductor, and there
was some discussion of an operatic project.
Clearly he had come a long way from the
hamlet of Le Roncole. The difference between
the route he travelled and that typical of his
predecessors and contemporaries in the primo
ottocento is striking. Very few had a rural
background,many had a musician for a father,
and almost all went to a conservatory in one

Bologna, Bottesini and Arditi at Milan, and

Poniatowski was at Florence. Verdi was a provincial in what was at that time an intellectually provincial country; if he was not
quite the peasant he claimed to be, he certainly stood outside the polite society whose
conservative taste dominated the arts. Verdi
was conservative, too, of course, in his acceptance and use of the musical forms and dramatic conventions of the day. But he was
scarcely genteel. It may well be that his vigor
and his vulgarity (the word is meant literally),
his status as an outsider, and the unhappy turn
his life took at the start of his operatic career
were crucial factors in keeping him from the
derivative superficialities of his contemporaries. At the very least, I believe these factors were crucial to Verdi's distinctiveness as
an operatic dramatist.
The completion of Verdi's studies and his
subsequent employment as Busseto's maestro
di musica made it possible for Verdi and Margherita Barezzi to marry in May 1836. Their
first child, Virginia, was bom in March 1837,
their second, Icilio, in July 1838. During this
time Verdi was occupied with his official
duties, but he was also making efforts to have
an opera of his performed, efforts which culminated in the production of Oberto in
November of 1839.
By the time of Oberto's premiere, an appalling series of tragedies had already begun
for Verdi. In August 1838 Virginia died, in October 1839 Icilio died, like his sister in his
second year, and then in June 1840 Margherita
died. Verdi had earlier experienced significant
losses: his teachers Provesi (in 1833) and
Lavigna (in 1836), both of whom were important to him personally as well as professionally, and (also in 1833) his only sister,
Giuseppa, aged seventeen. But these losses
were mild compared to the disasters which
deprivedhim of his entire family in a period of
less than two years. The effects were profound
and enduring. Accompanied by his father-in-

of the major musical centers of Italy. At an age

when Verdi was a village organist and attended to the musical needs of his town, Bellini, Mercadante, Coccia, the Ricci brothers
and Petrella were students at the Naples conservatory, Rossini and Donizetti were at

law, he returned immediately to Busseto,

"crushed," in a friend's words, and "reduced
... almost to the point of mental aberration."3

112

3Gatti, Verdi, p. 51.

Naturally, the grief moderated in time, but it

never entirely passed. In 1845, well launched
in his career, Verdi wrote, "Physically I am
well, but my mind is black, always black, and
will be so until I have finished with this career
that I abhor. And afterwards?It's useless to delude oneself. It will always be black. Happiness does not exist for me."4
Eight years later he wrote to his long-time
correspondent, the Countess Maffei, "They
say this opera [I1 Trovatore] is too sad, and
that there are too many deaths in it. But after
all, everything in life is death! What else is
there?"' He speaks in another letter to the
Countess at this time of the "destiny, which
in strange ways robs me one by one of everything I love'" and much later, in 1867, "This
is an ill-fated year for me, like 1840!! For two
months I have heard of nothing but deaths and
misfortunes of every kind."' The same year,
the year of Barezzi's death, Verdi asked a
friend to locate the graves of his wife and son,
but they could not be found. He added at that
time a lock of Barezzi's hair to the marriage
rings, two pieces of jewelry and a strand of
Margherita's hair he kept in a small box on
which he had written "Mementos of my poor
family. "
Some forty years after the events, Verdi's
grief is vividly conveyed in the autobiographical statement Giulio Ricordi induced him to
set down:
But now there began the most terrible series of misfortunes for me. At the beginning of April my little
boy fell ill . . . and the poor little fellow wasted
slowly away in the arms of his mother who went
nearly mad with grief. But this was not enough. A
few days later my little daughter sickened in her
turn, and this child too was taken from us! And
even this was not all. During the first days of June
my young helpmate herself was seized with an
acute encephalitis, and on the nineteenth of June,
1840, the third coffin was carried out of my house.

I was alone! ... alone! ... In a little over two

months I had lost three loved ones. My whole family was gone. And in this terrible anguish of soul, to
avoid breaking the engagement I had contracted, I
was compelled to write an entire comic opera!8
The inaccuracies in Verdi's report, as much
as the words themselves, suggest that the
wound had not healed. At the end of his life,
the theme still sounded: "There is a comfort,
among all those which I lacked, which would
have meant more to me than any other." And
finally, on the eve of the anniversary of the death

of his second wife, with whom he had lived for

fifty years, he wrote to a friend, "Tomorrow...
is a dire day for me ... but you have devoted and
loving children around you, while I am alone
and indescribably sad."9
"Alone and indescribably sad"!':these feelings were perhaps most intense when Verdi
was a young man and a very old man, but after

1840 they seem a fundamental aspect of his

nature. He had never been a sanguine or easygoing person, but the loss of his family
confirmed and deepened his melancholic and
brooding side. Happiness had proved an illu-

sion and the doom of his love had left a void

which, it appears, was never filled. Many

writers have suggested that these experiences
influenced Verdi's choice and handling of his
dramatic material. This effect was, I believe,

even more pervasive than has been generally

recognized.
The personal catastrophe was followed in
a short while by a professional catastrophe,
the utter failure of Verdi's second opera, Un
Giorno di regno, in 1840. After the moderate

success of Oberto, Verdi and Merelli, the impresario at La Scala, agreed to a contract for
three additional operas during the next two
years. The first of these was to have been a
serious opera, but Verdi was not taken with
the libretto, so that when Merelli found that

he needed instead an opera buffa for the autumn season, Verdi agreed to the change.
4Walker, p. 181.
SCharles Osborne, ed., Letters of Giuseppe Verdi (London,
1971), p. 89.
6George Martin, Verdi, His Music, Life and Times (New
York, 1963), p. 289.
7Franz Werfel, ed., Verdi: The Man in His Letters (New
York, 1942), p. 247.

Again there was a problem with the libretto;

none of those Merelli had in stock were to

8Ibid., pp. 86-87.

9Gatti, Verdi, p. 350.

113

GERALD A.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

Verdi's liking. He selected what he considered

the best of the lot, but, for the only time in his
career,he set a subject which was not really of
his own choosing and he set the libretto as it
was. It was during the composition of Un
Giorno di regno that his wife died. Merelli,
probably with good intentions, would not release him from the contract, and Verdi's only
comic opera until Falstaff was first performed
at La Scala in September 1840, less than three
months after Margherita's death. It was a
fiasco. The audience, Verdi bitterly recalled
nineteen years later, "slaughtered the work of
a poor ailing young man working under pressure and heartbrokenby a terrible catastrophe.
All this was known but it in no way restrained
their discourtesy ... I don't intend to condemn the public; I allow its severity, I accept
its whistles on condition that I'm not asked to
be grateful for its applause."10
He decided to give up composing. In the
autobiographical note quoted above, he says
that "with my mind tormented by my domestic misfortunes" and "embittered by the failure of my work ... I decided never to compose
This is something of an exaggeration,
again.""11
for he remained in Milan, supervised a production of Oberto in Genoa and wrote new
music for that production and a revival at La
Scala. But he did persuade Merelli to release
him from his contract. Thus Verdi's operatic
career, which had already begun quite late by
the standards of his day, was stalled at its beginning.
Fortunately, Merelli seems never to have
doubted that he had a winner, and the story of
how he induced Verdi to undertake Nabucco
is well known. The overwhelming success of
the opera at its premiere in 1842 was significant for Verdi in many ways. It established
his reputation as a leading young composer
and created the demand for new works which
was to remain constant virtually until his
death. It permitted him an uncommon degree
of independence in his choice of subjects and
in his dealings with librettists, performers,
1OJulianBudden, The Operas of Verdi from Oberto to

Rigoletto (New York, 1973), p. 72.

"Quoted from Walker, p. 34.
114

publishers and impresarios, an independence

which grew with time. This is not to say that
Verdi was free of the many constraints imposed on composers by the system of opera
production in the primo ottocento; but it was
the case that, from his third opera on, he was
in a position to assert his will in artistic and
dramatic matters. With a few exceptions, the
post-Nabucco operas can be taken as direct
expressions of Verdi's decisions and intentions. It is significant that, in their next contract, Merelli left the specification of the composer's fee to Verdi; his financial security and
eventual prosperity also began in 1842. Finally, his entrance into Milanese intellectual
circles, and particularly his friendship with
the Maffeis, resulted from the success of
Nabucco. In time, Verdi became a cosmopolitan and sophisticated person, but it is important to remember that until the age of 30 his
social, cultural, and intellectual experience
had been quite limited. Following Nabucco,
his world suddenly enlarged greatly and continued to expand thereafter. Though Oberto,
Un Giorno di regno and some early songs
should not be discounted, Verdi's own assessment seems just: "With this opera . . . my
artistic career began."'12

In the nine years between Nabucco and

Rigoletto, Verdi, despite periods of illness and
consequent inactivity, wrote twelve new
operas and firmly established his reputation as
Italy's foremost composer. Certainly part of
the special enthusiasm his operas aroused was
due to the patriotic meanings Italian audiences perceived in them, but far more significant was the realization that the old forms
had been revitalized by a new vigor and passion. Verdi, however, derived little pleasure
from his successes or his growing stature.
Composition took a toll on his health in the
form of chronic stomach and throat problems,
and he intensely disliked the world of the
theatre and its concommitant dealings with
singers, impresarios, and publishers. He
looked forward to an early retirement after he

12Charles Osborne, The Complete Operas of Verdi (Lon-

don, 1969), p. 42.

If any single opera can be regarded as a

turning point in Verdi's career, it is Macbeth.
Verdi clearly saw it as a very special work,
taking an exceptionally active and demanding
role in the preparation of the libretto, the details of staging, and the rehearsal of the performers. He made it clear to everyone concerned that this was no conventional piece,
but rather one in which all elements had to be

more significantly still, it was at this time

that Verdi first proposed contractual prohibitions on altering his scores.14 But nothing
speaks more eloquently of his regard for the
opera than its dedication to his father-in-law,
Barezzi:"Formany years I have intended to dedicate an opera to you who have been my father,
my benefactor, and my friend. Here now is
this Macbeth which is dearer to me than all
my other operas, and which I therefore deem
more worthy of being presented to you. I offer
it from my heart; accept it in the same way,
let it be witness of my eternal remembrance
and the gratitude and love of your most affectionate Verdi."15The bond between the two
men never seriously weakened, for they had
become in any meaningful psychological sense
father and son.
After the enthusiastic reception of Macbeth by the Florentine audience in March
1847, Verdi resumed work on I Masnadieri,
the second of his operas based on a Schiller
play. It is worth noting that his first four
operas were not based on sources of any great
significance, but thereafter-and particularly
in the mid-forties--Verdi regularly selected
his subjects from the work of major literary
figures important to the Romantic movement
(Hugo, Schiller, Byron, Voltaire, and, of
course, Shakespeare). This undoubtedly reflects the influence of the Count Maffei and
the intellectual circles in which Verdi moved
as well as that increasing seriousness of artistic purpose previously noted. There is little
evidence that he or his librettists grasped or
accepted the deeply anti-bourgeois, revolutionary, irrational and anarchic elements in
northern Romanticism; consider, for example,
how those elements are trivialized in Ernani,
say, or I Masnadieri. But if the sentimentalisch and neurotic remained foreign to him,
a relationship between his work and the progressive intellectual currents of his day was
nevertheless established through his choice of

subordinated to the drama. As Budden points

out, after Macbeth Verdi no longer provided
alternative arias for the benefit of singers;

14Julian Budden, "La Battaglia

had succeeded in becoming rich. In fact, it is

clear that Verdi was driven during this decade
by a passion for financial success; Walker describes it as "an almost frenzied search for the
wealth that alone could bring him independence." Strepponi knew this well and in 1853
cautioned him, "Sometimes I fear that the
love of money will re-awaken in you and condemn you to many further years of
drudgery."13

Given these circumstances, it is not surprising that there are a good many meretricious and conventional passages in these
operas, and that few if any of them can be considered a satisfying whole aesthetically or dramatically. Yet the most impressive aspects of
Verdi's career during these years are the manifest growth of his musical and dramatic resources, his increasing seriousness of purpose, and
his venturesomeness. Since the subjects he set
were entirely of his own considered choosing,
the great variety of theme, setting, emotional
tone and musical treatment in these twelve
operas must reflect Verdi's interests and aspirations at the same time. He generally resisted
the temptation to repeat past successes; rather
he seems to have sought opportunities to expand his expressive means and to refashion to
his needs the conventions he inherited. Despite his "love of money," his artistic ambitions made the "years in the galleys" a period
of steady, if irregular, deepening of the emotional and psychological substance of his
operas.
II

di Legnano: Its Unique

Characterwith Special Reference to the Finale of Act I,"

Atti del III0 Congresso internazionale

"1Walker,pp. 180, 182.

di studi verdiani

(Parma, 1974), p. 73.

"SBudden,Operas, pp. 274-75.

115

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

I9TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

subjects. By 1847, Verdi's progress from provincial Italian musician to composer of international significance and aspiration had been
accomplished.
If the year 1847 was of particular importance in Verdi's musical career, it was of even
greater importance in his personal life, for by
the end of that year, he and Giuseppina Strepponi were deeply in love. They had first met
several years before (she sang Abigaille at the
first performance of Nabucco and helped Verdi's early career in a number of ways) but had
seen each other only rarely until 1847. Strepponi, after an early retirement (at age thirtyone) brought on by vocal difficulties, established herself in Paris as a singing teacher in
Fall 1846. Verdi had written a letter of introduction to the Escudier brothers for her and
she had inquired about him in letters written
early in 1847, so it is not surprising that they
met when Verdi returned to Paris to work on
Jrusalem. Barezzi met and was charmed by
her that winter. By the summer of 1848 she
and Verdi were living together in the country
at Passy. They were to remain together, eventually as a married couple, for the next fortynine years, though not always in undisturbed
happiness.
Strepponi was an extraordinary woman,
passionate, perceptive, witty, and generous;
there can be little doubt of the profound effect
she had on Verdi the man and musician. But
when they met in Paris, she was passing
through a prolonged crisis. She had made her
debut in 1834 and by the next year her career
was well launched. From the start she was
clearly an outstanding and much admired
singer, and her early vocal decline, which was
already evident at the time of Nabucco, was
probably attributable directly to a combination of overwork and emotional stress. Her
father had died in 1832, so that she became in
time the financial mainstay of her mother, sister, and two brothers. To that burden was
added the support of an illegitimate child in

identity carefully. Her acute distress during

this period is evident in her letters, but her
financial needs obliged her to continue an excessively heavy schedule of performances. Finally in 1842 her health broke down and she
did not sing again for more than a year.
She returned with some success in 1843,
prompting the impresario Cirelli to write,
"God grant that it [her success] may continue
and that, giving up the crazy love affairs that
compromise her, she may begin to think of
her future." But neither her voice nor her
physical and mental condition could maintain
a comeback: by late 1844 a critic referred to
her "continual distraction" on stage and she
had to be replaced in some roles by another
prima donna. Her last performances and her
last successes were in Nabucco early in 1846,
by which time she had decided to try her fortunes in Paris. The closing years of her career,
then, were exceedingly painful ones, and it is
significant that this once-celebrated singer
seems to have retained no mementos at all of
the splendid days of her past.16
There is no way of knowing how Verdi
came to grips with the knowledge of Strepponi's affairs, but it is difficult to believe that
he, or any Italian man of the nineteenth century, however understanding and liberated,
could entirely have avoided feelings of jealousy and uneasiness about such a past. Surely
he knew too much about her to believe that
she was just a poor innocent who had been
led astray by the sophisticated and amoral
world of the theater. In fact, his operas at
this time and certain puzzling aspects of the
relationship between the two suggest that
Verdi could not dispel his ambivalence easily.
Strepponi's feelings are much clearer: she
viewed herself as a fallen woman who had
been rescued from a desperate position by
Verdi's love and she, in turn, loved him passionately. But in a letter of 1853, the one in
which Strepponi warned Verdi against the return of his old love of money, we can also see

1838 and another in 1841 (and there was probably a miscarriage in between). It appears that
the father, most likely the tenor Moriani, did
not act honorably toward Strepponi; but because he was a married man, she protected his

the complexity of their relationship. "We shall

have no children (since God, perhaps, wishes

116

"1Thisoutline of Strepponi'scareerfollows Walker,ch. 5.

to punish me for my sins, in depriving me of

any legitimate joy before I die). Well then, not
having children by me, I hope you won't cause
me sorrow, by having any by another
woman.""17What provoked this surprising reference to the possibility of infidelity is a mystery; it is but one of the puzzling aspects of
their relationship.
This letter of 1853 was written to Verdi in
Rome where he had gone for the production of
II Trovatore and certainly reflects her loneliness as well as her feelings of vulnerability.
Despite the distress it caused her, Verdi did
not permit Strepponi to accompany him on
the various trips his career required. Why? To
prevent the gossip that her presence would
likely have evoked? To keep her away from
the environment of her past? To remain unencumbered during the difficult period of preparing a first performance? Or did he feel a
need to preserve his feeling of freedom and autonomy? Certainly it was not the case that
Verdi was unaware of her feelings; it was evidently a matter of regular discussion between
them, and her letters to him are as forthright
as they are charming and poignant. He would
also have known that remaining alone in Busseto or later at Sant'Agata was particularly
distressing to her. But then it is also not clear
why Verdi chose to flaunt his scandalous relationship with Strepponi before the Bussetani.
Matz notes a similarity in this behavior to
that of Rossini: "Both men succeeded in forcing their mistresses upon their outragedfellow
citizens, in maneuvers which served the ego of
both men, and almost certainly injured both
women psychologically."'18
Perhaps it is fair to describe Verdi's actions as serving his ego, but before concluding
that he was so egocentric, it is well to consider that before moving with Strepponi to
Busseto he had offered to live elsewhere with
her, and further that Sant'Agata and its surrounding region had been the home of the
Verdi family for generations. He was, then, re-

turning to his paese and Strepponi would

surely have been sensitive to that fact. Verdi
might well have been genuinely surprised by
the reaction of the Bussetani, but being Verdi
the outrage of his neighbors would hardly
have moved him to alter his behavior. Quite
the contrary, a stubborn refusal to compromise in any way with their conventional
narrow-mindedness and an increasing secretiveness and isolation are precisely what
one would have expected of him. Nevertheless
it was Strepponi who suffered most-she was
the outsider and the most vulnerable target of
scorn. Yet her dependence on Verdi and her
need for him, which are so manifest in her letters and which can only have been increased
by their circumstances, did not move him
from his course, nor induce him to take steps
to ameliorate her distress. After the production of La Traviata in Venice (1853), Verdi
finally relented; subsequently they were rarely
parted, and, following Strepponi's wishes, they
often spent winters away from Sant'Agata. In
the usual absence of direct documentary evidence of Verdi's motives, the reasons for the
change must remain a matter of conjecture.
Obscurity likewise covers other aspects of
their relationship. Why did Verdi and Strepponi wait eleven years to marry? Walker argues that Strepponi "felt herself unworthy of
Verdi" and that he "had almost certainly offered" to marry her.19That would be consistent with certain aspects of er character, but
Verdi's behavior gives equally good reason to
believe that it was he who did not wish to
marry. Might he, for example, have seen it as a
concession to external pressure, as a constraint on his freedom? To further add to the
mystery, there is evidence that by 1856 Strepponi was using Verdi as her surname, and he
actually calls her his wife in a letter of 1857.
In this connection Strepponi's letter of 1853
quoted before is particularly interesting, first
because it suggests that they had wanted to
have children and second, because she speaks
of the "legitimate joy" that those children
would have provided. This certainly suggests

17Walker,p. 209.
"1MaryJane Matz, "Verdi and the 'Total Theater' of Our
Time," Atti 3 (1974), p. 305.

g1Walker,p. 205.

117

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

that by the early '50s they considered themselves to be, in effect, married. In light of this,
their seemingly sudden and unmotivated decision to marry in 1859 is as unexplained as
the long delay which preceded it.
The puzzles about their relationship by no
means cease with their marriage. Walker
notes that in 1860, despite compelling reasons to stay at Sant'Agata through the winter,
Verdi decided to spend two months in Genoa,
leaving Giuseppina behind, though she was
neither well nor in good spirits at the time.
There is no evidence of any preceding unpleasantness between them; Giuseppina in a
letter to a friend suggests that Verdi's motive
was "a strange desire to explore the world." In
fact, he returned after five days, but the incident prompts Walker to observe, "One does
not know what arrangement there was between them." Much earlier, in a remarkable letter to Barezzi of 1852, Verdi wrote
"Who knows what relationship exists between
us? What affairs? What ties? What claims I
have on her, and she on me?"20 This is Verdi
in his most deliberately obfuscating style, but
those questions cannot fail to arise in the
mind of anyone seeking to understand their
life together.
However, there is no reason to doubt the
strength of their fundamental attachment to
each other. Giuseppina's letters reveal again
and again her passionate and consuming devotion to Verdi; they are an eloquent and moving testimony to her profound love. Verdi, of
course, was far more reticent about his feelings, but there are few finer tributes to a
woman than in that letter to Barezzi:
In my house therelives a lady,free,independent,a
lover like myself of solitude,possessinga fortune
that sheltersher from all need. Neither I nor she
owes to anyoneat all an accountof our actions...
in my house she is entitled to as much respectas
myself-more even;andno one is allowedto forget
that on any account. And finally she has every
right, both on account of her conduct and her
character,to the considerationshe never fails to

Though Verdi was often hard on her, at

only one period in their long life together is
there evidence of a serious estrangement between them. Precisely what happened in the
decade between 1867 and 1877 is uncertain. It
is clear that Verdi was ill-tempered, morose
and unsettled much of the time, that he and
Giuseppina had frequent quarrels,and that she
felt rejected by him and was intensely jealous
of his relations with the singer Teresa Stolz
whom he had met in 1868. Giuseppina's distress, resentment and despair are evident in
her letters:
Permit my exacerbatedheart thereforeto find at
least the dignity of refusal,and may God forgive
you the most acute and humiliatingwound you
have dealt me. [To Verdi,1869]
I-in profounddiscouragement I tell you this-I no
longer believe in anything or anybody, almost. I
have suffered so many and such cruel disillusionment as to become disgusted with life. [To Countess Maffei, 1874]
I don't know if there's anything in it, or not ... I do
know that since 1872 there have been periods of assiduity and attentions on your part that no woman
could interpret in a more favorable sense ... You
know how you have repaid me with harsh, violent,
biting words! You can't control yourself ... Think
sometimes that I, your wife, despising past
rumours, am living at this very moment a*trois, and
that I have the right to ask, if not for your caresses,
at least for your consideration. [To Verdi, 1876]
Since fate has willed that that which was my whole
happiness in this life should now be irreparably
lost ... [To Verdi, 1876]
But the fever subsided and by 1878 they had
begun a final, serene phase of their life together. "To my Verdi, with my former affection and veneration!" she inscribed on a photograph that year, and in a letter of the next

year she wrote, in a way reminiscent of much

earlier times, "I still love you with a crazy affection and sometimes when I am in a bad
mood it's a sort of loving fever, unknown to

show to others.21

the doctors."22

20Ibid., pp. 227, 204.

21Ibid., p. 204.

2The excerpts in this paragraph are quoted from Walker,

pp. 405, 419, 431-32, 435, 440, 442.

118

III
Whether Verdi did or did not have an affair
with Stolz is as difficult as it is pointless to
determine.23 What is important is the evidence
of profound turmoil in the composer's life in
the period between Don Carlos (1867) and
Otello (1887), a period which, despite the continued growth of his musical powers, saw only
two new major works, Aida (1871) and the
Requiem Mass (1874). The breaking of his
close friendship with Mariani provides further
evidence of his state of mind in the early
'70s.24 This painful incident shows Verdi at
his worst: extreme in his demands for loyalty,
easy to take offense, intransigent and unsympathetic, harsh and remote in manner. These
are not entirely new characteristics -they
simply appear in exaggerated form during
these years. Similarly, there is an intensified
bitterness toward the public and critics.
Look how I've been treated by the press ... Stupid
criticism and praise more stupid still ... No one
has wished to point out my intentions; absurdities
and stupidities all the time, and at bottom a sort of
spite against me ... No one has said to me "Thanks,
dog!" [January,1873]
After twenty-five years absence from La Scala I was
hissed afterthe first act of La Forzadel destino. After
Aida endless chatter; that I was no more the Verdiof
Un Ballo in maschera (thatBallo that was hissed the
first time it was performed at La Scala); ... that I
didn't know how to write for the singers; ... and
that, finally I was an imitator of Wagner!!!A fine
result, after a careerof thirty-five years, to end up as
an imitator!!! ... I can't take as anything but a joke
your sentence: "The whole salvation of the theatre
and of art is in your hands!!" Oh no! Never fear,
composers will never be lacking, and I will myself
repeat what Boito said in a toast to Faccio after his
first opera:"... . and perhapsthe man is bornwho will
sweep the altar" ... Amen! [The reference is to an
unforgotten cut of twelve years earlier.]25
It is certainly no surprise that Verdi had
cided that he would write no more for
public: "When I want to make music I
make it in my own room, without hearing
23See Walker, ch. 8 for a detailed account.
24See Walker, ch. 7.

25Lettersquoted from Walker, pp. 469, 469-70.

dethe
can
the

verdicts of the learned or the imbeciles!"

(1875).26
Verdi's discouragement and bitterness are
hardly consistent with the immense critical,
popular and financial success of Aida. Further,
his concern for the health of Italian opera had,
if anything, increased over the years. Why,
then, his decision that "the account is settled"? I believe that the evidence indicates
that during his mid-fifties and sixties, Verdi
passed through a psychological crisis which affected all phases of his life, personal and professional. From the time of the loss of his family, Verdi never seems to have been at ease
with himself or his environment, not even, as
we have seen, with the most stable and dependable part of his world, Giuseppina. Although he could be good-humored, affectionate, and generous, a sense of restlessness and
of intense emotion barely controlled is always
present. At times his actions appear designed
to prevent too close a look inside. "I run all
day from the house to the fields, from the
fields to the house, until, when evening
comes, dead tired, I throw myself into bed, in
order to begin all over again next day" (1858).27
There can be no mistaking the significance
of Sant'Agata to Verdi, but the periods of intense physical activity in the fields, described
by Giuseppina in a letter of 1857 as "a mania,
madness, rage, fury-anything
you like that
is exaggerated" point to something other than
a love of farming and a wish for the tranquillity and solitude of the fields as their source.28
The unhealed wounds of his past had left
Verdi vulnerable, prey to despairing thoughts,
sensitive to the inevitable dangers of close
attachment, and consequently self-protective
and demanding in his personal relationships.
He had long since bid farewell to content and
the tranquil mind.
In 1867, both of Verdi's fathers died, Carlo
Verdi in January during the rehearsal of Don
Carlos and Barezzi in July after the opera's
premiere. Relations between the two Verdis
had not been close for many years-if, indeed,
26Ibid., p. 470.
27Ibid., p. 221.

28Ibid.,p. 219.

119

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC

they had ever been close. After his early successes had earned him the resources to do so,
Verdi provided quite well for his parents, but
there are clear signs of conflict between him
and his father after his return to Busseto with
Strepponi. In 1851, Verdi realized completely
his intention "to be separate from my father
both in my domestic and business affairs,"
partly by means of moving his parents to a
farm at Vidalenzo, a short distance away from
Sant'Agata. Shortly after the writing of
this letter and the move to Vidalenzo, Verdi's
mother died. All reports agree on the strength
of the bond between them; Verdi's grief,
perhaps heightened by guilt, was intense. One
does not get a sense of comparably intense
feeling at the time of Carlo's death. Again, a
letter of Giuseppina is illuminating: "Verdi is
extremely grieved and I, in spite of the fact
that I have lived very little with him, and that
we were at the antipodes in our way of thinking, feel the keenest regret-perhaps as keen
as that of Verdi."29
In contrast, with the exception of one brief
period of misunderstanding, the affection between Verdi and Barezzi deepened over the
years. Barezzi seems not to have objected to
the liaison with Strepponi and indeed rapidly
grew to love his "most affectionate quasidaughter" (her phrase). Both Verdi and
Giuseppina experienced an acute sense of loss
at his death. Earlier,when it was clear that the
old man was dying, Verdi wrote, "You see
how generous, how good and loving he was!
I've known many men but never one better!
He has loved me as much as his sons, and I
have loved him as my father."30These two
deaths cannot have failed to stir in Verdi
many painful reflections and memories. It was
after Barezzi's death that he attempted to locate the graves of his wife and son.
One consequence of the death of Carlo
Verdi was that his niece, Filomena, later
called Maria, who had been living with him,
was adopted by the Verdis. She was (and con-

in 1869, Verdi, despite the pain it caused

Giuseppina, sent Maria away to boarding
school. This may have been a sensible decision but in the context of Verdi's life it is
nevertheless curious. One might expect that a
man who never ceased to grieve the loss of his
children would have seized an opportunity to
compensate for that loss. He could likewise
have done so earlier by taking Strepponi's son
Camillino into his home, but there is no indication that this was ever considered. To have
adopted another man's illegitimate son would
surely have been an extraordinaryact, and it is
unlikely, moreover, that Strepponi, though
she maintained regular contact with the boy
until 1852, would have desired such an intrusion of her unhappy past into her new life.
Nevertheless it remains the case that in
neither instance did Verdi seek directly to fill
the void in his life.
It may well be, however, that in his relationships first with Marianiand then with Boito
Verdi came closest to recovering a son. Although Marianiwas only eight years his junior,
Verdi clearly did not regard him merely as a
friend; he orderedhim about, criticized or advised him freely and often treated him as an irresponsible boy. There was a great deal of affection between them and Verdi thought him
a great musician, but the relationship was not
that of two equal adults. The intensity of Verdi's feelings at the time of their break seems
to reflect a sense of disappointed hopes and of
personal betrayal which was quite out of
proportion to Mariani's behavior. He had
clearly expected more of Mariani than was
reasonable. Fortunately Boito, with his more
subtle and mature intelligence, later won for
himself, in Walker's phrase, "a truly paternal
affection." It is doubtful that Verdi could have
had, in his last fifteen years, a more devoted
son.
Verdi was in his mid-fifties when his
fathers died. This is a period which under the
best of circumstances can be difficult, a time

tinued to be) a source of great joy to them, but

when a sense of waning powers can become

acutely troubling. Verdi's status as a leading
European composer was never more secure,
but that status also made him a special target
of critical scrutiny, particularly by younger art-

"Walker, p. 268.
"3Martin,Verdi, p. 432.

120

ists. He was to a degree puzzled and bothered

by new musical trends and the growing
influence of German models on Italian musical life. The lukewarm success of Don Carlos,
his most ambitious, subtle, and complex opera
to date, was disappointing, and Verdi had to
contend moreover with the charge that he had
become an imitator. The political situation,
too, had taken a depressing turn which undoubtedly served to exacerbate Verdi's bitterness at the failure of the project to prepare a
composite Mass in memory of Rossini. It was,
of course, during this period that his relationships with Strepponi and Mariani deteriorated.
Even the triumph of Aida left a bitter taste,
for, as we have seen, Verdi seems to have been
more affected by what he regarded as insults
than by the virtually unanimous praise the
opera received.
The act of composition had remained physically trying for Verdi through the years,
and he periodically wrote, not without a little
self-dramatization, of ending the career he
claimed to detest. It appears that after Aida
this decision was actually made-motivated,
in part, by a deep, if irrational, anger at the
public, the critics, and the musical world at
large, which in his view failed fully to appreciate him yet never ceased in its demands. I
suspect that Verdi had also come to see himself as out of step with the times, too old and
perhaps too uncertain of the reception of his
work to risk presenting himself again to the
public. Lurking behind the anger may well
have been the genuine self-doubts of a vulnerable and aging man for whom the struggle had
become pointless.
Of course, Verdi did write another major,
though non-operatic, work two years after the
premiere of Aida, but that was prompted by
the death of a man he regarded almost as a
saint. The writing of the Requiem was an act
of patriotism as well, and one which served to
atone for the shame of the failure of the Rossini Mass. Though both works of this period
clearly reveal Verdi's ever increasing technical
mastery, they are very different in character.
Aida is a triumph of workmanship, but compared to the complexities and subtleties of
Don Carlos it is a reversion to the more

straightforward and conventional characterizations of earlier operas; only the jealous Amneris is portrayed with the acute dramatic
penetration of which Verdi was manifestly capable. The drama, in sum, seems externalized.
The Requiem, however, unmistakably reflects
the circumstances in which it was written;
the work is permeated with grief, uncertainty,
and despair. As many have noted, it is not an
abstract cosmic drama, but an intimately personal one, continuous with the psychological
and spiritual atmosphere of the later operas.
Verdi must, at the time, have regarded it as
his final public statement.
During the next five years Verdi remained
actively involved in the performance of his
works, conducting the Requiem Mass in the
major musical centers of Europe, for example.
But he firmly rejected efforts to induce him to
return to composition. By 1878, however, the
turmoil and exacerbated feelings of the past
decade had eased greatly and one senses a
readiness on Verdi's part to resume his career.
It still took something of a conspiracy, organized by Giulio Ricordi, to launch the next
operatic project. Ricordi chose the circumstances and the bait astutely; after a
very successful benefit performance of the Requiem Mass in Milan, which was followed by
a public outpouring of affection for the composer, the idea of setting Otello with Boito as
librettist was suggested. Verdi's reaction was
one of great interest coupled with great caution, but by 1880 Verdi and Boito were in
correspondence about the libretto. Clearly,
though, as Verdi's committment to Otello increased, his doubts about his capacity to succeed in the undertaking likewise increased.
"I'm becoming too deeply involved," he
wrote, "things are going too far and I don't
want to be constrained to do what I don't wish
to do."31In fact, what was at issue seems less
what Verdi wished to do than what he believed himself able to do.
The successful revision of Simon Boccanegra in 1881 was undoubtedly reassuring
to Verdi both in a personal sense and with re31Walker,p. 478.

121

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

gardto the possibilities of working with Boito,

yet it was not until 1884 that he actually
began composition. Progress was slow and
fitful, but finally, some seven years after he
had received the first draft of the libretto,
Verdi completed the score. Otello had an
overwhelming success: those principles of Italian art which had guided Verdi's entire career
had been vindicated. The considerable income
derived from the opera was dedicated to charity, notably a hospital for the commune of Villanova d'Ardaand a home for aged musicians,
the Casa di Riposo in Milan, which Verdi once
referred to as his greatest work. These are
characteristic acts of a man who, despite his
love of money and conservatism in many matters, had an acute sense of social justice
throughout his life.
The struggles which accompanied the creation of Otello were not repeated in the writing of Falstaff. Verdi responded at once with
enthusiasm to Boito's sketch for the libretto,
though he did raise questions about whether
"the enormous number of my years" would
permit completion of the project. He worried,
too, and continued to worry that work on
Falstaff would interfere with Boito's progress
on his own opera Nerone. But this time, the
questions seem perfunctory, and, most significantly, he wrote to Boito (July 1889),
"what joy to be able to say to the public:
'HERE WE ARE AGAIN!!! COME AND SEE
US!' ",32 The premiere on 9 February 1893 at
La Scala was again a triumph, a triumph
which Verdi, as he had done four years earlier,
insisted should be shared with Boito. And, indeed, without Boito's "voluntary servitude"
the two masterpieces of Verdi's old age cannot
be imagined.
Verdi's last two completed works, the Te
Deum and Stabat Mater, were written between 1895 and 1897. His interpretation of the
former was 'original and characteristic, for, in
contrast to the usual festive and joyous treatment of the hymn, Verdi was caught by its

IV
This account of Verdi's life, though it covers the span from birth to death, can in no
sense be considered inclusive or fully-rounded.
It is not intended as a short biography,nor certainly as a case study or a psychological analysis of his artistic career. Rather I have focused
on particular aspects of Verdi's character and
personal history which relate most directly to
his choice and treatment of those dramatic
themes which recur most consistently in his
operas. My object is to try to see how the personality and the experiences of the man Verdi
led to a metamorphosis of the Italian romantic
melodrama into a unique, personal oeuvre
concerned with primary and fundamental
human relationships.
Verdi was essentially a traditional composer, a willing product of the primo ottocento. The conventions established by Rossini and elaborated by Bellini, Donizetti, and
Mercadante permeate his early works and provide the raw materials from which he refined
his mature style. Consequently, precedents
can be found for virtually every aspect, musical and dramatic, of Verdi's work. This is important to keep in mind while considering
Verdi's most characteristic dramatic themes,

dark side, "Humanity believes in the ludex

venturus, invokes Him in Salvum fac, and
ends with a prayer, Dignare Domine die

for on the surface there is little to distinguish

his subjects and librettos from those of his
immediate predecessors and contemporaries.

32Osborne,

122

The Complete Operas, p. 474.

isto-moving, sad to the point of terror. All

that has nothing to do with victories and
coronation..

."33

In November 1897 Giusep-

pina died, and with her death and the subsequent performancesof the Pezzi Sacri in Milan, Verdi's career and life were ended. In his
last years, he was attended constantly by his
friends and his adopted daughter, Maria, and
her family. Work on the Casa di Riposo continued to engage his attention and, though
often in good spirits, he wondered to a friend,
"What am I doing still in this world?" In
January 1901 he suffered a fatal stroke. One
month later he was buried next to Giuseppina,
as he had requested, in the courtyard of the
Casa di Riposo.

33Walker, pp. 502.

Like other nineteenth-century Italian composers, he used the work of foreign writers as his
principal sources. The librettos are written in
the grandiloquent theatrical poetry of the day,
the plots are romantic and melodramatic, full
of outlaws, distressed ladies and implacable
villains, the settings are historical, usually
medieval or Renaissance, and the behavior of
the characters is rarely distinguished by its rationality. There are important exceptions to
this, which will be noted later, but the major
difference between Verdi and his contemporaries is the manner in which he treated
these conventions. Instead of a drama of plot
and situation, Verdi's is primarily a drama of
character in which the mainsprings of the action are inherent in the personalities and interrelationships of the actors. While maintaining the external forms, then, he internalized
and psychologized the drama and in so doing
gave expression to his personal view of human
affairs.
In what follows, I shall consider two major
groups of themes in Verdi's work, sexual love
and the relationships between parents and
children. The former is, of course, a staple of
Italian opera, indeed of all opera. The latter
has a centrality in Verdi's operas which has no
parallel in any other composer's work.
With the possible exception of Macbeth,
each of Verdi's operas includes a significant
love relationship, usually involving the primo
tenore and the prima donna soprano. Yet, as
William Weaver points out, there are surprisingly few love duets in Verdi.34In fact, if we
define a love duet as an extended number in
which a man and a woman celebrate their
mutual love, only the first act duets of Don
Carlos and Otello qualify, and neither is a
conventional representative of the genre. Several operas entirely lack a formal duet between the lovers. In Nabucco, Verdi excised a
duet between Ismaele and Fenena originally in
Solera's libretto; the duets between Elvira and

duettino, but its bars are sandwiched in between "Ah! si, ben mio" and its cabaletta;
and finally, in Falstaff Fenton and Nanetta
have fleeting amorous exchanges, but are
never permitted the luxury of a real duet. In
each of the remaining operas (excluding
Oberto and Un Giorno di regno), although the
tenor and soprano have a scena e duetto or a
duetto, an examination of their character and
settings shows them to be something other
than a mere exchange of tender sentiments.
In several operas, a conventional pattern of
the primo ottocento, denunciation-distressexplanation-reconciliation (or despair) occurs,
e.g. Attila, La Battaglia di Legnano, the second duets of H6l1ne and Henri in Les VWpres
siciliennes, and of Gabrielle and Amelia in
Simon Boccanegra. In others, the situation
prevents the fulfilment or even the continuation of the love in this world, e.g. I Lombardi,
I due Foscari, I Masnadieri, the final duets of
La Traviata, Les V~pres siciliennes, and Don
Carlos.
Another most interesting pattern is one
in which the heroine is distressed and conflicted by the hero's ardent avowals of love,
e.g., Giovanna d'Arco, Un Ballo in maschera, La Forza del destino, the second duet of
Don Carlos. In each of these cases the love is
requited but it is incompatible with other obligations. Several duets do not easily fit into
any of these admittedly rough groupings, but
they too are quite removed from what we
normally regard as a love duet. For example,
Weaver aptly describes the scena e duetto in
the last act of Stiffelio as a "divorce duet"; in
Rigoletto, there is no good reason to believe
that the Duke loves Gilda; and in Aida, the
first Radames-Aida duet consists of her attempt to seduce him away from his duty
while her father listens in to be sure that she
does hers. Even in the Fountainebleau scene,
Elisabeth does not know the identity of Don
Carlos until the end of the duet and, of course,

Emani are embedded within larger numbers,

and a similar situation occurs in Luisa Miller;
there can be no question of a love duet in
Macbeth; Manrico and Leonora sing a brief

their happiness is very short-lived. This duet

is unique in Verdi in the sense that nothing
has prepared either the lovers or the audience
for the sad disillusionment which occurs at
once. It is interesting to note as well that this
is one of the few Verdi operas in which we see
the first meeting of the lovers. One has to turn

34William Weaver, "Verdiand the Drama of Love,"Atti 3

(1974), pp. 523-28.

123

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

to the Puccini of Manon Lescaut, La Bohbme

and Madame Butterfly to find a composer
truly interested in portraying the process of
falling in love.
The first-act duet of Otello and Desdemona is unquestionably a full and wholehearted expression of mutual love, but it is
perhaps even farther from a conventional
tenor-sopranonumber than the examples cited
before. How often in opera does a mature,
married couple reminisce about the origins of
their love and passionately dedicate themselves to its contination? It is essential to the
drama that Otello and Desdemona are not
adolescents in the first flush of love, that they
are a husband and wife, two equals in love
who have given the most central parts of
themselves to each other. It is from this that
the deeply erotic character of the duet arises;
love, self and sexuality are fused. Thus when
Otello believes his wife unfaithful, his life is
rendered meaningless-he has been wounded
mortally, where he lives. Despite its celebration of love and its serene ending, then, the
duet is ultimately disquieting, not only because we know already of Iago's plots, but also
because Verdi uses the duet to delineate Otello's turbulent character and the extravagence
of his feelings. His outbursts at "Pingea
dell'armi

il fremito

..."

(so tellingly

con-

trasted with Desdemona's serene response)

and the overwhelming emotion of "Ah!la gioia
m'innonda si fieramente ..." show us a man
barely able to contain his passions. And Otello's lines begining "Tale e il gaudio dell'anima

che temo ..."

contain a presenti-

ment of the tragedy to come. The duet, then,

is far from a mere celebration of love, for it
establishes the dramatic and psychological
core of the drama and in so doing reveals the
tragic end in what seems a joyful beginning.
What accounts for this absence of
straightforwardlove duets in Verdi's operas?
Weaver concludes that the composer subordinated the theme of love to the necessities of
the drama as a whole. "There is rarely time for
heroes and heroines to linger over a single
emotion; the drama is too rich and demanding. As in life-but not always in the operas of
is only one problem.
other composers-love
Others are really more frequent, and more im124

portant."35 That is true to a degree and, as

Budden points out, Verdi's idea of drama was

essentially confrontational in nature.36
Nonetheless there are numerous instances
in which Verdi does permit his heroes and
heroines to linger over a single emotion, including love. It is typically in arias rather than
duets that he does so, however, e.g. "Ernani
involami," "Caro nome," "I1 balen del suo
sorriso," "De' miei bollenti spiriti," "La
rivedra nell'estasi," and "Celeste Aida." Furthermore, the baritone-sopranoduets of Luisa
Miller, Rigoletto, and Simon Boccanegra,
among others, are expansive, lyrical treatments of filial and paternal love which are far
from confrontational in character. Nor is it
evident that love duets are, as Weaver
suggests, inevitably dramatically static. The
example of Otello shows how they can establish critical aspects of character and, in fact,
define central dramatic themes. The same
point can be made about love arias; consider
how varied are the five arias cited above, how
surely each defines a distinct personality in a
specific dramatic context. It does not seem
reasonable to conclude, then, that the nature
of Verdi's dramaturgyprecluded conventional
love duets.
It also will not do to argue that love is a
relatively unimportant theme in Verdi's
operas. Though absent as a factor in Macbeth
and distinctly subsidiary in Nabucco and Attila, love motivates the drama or is the subject
of the drama in each of his other twenty-some
operas. In many of them, other themes are of
equal or greater significance, but in none
would the essential action remain unchanged
if the love relationship were excised. Even in
La Battaglia di Legnano, a frankly patriotic
piece d'occasion, the love triangle assumes a
prominence equal to the political events. In
sum, no theme is more prominent in Verdi's
work as a whole than that of sexual love.
Now it must be recognized that the operas
of Donizetti (though not of Bellini or Rossini)
provide precedents for several of the features
of Verdi's treatment of love. For example, unhappy endings abound in Donizetti's work,
3Ibid., p. 528.

38Budden, Operas, pp. 33-35.

love relationships may be absent or insignificant (as in Lucrezia Borgia, L'Assedio di

Calais or Maria Stuarda), and rarely are the
tenor and soprano secure in their love for very
long. The parallels are clearest in Verdi's
pre-Macbeth works, when he was most
strongly gripped by the modes of Donizettian
melodrama. But what in Donizetti so often
seems conventional becomes in Verdi truly
psychological--an expression of a personal
view of life. It has often been suggested, and
rightly, I think, that the prominence of
parent-offspringrelationships in Verdi's work
is a consequence of the loss of his children. It
is less often noted, however, that at that time
he also lost his wife, probably the most crushing blow of all, for not only did he love her
deeply, but it was at her death-which followed those of the children-that he was left
alone. Never of a sanguine temper, this experience can only have impressed upon Verdi
how transitory happiness is, how cruel and arbitrary fate can be, and how love exposes one
to the pain of loss.
I argued earlier that Verdi never recovered
from this great misfortune of his youth,
that it permanently colored his thinking and
emotional life, affecting even his relationship
with Giuseppina, whose love and devotion he
cannot have doubted on any reasonable
grounds. It also colored his operas: Verdi does
not present love as a happy state, but rather as
a prelude to grief and despair. Often it seems
more a malady than a blessing, and in such
characters as Silva, di Luna, Amelia, Don Carlos, or Otello, love becomes something of a
derangement of the emotions. The absence of
conventional love duets, then, is symptomatic
of Verdi's pervasive pessimism about the possibilities of love, for as he knew too well, happiness in love is an illusion.
There are, of course, several operas in
which the lovers are alive and together at the
end, for example Alzira and Simon Boccanegra, but with the exception of Un Giorno
di regno, a comic opera and the only libretto
Verdi passively accepted as it was given him,
and Stiffelio (Aroldo), an extraordinary case to
which we shall return, the fate of the lovers is
more a footnote to the conclusion than its
focus. Only in Falstaff is the happy union of

the lovers a central element of the finale. Fenton and Nanetta are sometimes regarded as
akin to the second leads of a musical comedy,
a light romantic contrast to the main action.
They are indeed a contrast to the main action,
but in no sense can they be considered a sentimental creation of a fond old man, who, at
the age of eighty, was willing to accept the illusions he would not permit himself before. It
is of the essence that these two young innocents live in a dramatic and musical world
apart from that of the other characters. Their
brief snatches of duet are of substance quite
unique in Verdi, ardent as always, but wistful
and gay as well. The staging, about which
Verdi was quite particular, emphasizes their
separation from the rest of the world, and so
does the way in which their musical line soars
above and free of the turbulence and foolishness around them in the second scene of Act
II. Finally, we are made to realize in the last
scene that they inhabit a different spiritual
world. Edward Cone points out that "when
Nanetta appears as the Queen of the Fairies
(a role assigned to Mistress Quickly in the
original) .. . her separation from the real
world, already prepared, ... is now complete;

contrasting, earthly counterpoint is no longer

present. She has become the fairy she is pretending to be, and the elves she summons are
real elves. The magical orchestration of the
passage ensures the transformation."'37
Verdi, then, at the end of his career gives
us a vision of pure and innocent love, uncorrupted by everyday passions and entirely selfsustaining. But it exists only in a magical
sphere; it is not part of this world. In earlier
operas, the lovers hope to be reunited in a better world, after death. In Falstaff, Fenton and
Nanetta are united in this world, but only
through the trickery of the merry wives. The
irony is poignant, for the continuation of their
love depends upon the scheming and deception which are its very opposites. The participation of the lovers in the final fugue signals
the acceptance of the sad reality that the
dream of love must be compromised by the
facts of ordinary existence. For all the mirth
37Edward T. Cone, "The Old Man's Toys: Verdi's Last

Operas,"Perspectives USA 6 (1954), p. 132.

125

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

and good humour of the opera, Verdi's view of

love remained fundamentally unchanged. Certainly, what once caused pain can now be regardedwith a measure of amused detachment,
but beneath the merriment, Verdi mourns for
what can never be. Although the world is still
the enemy of love, Verdi, in this wonderful
summing-up, seems finally to have reconciled
himself to its ways.
V
The year 1847, as we have seen, was a
turning point both in Verdi's career and in his
personal life. Macbeth was the product of a
great advance in his powers of expression and
characterization. Before he was free to pursue
the new directions embodied in that remarkable achievement, however, Verdi had first to
discharge a number of earlier commitments, I
Masnadieri, II Corsaro and the revision of I
Lombardi. One can only speculate about what
turn Verdi's career would next have taken had
he not met Strepponi in Paris at that point. As
things turned out, by the time his first postMacbeth opera was conceived and written,
their affair had been firmly established. The
post-Macbeth operas are also post-Strepponi
operas.
Until recently, it was the general critical
view that the seeds planted in Macbeth did
not mature until Rigoletto, that the intervening operas were typical products of the anni di
galera. Closer acquaintance with the three
operas which followed Macbeth shows, however, that the more advanced and subtle style
begun in 1847 continued to develop in these
works. Budden provides many examples from
La Battaglia di Legnano, Luisa Miller, and
Stiffelio of Verdi's more varied and refined use
of orchestral resources, of his modification of
conventional forms to suit dramatic purposes,
and of "a new concentration of lyrical elements within the dramatic scheme.""' It is
clear, too, that Verdi himself regarded these
works as special. He prepared extensive

my operas which don't do the rounds, I leave

some alone because the subjects are wrong, but
there are two which I wouldn't want forgotten-Stiffelio and La Battaglia di Legnano.'"39
Verdi subsequently did revise the former (the
unsuccessful Aroldo of 1857) and for two years
seriously pursued the possibility of doing
the same to the latter.
As Budden points out, it was unusual for
Verdi to be concerned about the fate of his
operas after their initial production; generally
he accepted the verdict of the public and went
on. Why then did he not want these two to be
forgotten? The reason was, I think, that the
operas written and conceived between Macbeth and Rigoletto represented for Verdi the
beginning of a new phase in his artistic and
personal life. With them, he left behind many
of the conceptions and modes of the primo ottocento melodrama and confirmed the new set
of dramatic ideals which were to underpin his
mature works. Certainly none of these works
is entirely consistent in this regard, but in
each he succeeded in creating individual
characters, rather than types. They are credible people whose emotional states are particularized. Accordingly, the musical style is
more differentiated, poetic, and nuanced than
before. With the exception of the public
scenes of La Battaglia di Legnano, furthermore, the scale of these operas is much
reduced: a great deal of the critical action in
all three occurs in a domestic setting, and in
two of them the fate of a marriage is at the
center of the drama. With these operas Verdi
had entered definitively into a new realm of
sentiment as well as artistic ambition.
Despite their diverse sources and settings,
these three transitional operas are thematically linked, for in each, male jealousy and the
guilt or innocence of the heroine are the central interpersonal issues. Now both these
themes were staples of nineteenth-century Italian opera; but prior to La Battaglia di Legnano they rarely served as a motivating force

sketches for Luisa Miller, probably the first

time he had done so in his career, and of the
other two operas he later (1854) wrote, "Among

in Verdi's dramas. Of the twelve earlier operas, sexual rivalry figures prominently in only
two, Ernani and Alzira. There is a triangle of

38Budden,Operas, p. 446.
126

39Budden, "La Battaglia di Legnano," p. 71.

sorts in Nabucco, I Masnadieri, and II Corsaro,

but the villanies of Abigaille, Francesco or Seid
can scarcely be considered the consequence
of frustrated love. The jealousy of Pagano and
Foresto are distinctly peripheral to the main
action in I Lombardi and Attila, and sexual
rivalry does not occur at all in the remaining
five operas. With La Battaglia di Legnano,
sexual jealousy and betrayal become predominant themes in Verdi's work, and will be absent only in Les V~pres siciliennes and La
Forza del destino.
At the same time his heroines underwent
a correspondingtransformation. They are now
essentially innocents who are corrupted or destroyed by the world, a world ruled by the passions of men and the inflexible ordercreated by
men. These women react to circumstances
rather than create them; they are the victims
of forces beyond their control. Their conflicts
are consequently internal, the product of contending emotions. Again precedents can be
found for much of this in earlier operas and,
of course, it is not the case'that all these characteristics are present in every one of the heroines
of the later operas. But after 1847, they occur
with impressive consistency.
It would be foolhardy to claim that Verdi
focused on this interrelated set of themes in an
intentional or self-conscious manner, as he appears to have done with the patriotic elements
which recur in his operas. But it does seem reasonable to argue that he was drawn to them by
events in his personal life. As far as we know,
between the death of his first wife and the
liaison with Strepponi Verdi had formed no attachments to any other woman. There can be
little doubt that both he and Strepponi were
emotionally needy at the time of their meeting
in Paris, and that for many reasons they were
very well suited to each other. Nevertheless, as
Verdiwell knew, Strepponiwas a woman with a
past whose careerhad been ruined by a passionate, and, it seems, rather sordid affair.The contrast between Margherita Barezzi and this
woman of the theater could, at least on the
surface, scarcely have been more extreme. It is
also clear that, even after Strepponi had established a new life for herself, her feelings of unworthiness persisted in her correspondence for
many years. It requires little psychologizing to

believe that, for all the positive elements in the

new relationship, Verdi also found in it much
that was unsettling-for he had now to come to
grips not only with his own past, but also with
Strepponi's. It was not, nor could it be, an uncomplicated and untroubled love. As we have
seen, there are many indications of ambivalences on Verdi's part in the succeeding years,
ambivalances which were not fully resolved
until his old age.
If we return now to the first operas conceived after 1847, the influence on them of the
affair with Strepponi seems unmistakable.
Considering the circumstances of the composition of La Battaglia di Legnano, Verdi could
easily have focused exclusively on the patriotic elements and written a piece in the grand
manner. Instead he gave equal weight to the
private and the public domains. In fact, Verdi
and Cammarano had to augment the public
side of the play on which the opera was based
to produce a properly stirring patriotic spectacle, while they retained largely intact the private drama of Joseph Mery's original. In that
original the emotional focus is the heroine,
and Verdi took care that the role of Lida
should not be swamped by the opera's more
obviously exciting and powerful characters
and events. Of the three principals, it is she
who is the internally conflicted one, and it is
primarily in her music that we find, in Budden's words, "something new to Verdi: an anticipation of that intimacy of sentiment that
finds its perfect expression in La Traviata."4
Both her remarkable recitative in Act III,
scene ii and the following duettino with her
husband were additions suggested by Verdi.
Evidently his imagination was caught by the
character and dilemma of the innocent
woman who, despite appearances, is wrongly
accused of infidelity, and who, despite her
guiltlessness, feels guilty. In many ways Lida
is a prototype of the female characters to
come, just as the destructive jealousy of the
males around her was to find expression again
and again in the subsequent operas.
In his next opera, Verdi pursued similar
themes and created in Luisa perhaps his purest

4?Budden, Operas, p. 414.

127

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

example of the destruction of innocence. Her

progress from the ingenuous, loving girl of the
opening to the weary, tragic woman of the last
act gives the opera its psychological coherence
and much of its emotional force. We find later
in Gilda a similar progress, though she, unlike
Luisa, shares in the responsibility for her fate.
Again, in Luisa Miller the hero is led by circumstances to believe his beloved is false, and
it is his jealousy and sense of betrayal which
leads to the final tragedy. Luisa, like almost
every succeeding heroine, is the victim of the
machinations, irrationalities, and needs of
men.
This is certainly also true of the heroine of
the next opera, Stiffelio. But Lina is unique
among Verdi's creations in that she has, in
fact, been unfaithful. Although she claims to
have been betrayed by Raffaele and never to
have loved him, it remains the case that their
affair extended over some time and involved a
measure of cooperation on her part. She is
clearly a guilty woman, and in the opera, unlike the play, she is given little excuse for her
conduct. Her remorse and her love for her
husband are never in doubt, but it requires an
act of extraordinaryforgiveness on the part of
Stiffelio to overcome his jealous rage and to
pardon his repentant wife.
There is nothing else quite like Stiffelio in
all Verdi's work, or, for that matter, in all Italian opera. Though some melodramatic trappings remain, it is essentially a problem play
with a bourgeois domestic setting. The hero is
no impetuous youth full of ardor and poetry,
like all of his predecessors and most of his
successors, but an older man, a leader of a Protestant sect, who has seen much of the world
and has suffered for his beliefs. He is a cuckold
but not a figure of ridicule, and instead of avenging himself on his wife as a proper husband
should, he first offers her a divorce and then
accepts her back. And all of these strange
goings-on are placed in a contemporary setting.41 That a composer so astute and so attuned to his audience should have chosen a
41In

only one other case, La Traviata, did Verdi intend an

operato have a contemporarysetting, but in that instance

he was dissuadedfrom his plan. I believe it is a measure of
the personal significance of these two operas that Verdi
128

subject so remote from their experience and

expectations is remarkable.
Not surprisingly, Stiffelio was far from a
success and received few performances after
its premiere. Certainly much of its integrity
was destroyed by problems with the censorship. But even apart from this, it seems clear
that Verdi had simply ventured into areas that
were beyond the comprehension of his conservative audience. In the attempt to rescue
Stiffelio as Aroldo Verdi and Piave conventionalized it by providing a medieval setting,
changing the hero to a knight, and much reducing the religious elements. The rescue failed
and both operas have continued in obscurity. It
could hardly have been otherwise; even to a
twentieth-century audience, Stiffelio must
seem a strange subject for treatment within
the conventions of Italian opera. But whether
it remains a curiosity or ultimately is judged
"worthy to stand beside the three masterpieces which it immediately precedes,"42 we
cannot doubt that it meant a great deal to
Verdi. In choosing to set Stiffelio he was deliberately seeking to create a new kind of
operatic drama, one of greater psychological
truthfulness and contemporaryrelevance. And
it seems clear that Verdi's feelings toward
Strepponi are reflected in this drama of
jealousy mastered by acceptance, of an unfaithful woman redeemed and of reconciliation through love.
VI
These three operas which preceded
Rigoletto, and the many thereafter in which
the themes of innocence, betrayal, and
jealousy recur, cannot rightly be considered
autobiographical. There is a sense in which
they are about the relationship with Strepponi, but certainly no character can be taken
as a representation of Verdi or his mistress.
But there is one opera, La Traviata, which
comes very close to being directly autobiographical.It is impossible to believe that Verdi
was

not

aware

of

the

parallel

between

favoreda setting so out of keeping with operatic tradition

and the expectations of his audience.
4Budden, Operas, p. 474.

Dumas's drama of an illicit love destroyed by

convention and his own affair with Strepponi,
an affair which caused such scandal in Busseto, alienated him from his father, and even
ruffled momentarily his relationship with
Barezzi. This surface resemblance, however, is
only one of several elements in the opera
which make it Verdi's most personal and, for
many, his most touching work.
With few exceptions, Verdi's operas are
dominated by their male characters. Indeed, to
fill his dramatic needs Verdi virtually created
the baritone as a separate dramatic category
and gave to that voice many of his most powerful and characteristic roles. It is all the more
striking a feature of La Traviata, then, that its
focus is so completely on its heroine. Although Alfredo and Germont are clearly delineated figures who develop and change in
the course of the opera, neither is one of Verdi's more complex or interesting creations.
Nor is La Traviata really a story of thwarted
love. Rather it is an intense and subtle portrayal of a woman destroyed and redeemed by
her own character.
Psychologically, the key to Violetta's tragedy is her sense of guilt and worthlessness. From the very outset Violetta knows her
life will be short and meaningless, that the
most she can hope for is a brilliant career of
pleasure; she knows perfectly well, too, that
no one really cares about her, "A poor woman,
alone, abandoned in this crowded desert that
they call Paris."43Initially she treats Alfredo's
declaration of love lightly, though with considerable kindness, for she cannot believe herself capable any longer of love or of being
loved. The evident sincerity of this naive
young man, though, reawakens dreams from
the past. In a passage usually omitted in performance, Violetta recalls that "When I was a
girl, an innocent and timid desire depicted

43Wherepossible translations have been taken from William Weaver,Seven VerdiLibrettos (New York, 1975). For
operas not included in that volume, I have used Weaver's
translations of Luisa Miller and I Vesprisiciliani (accompanying the RCA Victor recordings LSC-6168 and ARL40370), Lionel Salter's translation of Simon Boccanegra
(Deutsche GrammophonGesellschaft 2740169), and Peggy
Cochrane's translation of Don Carlo (LondonOSA1432).

him, the tender lord of my future...

." This

contrast between innocence and corruption

serves as a refrain which is repeated in each of
the succeeding acts. Violetta is well aware
that her decision to accept love is a dangerous
gamble. ("Would a serious love be a misfortune for me?"), but it is her last chance to redeem her life. "Sempre libera," then, is a desperate attempt to dissuade herself from a
course she knows she must take but which
nevertheless frightens her deeply.
The second-act scene between Violetta
and Germont pare forms the musical and
dramatic crux of La Traviata and is surely one
of Verdi's masterpieces of psychological penetration. Rapidly he establishes Germont's
character, underlines Violetta's dignity, independence, and sophistication, and-most
us how Violetta has
significantly-shows
and Germont phre forms the musical and
dramatic crux of La Traviata and is surely one
I love Alfredo, and God erased it, with my repentance." But her defeat is inevitable: whatever God has done, she remains a prey to her
own guilt. Germont's plea in its sweet conventionality is dramatically perfect. Violetta
cannot sacrifice the girl, "pure as an angel," to
her own, undeserved happiness. She fights on
a bit, but Germont relentlessly pursues her
most vulnerable points, finally insinuating
that, with desire satisfied, Alfredo's love will
fade; it is more than she can resist. Her response to Germont is not, as might be expected, a defense of Alfredo, but a simple "E
vero! e vero!," as if Germont had merely given
voice to her own unacknowledged fears and
her realization that she has no claims on her
lover. Her capitulation, "So for the
wretched girl, who one day fell, any hope of
rising again is silent! Even if God is kind and
indulgent to her, mankind will always be implacable," is a passage of the purest pain and
grief. Nothing remains for Violetta; her
"seductive dream" is shattered and she is utterly without illusions about what is to come.
In a most moving and significant phrase, she
asks Germont to embrace her "qual figlia,"
then urges him to console his son and let him
know, in time, the truth so Alfredo will not
curse her memory. Through all this Germont
remains sympathetic but uncomprehending.
129

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

His viewpoint is conventional and he gets what

he wants not because his arguments are compelling, but because Violetta, despite her
brave words, is psychologically unable to
transcend her past. It is only in the last act,
when she is dying, that she can finally make
peace with herself.
In terms of dramatic action, what follows
the scene between Germont and Violetta is
really anti-climactic: all that happens
subsequently--Violetta's farewell, her degradation and despair, Alfredo's jealous rage, and
the final death scene-has
already been
foretold. Yet the last scene is not merely the
obligatory mournful tableau. To treat it as
such reduces Verdi's carefully judged resolution of the drama to sentimentality. In the last
act each of the three main characters achieves
a new understanding. Germont's is the most
obvious and the least significant ("Too much
remorse is consuming my soul ...

Only now

do I see the harm I did!"). More striking is the

deepening of Alfredo's character. Though he
has been consistently presented as a sincere
and ardent lover, his self-centeredness, immaturity, and insensitivity to Violetta are
manifest throughout the first two acts, most
tellingly in his smug response to Violetta's
outburst of love and grief in the second act.
"Ah, that heart lives only for love of me," he
reflects, as if she had just given him an unexpected peck on the cheek. Only in the last act
does he grasp the depth of her love and come
to realize what truly he has lost. His searing
phrase at "No, non morrai, non dimelo" tells
us in a stroke that at last he comprehends.
But it is in Violetta, inevitably, that the
most complex change occurs. "Addio, del passato" is her final renunciation of all hopes,
and, above all, her acceptance of her past. It is
immaterial, I think, that her acceptance of
guilt may strike a modern audience as quite
unnecessary, since by contemporary standards
Violetta is hardly a great sinner. What counts
is that she sees herself as guilty. Earlier she
had hoped, vainly, that through her love of Alfredo her past could be erased, but here she
acknowledges what she has been and prays
that God will receive and forgive her. As
Joseph Kerman points out, it is only in "Ad130

dio, del passato" that the word traviata appears, the emblem of her self-recognition.44
In the following duet, Violetta may seem
to share Alfredo's fantasy of leaving Paris, a
place where love and health cannot flourish,
and of spending their lives together in happiness. The simplicity of the music and the gently rocking accompaniment are like a lullaby
intended to soothe and reassure; but it is Alfredo who must be protected from the truth.
The trill at "Ora son forte. . . vedi? sorrido" is

reminiscent of the orchestral trills which accompany Violetta's attempt to reassureAlfredo

just before she leaves him in Act II: "Or son
tranquilla ...

lo vedi? ...

ti sorrido." Even

the language is virtually identical; in both situations, we hear a transparent effort to hide
the underlying anguish. The first time Alfredo, the uncomprehendingboy, was deceived,
but here illusions are no longer possible to
either of them, and their duet culminates in
a mutual expression of despair.
With Germont's entrance the drama
moves to its final stage, Violetta's rebirth.
Germont sets the theme at once by embracing
her for a second time, but now spontaneously,
as a daughter. Through her acceptance of guilt
and her self-sacrifice she has been restored to
grace. The identification with Alfredo's sister
suggested earlier by "Dite alla giovine" here
comes to fruition. The episode of giving Alfredo her portrait to be passed on to the
"pudica vergine" he will someday marry
comes very close to sentimentality, but it is
psychologically and dramatically necessary as
the last step in Violetta's progress. In her fantasy of a return to innocence, she is now the
daughter, the sister, and the bride. The return,
for the last time, of "Di quel amor" in the
high strings is no mere reminder of happier
days-her redemption has purified and intensified her love, making the contrast between
her ecstatic sense of rebirth and the grief of
Alfredo and Germont all the more poignant.
Characteristically, once Verdi has made his
last point, he wastes no time in reaching the
final chords.
44Unpublished ms. preparedfor the School of Criticism

and Theory, Irvine, California,June 1976.

Violetta has a specificity and a reality

unmatched by any other of Verdi's
heroines-she seems to be drawn from life
and there is little reason to doubt that Strepponi was the model. There are inevitably
many differences between Violetta and Strepponi, for an opera is not a biographyand Verdi
had, moreover, based his work on a strong
play which itself portrayed an actual woman,
Marie Duplessis, and her world. But the resonances between life and work are, in the case
of La Traviata, remarkable. The basic situation of an affair which outrages bourgeois
morality is only the most obvious of the
similarities. The setting of the opera, Paris,
where Verdi and Strepponi met again and
began their liaison, provides another. Violetta's description of herself, "A poor woman,
alone, abandoned, in this desert that they call
Paris" describes the situation of Strepponi,
who had just passed through the nadir of her
life, her career prematurely ended and her personal affairs a shambles. Earlier the hectic
pace of her life had severely threatened her
health: she wrote in March 1842 that the doctors had "declared unanimously that I shall
die of consumption if I don't immediately
abandon my profession."45The words fit Violetta perfectly. Strepponi's often repeated dislike of the "social masquerade," of the empty
excitement of the city, and her wish to retire
to the peacefulness and solitude of the country
are echoed in the opening of the second act of
the opera and again in "Parigi, o cara." The
lovers' retreat to a "casa di campagna presso
Parigi," moreover, directly parallels the stay of
Verdi and Strepponi in Passy, then a country
village, in the summer of 1848. But in the instance of La Traviata the fundamental similarity between life and work is not one of situation or incident; it is rather one of character
and personality. Violetta, like Strepponi, is a
sophisticated, spirited, and independent
woman, generous in her feelings, but plagued
by a sense of worthlessness and with an underlying melancholy. Each seeks through love
and selflessness to redeem a scandalous past,
45Walker,p. 93.

to find again a spiritual innocence which had

seemed lost.
Strepponi, of course, was never called
upon to make any great renunciation like Violetta, but her devotion to Verdi, her Mage, was
her salvation. In a letter of 1860, she wrote to
him "O my Verdi, I am not worthy of you, and
the love that you bear me is charity, balsam to
a heart sometimes

very sad ...

Continue to

love me, love me also after death, so that I

may present myself to Divine Providence rich
with your love and your prayers, O my Redeemer!" Years later, at the time of the engagement and marriage of the Verdis' adopted
daughter, Maria, there is a final reminiscence
of La Traviata. Giuseppina wrote of her, "She
will not have, certainly, the alluring and
dangerous joys of dances and balls, of vain display and vanity satisfied of the great city
world, but in compensation will have the
peace of the heart, the chaste and blessed joys
of wife and mother, joys undisturbed by tempestuous passions ..."

In a subsequent letter

she described the wedding: "When I saw her

walk to the altar, in her white bridal veil,
shyly leaning on Verdi's arm, I was profoundly
moved and she seemed to me a true symbol of
virginity, with a beauty wholly chaste and innocent, full of modesty and virginal
A longing for what she had never grace.'"'4
been, a
young, pure bride, and regret at her own lost
innocence permeate these passages, just as
they do Violetta's final thoughts. Verdi's portrait is by no means an exact rendering, but it
is remarkably true to Strepponi's essential
nature.
But the identification of Violetta with
Strepponi is, I believe, only part of the personal
significance this character held for Verdi.47Although many (but not most) of his heroines
4Letters quoted from Walker, pp. 226, 439, 440.
47Besides the parallel between Violetta and Strepponi,
Osborne (The Complete Operas, p. 268) suggests a connection between Germont and Barezzi. But there is little
similarity between Verdi's sweet and doting benefactor
and the strait-laced, provincial paterfamilias of the
opera. The available evidence suggests, moreover, that
Barezzi was fond of Strepponifrom the outset, and never
opposed the liaison at all. It was Carlo Verdi who refused to be reconciled to his son's affair, but his attempt
at intervention led only to estrangement.

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die at the end of the opera, Violetta's death is

unique in his oeuvre. In every other case the
end is violent; she alone dies in her bed of a
wasting illness, surroundedby those she loves
most. One cannot help being reminded of
Barezzi's description of his daughter's death,
"Through a terrible disease .. there died in
my arms at Milan ... my beloved daughter

Margherita in the flower of her years and at

the culmination of her good fortune, because
married to the excellent youth Giuseppe
Verdi . . ."4"
There is another reminder, too, of Margherita Barezzi in La Traviata. In his autobiographical statement about his early days in
Milan, Verdi recalled in some detail an incident which obviously had great significance for
him. Because of illness he was unable to pay
his rent on time or to arrangeto borrow funds
by the due date; "Thereupon, my wife, who
saw my agitation, took her few jewels and, I
know not how or by what means, got the sum
together and brought it to me. I was deeply
moved by this proof of her devotion and swore
to myself to return everything to her."49 The
resemblance to the opening of the second act
may be circumstantial, but if the incident
stayed in Verdi's memory for some forty years,
it is not difficult to believe that it occurred to
him, too, while writing La Traviata. This is to
argue, then, that Violetta represents, in a psychological sense, a fusion of Margherita
Barezzi and Strepponi, of past loss and present
love. Strepponi, that most remarkablewoman,
restored to Verdi some of the wholeness
which was shattered by the destruction of his
first family. Whether or not Verdi intended it

as such, La Traviata is a deeply felt and a

deeply moving tribute to the woman he loved.
VII

AfterLa Traviata,Verdi'sworks changed

noticeably. The succeeding operas, up to

Otello, have something of an experimental
character to them, as Verdi sought apparently
to master the style of Parisian grand opera and
to integrate it with Italian operatic tradition.

48Walker,p. 33.
4gWerfel,ed., Verdi, p. 86.
132

These operas are written on a grandiose scale,

with clashes between national groups or social
classes, conflicts between love and honor, an
enlargement of the role of the chorus and
more varied and prominent instrumental
effects-in short, elements found in the work
of Scribe and Meyerbeer. Significantly, of the
six operas between La Traviata and Otello,
only Un Ballo in maschera (an adaptation,
nonetheless, of a Scribe libretto) and Simon
Boccanegra were composed for Italian opera
houses, and they are the two which most
clearly resemble Verdi's earlier work. Evidently Verdi aspired to a higher standing in
the international operatic and intellectual
world; to be a composer of "operas that are
made of duets, cavatinas etc." no longer
satisfied him. Probably he was motivated as
well by that need to expand his dramatic and
musical resources which is so impressive a
characteristic of his career, and by patriotic
sentiments too, for he was, after all, Italy's
leading composer. But whatever the reasons
for the specific direction Verdi took, some
change was required both on artistic and personal grounds after La Traviata.
The special ambience and dramatic sensibility of La Traviata derive from a particular
stage in Verdi's life; the opera marks the end
point of those developments set in motion by
the affair with Strepponi. I do not think it
merely coincidental that after La Traviata
Strepponi's "exile" when Verdi travelled came
to an end. Although it was not until six years
later that they were married, Verdi seems by
1853 to have achieved some resolution of his
ambivalence regardingStrepponi and his relationship with her, ambivalences which had as
much to do with his own past as hers. Perhaps
during the trying early years in Busseto, he
came fully to understand (like Alfredo) the
true quality of his mistress and the strength of
her devotion to him. I do not mean to argue
that Verdi's progress from La Battaglia di
Legnano to La Traviata was solely, or even
primarily, the result of the feelings stirred up
by his relationship with Strepponi. It does
seem, however, that his personal experiences
guided him to a set of dramatic themes and
materials through which the musical and expressive advances manifest in Macbeth came

to a first flowering. La Traviata, then, is a

culminating work. Never again did Verdi set a
contemporary problem play or attempt to
create so intimate a dramatic world. He had
gone as far in that direction as he could or
needed to go. And in the other opera of 1853,
II Trovatore, Verdi had written the classic of
Italian romantic melodrama. Psychologically
and artistically, Verdi was set to move on.
He seems deliberately to have sought subjects which would permit him to explore new
situations and characters, to develop new
musical resources and to overcome the
limitations imposed by the convenienze. Yet
the interpersonal themes which had preoccupied him since 1847 were by no means
abandoned. Rather his treatment of those
themes deepened along with the rest of his art.
Thus, until Falstaff his female protagonists
remain the victims or the pawns of men, but
in the later operas they have a maturity and
substance well beyond that of his earlier
heroines. With some exceptions, Lucrezia in I
due Foscari and Lady Macbeth being the most
notable, one feels that these earlier heroines
are essentially girls, albeit passionate girls; the
later heroines seem, in contrast, to be women.
As with all generalizations about Verdi's
operas, contrary examples can be found for
this one, but after La Traviata there are no
more Giseldas, Medoras, Luisas or Gildas.
Leonora di Vargas is a far cry from her
namesakes of II Trovatore and Oberto. Verdi's
leading tenor roles, by comparison, show less
consistent change; Henri, Gabriele, Radames,
and to a lesser extent Alvaro differ little in
conception from the heroes of his earlier
work. Thus the change in the female roles
seems to reflect more than the general growth
in Verdi's powers of characterization.I suspect
that once Verdi had lived so intensely with
the emotional complexities of a woman in actuality, the traditional female characters of
Italian opera could no longer be of any interest
to him. Though Strepponi never again served
so directly as a model for a Verdi heroine as
she had for Violetta, her influence on Verdi's
conception of the women he portrayed was
continuous and essential to his achievement.
Verdi likewise continued to pursue the
theme of jealousy in the eight operas written

after 1853. Although absent from Les VWpres

siciliennes and (depending on how the behavior of Don Carlo di Vargas is interpreted) La
Forza del destino, in the remaining operas
jealousy is a critical focus of the dramatic action. It does not, however, take the form of the
mere sexual jealousy of a Seid or a di Luna, or
the hyperbolic reaction of a romantic tenor
like Foresto or Rodolfo. The precursors are
found rather in Rolando and particularly Stiffelio, husbands who are wounded by the
apparent or real faithlessness of their wives.
This is least true of Simon Boccanegra,
perhaps, for Gabriele, the lover who feels himself betrayed, recalls Verdi's earlier tenors in
more than his offstage serenade. Nevertheless,
his jealousy is colored by a sense of loss which
moves his reaction to Paolo's provocation beyond simple outrage. Verdi establishes the
seriousness and depth of his relationship with
Amelia at the beginning of Act I, both through
the lover's dialogue and through the quasireligious benediction of Fiesco. Clearly, this is
not meant to be a passionate and irrational affair between youngsters. To Gabriele, Simone
is not just a rival, but someone who has stolen
his "treasure,"just as he had previously taken
his father from him. His second act aria begins
like that of a tenore di maledizione, but in its
second part moderates into a different realm of
sentiment: "What am I saying? I am weeping
... Merciful heaven, restore her, restore her to

my heart." In its dualism it adumbrates Renato's "Eri tu" in Un Ballo in maschera,

though that is in every respect a superior and
more moving piece of writing.
Gabriele, though, is not a particularly interesting character, nor is his jealousy central
to the drama. More interest by far attaches to
the role of Paolo-he is from start to finish
the active force in the opera. If a lust for power
motivates his early actions, it is lust of the
more conventional sort on which the drama
turns. Paolo genuinely desires Amelia, and not
for her fortune alone. Thus Simone's curt refusal to give her to him angers Paolo on two
grounds: the ingratitude of the Doge he
created and the frustration of his passion. But

it is primarily jealousy which reduces the cool

schemer of the Prologue into the rash abductor and outcast of the first act and it is the
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pain of jealousy which infuses his last lines (in

the revised version) with a measure of poignancy.50"Do you hear the wedding hymn that
pursues me? In that chapel Gabriele Adorno is
being married to the girl I carried off." Thus
Paolo, who uses the jealousy he knows well to
provoke Gabriele to vengeance, is himself ultimately mocked by the green-eyed monster.
In Paolo, then, and to a lesser degree Gabriele,
jealousy functions as something more than a
convenient plot device or an occasion for an
exciting outburst-with Simon Boccanegra it
becomes a complex theme which Verdi was to
probe with increasing intensity.
In The Tenth Muse, Patrick Smith points
to the prevalence of the theme of hatred in the
Italian melodrama generally and in the operas
of Verdi specifically:
... in fact the focus of most Italian librettos is less

on love .., than on the hatredthis love engenders.

Jealousy,rage, and plain dislike are continually
magnifiedin these works;wordsof hatredas well
as situationsof vendettafaroutnumberexpressions
of any otherpassion... Hatredsaturatesthe librettos of Verdi:Don Carlo'sdogged,almost maniacal
pursuitof Alvaroin La Forzadel destino can be
taken as symbolicof severalgenerationsof Italian
bassandbaritoneroles.5"
It is certainly true that in this as in other respects Verdi was a product of the primo ottocento and that such strong and direct emotions fit well his musical and personal style.
Nevertheless, Smith exaggerates-expressions
of love, both sexual and paternal or filial are
not far outnumbered by expressions of hatred,
nor is Don Carlo in his ferocity and motivational simplicity like any other protagonist of
a mature Verdi opera except Amonasro. But
more significantly, Smith fails to recognize
the complexity with which Verdi handles the
theme of jealous hatred and its close connection with the theme of love.
Consider, for example, Renato's reaction
50Althoughthis more subtle treatment of jealousy is evident in the first version of Simon Boccanegra, it is much

more fully developed in the revision. This revision, it will

be recalled, was made after Verdi and Boito had begun
their collaboration on Otello.
51Patrick J. Smith, The Tenth Muse: A Historical Study of
the Opera Libretto (New York, 1975), p. 198.

134

to his wife's presumed adultery in Un Ballo

in maschera. Initially he rages at Amelia
("Blood is demanded, and you will die"), but
after her plea to see her child one last time,
his anger turns from her to the true betrayer,
Riccardo. "Eri tu" begins as a vengeance
aria, then, replete with forte brass and timpani, but after twenty bars a new and very different emotion has entered: "O lost sweets; O
memories of an embrace that composed my
being! When Amelia, so beautiful, so pure, on
my bosom glowed with love!" The delicate
accompaniment, harp and two flutes playing p
or pp and lightly supported by strings, is of a
remarkable sweetness which makes clear to
us the magnitude of his loss. A resurgence of
anger breaks Renato's reminiscence, but his
words at this point, "It is finished ...

only

hatred and death [dwell] in my bereaved

heart," do not form the conclusion of the aria.
Rather Verdi returns to the music and mood of
"0 dolcezze perdute," and the key word of the
ending is not odio but a thrice repeated amor.
The aria and, indeed, the scene as a whole
have a psychological and emotional richness
which make Renato more than the familiar
outraged husband whose one thought is to
avenge his lost honor. Riccardo's romantic,
self-indulgent conquest of Amelia has in
Renato's words "lacerated [his] heart for
ever," taking from him the sustaining force
of his love; he is far more a victim than a
villain. In the end, it is Renato's pain, not his
hatred, which makes him a memorable and
moving character.
Renato is neither the first nor the last of
Verdi's jealous husbands. In all, there are six
of them, and all are in operas conceived after
the affair with Strepponi had begun. (In fact,
with the exception of I due Foscari, dramatically significant marital relationships do not
occur prior to La Battaglia di Legnano.) These
husbands are all men of considerable stature
and all are in their full maturity. In most Italian romantic operas, including Verdi's, one
has the sense that the lovers do not really
know each other very well, and that it is not
important that they should. They provide for
each other the occasion to be in love, and that
is what matters most. But with Rolando, Stiffelio, Renato, Philip, Otello, and Ford, Verdi

is working with very different emotional

material; for them, love is part of a substantial, long-standing relationship, a network of
deep personal, social, and emotional commitments. When they can no longer believe in the
faithfulness of their wives, their world comes
apart. Their anger, then, is in proportion to
their pain. In La Battaglia di Legnano such
complexities of emotion and relationship are
not fully developed, but even here, by introducing the scene in which Rolando bids
farewell to his wife and child and then entrusts them to Arrigo in the event of his death,
Verdi establishes the seriousness and depth of
Rolando's feelings. Like Renato, he is neither
a conventional villain nor a vengeful rival in
love. He acts as he does because he is a husband and father who has been irreparablyinjured by his wife's disloyalty.
Stiffelio is even less of a conventional
operatic portrayal than Rolando or Renato; he
is surely one of Verdi's most original creations. Budden rightly describes him as "a
controlled, less vulnerable, forerunner of
Otello,"52 but it is important to realize that
Stiffelio's anguish is compounded of jealous
rage and the conflict between that rage and
the Christian principles of forgiveness and
self-control to which his life is dedicated. His
very existence, as husband and as man of God,
is rendered meaningless by Lida's adultery. In
this light, Stiffelio's desperation and his dazed
state in the final scene are quite convincing.
His ultimate act of forgiveness, so important
personally to Verdi, likewise has a psychological and dramatic integrity which derives from
his essential character. The force of Verdi's
highly original finale comes less from the reconciliation of husband and wife than from the
restoration of faith to a desperate man.
It should be evident by now that in the
post-Strepponi operas, Verdi's conception of
jealousy is very different from that of his predecessors or, for that matter, his successors.
With few exceptions, his jealous men are not

us forget that jealousy with its anger and

hatred is a disorder of love, a painful withering
of the spirit. If in the operas preceding Don
Carlos, conventional melodramatic elements
intrude on this conception, in King Philip and
Otello it attains a full realization.
Both in his person and in terms of the
thematic weight he bears, Philip is Verdi's
most complex, multi-faceted role. He is a husband and a father, an autocratic despot who
nevertheless has no power over those things
which matter most to him; in public he is a
cold and ruthless figure, in private a vulnerable, suffering man. Though he embodies lifedestroying forces, Verdi makes of him a deeply
moving person. He achieves this in part by
showing Philip to be a victim, not only of his
own limited vision, but of a suffocating environment as well. Except for the Fontainebleau
scene, Don Carlos is unremittingly sombre in
its coloration. This dark, brooding, joyless atmosphere is an essential element of the
drama-in the end it destroys Posa, Carlos,
and Elisabeth and renders Philip devoid of
hope. Like Verdi's other husbands, Philip is a
desperate man, although, one outburst apart,
his is a quiet desperation. He is painfully
aware that Elisabeth has never loved him and
his pain is intensified by his jealousy, a
jealousy which contributes to or motivates all
his actions in the opera, from his very first appearance to his last. But like everything else
about Philip, his jealousy is of a uniquely
complex variety, for his rival in his fears and
in fact is, of course, his own son. Consequently the political aspects of Don Carlos
are completely fused with the personal.
Philip fully realizes that in championing
the cause of Flanders, the Infante is in rebellion not only against his king, but also against
his father, the husband of Elisabeth. (Though
the temporal relationships are unclear, Eboli
has presumably incriminated the Queen by
the time of Carlos's rash, thoroughly neurotic
political behavior.) Philip's lines, "You wish

impetuous, love-besotted adolescents, nor are

they villains, even though they are led by their
jealousy to villainous acts. Verdi does not let

me to proffer you with my own hand the

weapon with which you would sacrifice the
King!" refer to far more than matters of the
succession, and recall Elisabeth's earlier and
even more direct, "Finish your fell work, hasten to kill your father, and afterwards, stained

52Budden, Operas, p. 474.

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with his blood, you will be able to lead your

mother to the altar!" Posa's sacrifice can gain
a temporary reprieve for his friend, but in
terms of the drama, Carlos's doom is as inevitable as that of Oedipus. And out of this tangle
of love requited, unrequited and forbidden, of
rivalry and rebellion, nothing of value remains. Philip's honor and authority have been
vindicated, but no one can restore to him his
friend or his son or his hopes of love. He is
desolate and empty; in the end it is his heart
which is closed forever.
Don Carlos is further complicated by the
fact that it contains not one but two interlocking triangles, Philip-Elisabeth-Carlos and
Eboli-Elisabeth-Carlos.53Moreover, we learn
from Eboli's confession to the Queen that she
has been the King's mistress. This pointobscured in the original Paris version of the
opera and rightly emphasized by Verdi in his
Italian revision-is essential to an understanding of Eboli's emotions in the fourth act as she
comes fully to realize the viciousness of her
own behavior in betraying the Queen. Thus by
moving closer to the Schiller, Verdi makes
Eboli's remorse and her resolution to save Carlos dramatically and psychologically convincing. But it is in her guilt rather than her
jealousy that Eboli is a distinctive character,
for her earlier fury is of a familiar kind, the
fury of a woman scorned. The same point
holds for Amneris: it is unrequited love which
drives her to hatred of Aida and the abandonment of Radames to his fate, but it is her
comprehension of what her jealousy has done
that makes her a moving and pitiable woman.
I do not mean to imply that Eboli and
Amneris would be weak or uninteresting
characters were it not for their ultimate self53The two interlocking triangles of Don Carlos, wife-

husband-(would-be) lover and wife-lover-other woman

create a dramatic situation remarkablylike that in Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda. There too the tenor, by mistaking
the other woman (Agnese) for Beatrice, reveals his secret
love. Enragedby jealousy, Agnese betrays Beatrice to her
husband, and is then overwhelmed by remorse, ultimately
confessing her betrayal to Beatrice.
This similarity serves as a reminder of the degree to
which Italian opera composers of the period worked from
a common stock of materials. Once again, it is Verdi's
ability to infuse these materials with a new psychological
validity and emotional depth that makes him distinctive.
136

recognition; on the contrary, both are vividly

portrayedfrom the outset and Amneris in particular has a voluptuousness unmatched by
any of Verdi's other heroines. (For more than
one reason it is difficult to believe that she
loves Radames for his mind alone.) Nevertheless Verdi's treatment of the theme of jealousy
is more conventional in his female than in his
male characters.Indeed female jealousy occurs
much more rarely than male jealousy in Verdi's work. The only instance prior to Don Carlos is in Nabucco, where it lacks any real
dramatic significance. Interestingly, a similar
difference obtains with respect to parentoffspring relationships, for Azucena and Mistress Ford are the only developed maternal
figures in Verdi's oeuvre. He was not, like Bellini or Donizetti before him or Puccini after
him, a composer of woman-centered operas.
There are, of course, many striking portrayals
of women in his work, particularly from Macbeth on, but his female characters rarely have
the psychological complexity or originality of
conception of his males. In the treatment of
his two most characteristic themes, jealousy
and parent-offspringrelationships, it is the experience of males, above all husbands and
fathers, which evoked the most subtle and
personal response in Verdi.
VIII
In a well-known letter to the Countess
Maffei (1876) Verdi wrote "It may be a good
thing to copy reality, but to invent reality is
better, much better,""'4 and surely throughout

his career he realized this ideal. Yet I have no

doubt that his most distinctive, deeply felt,
and psychologically articulated creations are
based on the actualities of his own experience.
Once again, this cannot be taken in a literal
sense, for his operas are not made of scenes
from the life of Verdi. But there are some
characters whose psychological and emotional
states are presented with such specificity and
deep understandingthat one cannot escape the
sense that Verdi the man has been directly revealed by Verdi the dramatist. Otello seems to
me the clearest example.

54Werfel,ed., Verdi, p. 336.

With respect to externals, there is scarcely

any resemblance between the Moor of Venice
and the aging Italian composer who created
him, nor does Otello's jealousy have a clear
parallel in Verdi's life. There is no reason to
believe that in their life together, Giuseppina
ever gave him cause for jealousy; rather it was
Verdi who brought his wife to despair by his
involvement with another woman. Undoubtedly this long episode contributed to Verdi's
understanding of what it is to be jealous, for
his portrayal of Otello's possession by the
green-eyed monster has an unprecedented vividness. It is noteworthy, too, that the erotic is
handled far more directly and frankly in
Otello than in any other opera Verdi wrote,
both in the first act duet and in Otello's reaction to Iago's insinuations in Act II: "In the
secret hours of her lust (and stolen from me!)
did any presentiment perhaps stir in my
breast?I was confident, joyful ... I knew nothing yet; I didn't feel on her divine body that
makes me love her and on her false lips the
ardent kisses of Cassio!" The images here lay
bare the sexual nature of male jealousy, something only glimpsed in earlier operas. But even
though Verdi focuses on the experience of
jealousy per se as he never had before, Otello
is no more a study of a jealous man than La
Traviata is a study of a frustrated love.
Jealousy precipitates Otello's disintegration,
but it is that disintegration--the disintegration of an awesomely powerful man-which
forms the core of the drama Verdi and Boito
created. In this they are true to Shakespeare's
original; Otello no less than Othello is a figure
of tragic grandeur.
In the earlier discussion of the first-act
love duet (p. 124) I pointed out that Verdi
makes the fierce intensity of Otello's emotions unmistakeably clear. From his first appearance we know him to be an elemental
character, and the duet shows this to be no
less true of him as a husband and lover than as
a warrior. He has few reserves; constraint is
not part of his make-up. One is aware always
of a sense of strain, of an internal battle to
control the vehemence of his own emotions.
What holds these forces in check and channelizes them is the love of Desdemona, for the
meaning and coherence of his life, past and

present, derives from her love of him. This too

is established in their duet as they reminisce
about the origin of their love; her pity "ennobled the story" of his sufferings and made
"glorious" the darkness of his life. Otello is
not merely a superb warrior, he is Desdemona's superb warrior;he no longer has an identity apart from Desdemona. Thus Otello is
doubly vulnerable, first to the vehemence of
his own emotions and second to doubts about
the faithfulness of Desdemona. Once Iago has
succeeded in raising those doubts, Otello's disintegration is inevitable.
To modern audiences, Otello's gullibility
and the violence of his reactions may seem
excessive and insufficiently motivated, and
perhaps from the standpoint of the well-made
play they are. But from a psychological
standpoint, his behavior is entirely coherent,
for nothing less than an absolute belief in Desdemona's love can protect this too passionate
man, an outsider "declined into the vale of
years," against the fear that he has staked his
life on an illusion. Iago's poison works so
surely because Otello is in fact ready to believe what he most fears to believe. It is Otello
who fills in from his own imaginings what
Iago has merely hinted at. No "proofs"of disloyalty are needed by him to mourn that "she
is lost and I am mocked and my heart breaks,"
nor for him to bid farewell to all that has been
Otello's glory. It is above all in the third-act
monologue "Dio, mi potevi scagliar" that
Verdi shows us the depth of Otello's despair:
"O tears, O grief! they have taken from me the
mirage where, rejoicing, I still my spirit. Extinct is that sun, that smile, that radiance that
makes me alive, that makes me happy." When
the light is extinguished, Otello is possessed
by furies, always latent within, which tear
him apart psychologically, morally, and physically.
Without doubt, Otello is the culminating
figure in Verdi's long line of jealous men. It is
he who embodies in purest form the psychological crux of jealousy for Verdi, the loss of
faith and meaning, the destruction of the
dream of love. Certainly Otello reacts with
uncontrollable rage, but it is a rage born of anguish, an anguish made all the more profound
by the joyful, fulfilling love which has pre137

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdi the Man
and Dramatist

19TH
CENTURY
MUSIC

ceded it. That Otello continues to love Desdemona passionately exacerbates his state
still further. He cannot fully believe that she
is faithless and he is consequently racked by a
terrible ambivalence. Thus every reminder of
her goodness, every protestation of innocence
serves as a spur to renewed anger; only an admission of guilt could still his doubts. Even in
the last act he remains irresolute, first rushing
"upon an impulse of fury" to kill Desdemona,
then stopping to kiss her, and finally trying
one last time to coerce an admission of adultery from her. Shakespeare's grim, legalistic
judge is not to be found in Verdi's griefstricken, tormented man; Otello's "P tardi!" is

a cry of sheer pain meant for himself as well as

for Desdemona. This difference from Shakespeare's original, characteristic of the opera as
a whole, is maintained in the closing pages.
Verdi's hero makes no attempt to recall his
past nobility and service to the state, or to preserve his honor; he is absorbed totally in the
awful realization of what he has done and
what he has lost. At the last, it is the immensity of Otello's grief and also of his love
that brings tears.
In his chapter on Otello in Opera as
Drama, Kerman argues that Verdi "sacrificed
the tragedy of Otello for the pathos of Desdemona," that "in the great wave of pity for
her we are left in doubt about our man."55
Now there can be no question that Verdi and
Boito decisively altered Shakespeare's dramatic conception in refashioning the play into
the opera; the stamp of the ninteenth century
is clearly on their work. But if in this "powerfully romantic Othello" Desdemona has an
importance and stature she lacks in the play,
the passion of Otello remains at its core. Certainly he is not a classic tragic hero, a figure of
established nobility destroyed by a flaw of
character. Indeed, it seems doubtful to me
that Verdi could have portrayeda classic tragic
hero successfully had he chosen to do so; the
conception fits neither his times nor the range
of his experience. What he could grasp and
grasp profoundly is a conception of Otello as a

55JosephKerman, Opera as Drama (New York, 1956), p.

161.
138

vulnerable, unsettled man, torn apart internally by powerful and turbulent emotions. It
is in this sense that Verdi the man is revealed
in Otello, and it is, I believe, from his identification of his own internal states with those
of Otello that the opera takes on its distinctive cast.
It will be recalled that the composition of
Otello was particularly difficult for Verdi.
Though the crisis in his marital life had been
resolved by 1879, there is ample evidence that
he was still in an angry and unsettled frame of
mind, uncertain of himself and deeply depressed. If he could not resist the bait offered
him by Ricordi, neither had he the confidence
to make a whole-hearted commitment to the
project. In this light, one detail in his early
correspondence with Boito about the libretto
is particularly revealing. He felt Boito's treatment of the finale of Act IIIto be dramatically
flat, and suggested that after Otello's insult of
Desdemona and Lodovico's reproach, there
should suddenly be an attack by the Turks.
Following the surprise and terror of the
people, Otello "shakes himself like a lion and
draws himself erect; he brandishes his sword:
'Come on; I will lead you again to victory',"
then battle, prayers and curtain. The idea is
surprisingly inept for someone of Verdi's
dramatic sensitivity and indeed he himself
questioned it on several grounds: most interestingly, he asked Boito, "Can Otello,
crushed with sorrow, gnawed by jealousy, discouraged,physically and morally sick-can he
pull himself together and become the hero
that he was?"56It does not require a great inferential leap to suppose that Verdi was thinking more of himself than of Otello in his
suggested turn of plot and the questions he
raised about it. They express poignantly both
his hopes and his doubts, and though it was
not jealousy which gnawed at Verdi, the description of Otello's desolate state is an apt
description of Verdi's own distress.
In sum, Verdi found in Shakespeare'splay
a vessel into which he could pour the accumulated pain, uncertainty, fury, despair, and visions of his own life. The shape of the vessel

"5Walker,pp. 477-78.

was greatly changed in the process: Verdi's

Otello is not a retelling in musical form of
Shakespeare's Othello. Though comparisons
with the original are inevitable and illuminating, they can also be misleading, for the opera
is surely best comprehended as Verdi's culminating dramatic work. In it he treats with
unparalleled concentration and intensity the
themes which preoccupied him from the
time of Macbeth on: jealousy, female innocence, the loss of love and the loss of hope. In
all senses it is the most Verdian of Verdi's
operas.

IX
Just as La Traviata can be seen as the end
of one phase of Verdi's career, Otello can be
seen as the end of another. With Otello the
long period of artistic experimentation had
come to a conclusion: Verdi's style had become fully integrated and mature, an entirely
personal instrument. Moreover, the enthusiastic reception of the opera proved that the old
lion could indeed "become again the hero that
he was." Thus by 1887 the context of turmoil
and distress in which Verdi had worked for so
long, and which had found an ultimate expression in Otello, was past. Both his private and
artistic crises had been resolved and Verdi, at
seventy-nine, had finally moved into his old
age, free to embark in a new direction. He did
just that in Falstaff, his first comic opera in
half a century. Though elements of humor had
appeared in earlier operas, perhaps most notably in the character of Fra Melitone, the gaity,
lightness and wit of Falstaff stand in marked
contrast to the prevailing grimness of the preceding works. Nevertheless the newness of
Falstaff consists less in Verdi's decision to do
a comic opera than in the relationship of the
composer to his work: for all its velocity and
high spirits, Falstaff is essentially a reflective
and retrospective piece.
In some comments on the performance of
"Die Winterreise," the singer Hans Hotter
delineated two equally valid interpretive approaches. In the first, the singer enters directly
into the world of the protagonist and enacts
his drama. In the second, the singer remains
outside the drama, and tells a story which has
moved him deeply. The operas prior to

Falstaff have a lived-through quality; one can

believe that Verdi is expressing emotions he
had known well. In Falstaff, however, one
senses that he is more an observer, that he is
occupying a role like that of an ominiscient
narrator. But the story Verdi tells is twofold,
for it concerns himself as well as the characters on the stage. Thus Falstaff, unlike any
other of his operas, can be fully understood
only in the context of its predecessors.
I do not mean to suggest that Falstaff is
other than a self-contained and complete work
in its own right, only that it is also a satire
whose object is Verdi himself. This is perhaps
most evident in the music which accompanies
the ladies' reading of Falstaff's letter in Act I,
scene ii. The grand theme to which the lines
"E il viso tuo su me risplendera ... ." are set
is as warmly romantic and as typically Verdian as any the composer wrote, but when
such music is applied to the seedy old knight,
its effect becomes ludicrous. While this is appropriately ludicrous and very much in keeping with Falstaff's character, I cannot doubt
that Verdi was also poking fun at his own old
ways. Indeed, Verdi stocked his last opera
with self-parodies and reversals of his accustomed dramatic situations. Falstaff, the ardent
lover, is the very antithesis of the ardent
lovers of the earlier operas, and where the
frustation of their hopes is tragic, Falstaff's
misfortunes are farcical. Likewise, Verdi
brings up for a final review that staple of
in
nineteenth-century opera, honor-but
Falstaff honor is the concern of the two fleabitten buffoons, "cloache d'ignominia," and
the object of Falstaff's comic scorn. Verdi has
moved quite some distance from the terrible
conflicts of a Radames or an Elisabeth.
The satirical aspect of Falstaff can also be
seen in the way Verdi treats the theme of
jealousy, the theme which so preoccupied him
in the post-Strepponi operas. Ford's music expresses a fury and bitterness matched only by
that of Otello. Cone makes much of this: "...
the terrifying reality of Ford's jealousy . . . is

sufficient proof that Verdi did not regard his

characters as mere puppets .... in the two late

works the emotion has acquired a moral aspect: the husband's sense of right and wrong
has been outraged by the supposed conduct of

139

GERALDA.
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Verdithe Man
and Dramatist

19TH

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his wife." It is, he continues, this moral aspect

that "makes a tragic hero of Otello-and almost of Ford."57 But can we take Ford's
jealousy seriously? In one sense we canVerdi surely does show Ford to be a man torn
apart by his emotions. In another sense, however, Fordis a foolish man who is quite unlike
Verdi's other jealous husbands. His presumed
rival is no Venetian gentleman-soldier, Infante
of Spain or young nobleman; only the most
uncomprehending man could believe that a
woman like Alice would yield to the advances
of the fat old knight. Moreover, that awful
sense of loss which makes the jealousy of
Verdi's men profound is completely lacking in
Ford's reactions to his suspicions. He can
think only of his lost honor as a husband; he
is a man consumed by his fears of being cuckolded. It is in fact this fear of being a cuckold rather than any actuality which makes
him appear ridiculous.
In this regardFord more resembles a husband of opera buffa than a near tragic figure.
Consequently, the use of Otello's music for
Ford's jealousy has the effect of comic exaggeration. The text of his monologue in Act II is
in the language of farce: "Already behind my
back, names of infamous invention they whistle, passing by; contempt is murmuring. O
matrimony: inferno! Woman: demon! Let
simpletons have faith in their wives! I would
entrust my beer to a German, all my table to a
gluttonous Dutchman, my bottle of brandy to
a Turk: not my wife to herself." Where the
word fazzoletto, so rich in emotional significance, serves as the emblem of Otello's
anguish and of the obsessive ideas which drive
him nearly mad, it is the word coma, that
stock image of comedy, which brings Ford to
the limits of his control. And, finally, Ford
alone of Verdi's husbands could praise
jealousy. His climactic words "Laudate
sempre sia nel fondo del mio cor la gelosia"
are set, moreover, to the last of those soaring,
expansive phrases Verdi had so often before

is more than a possibility that too strong a

feeling has been aroused, and that the composer is not certain that he can contain it
within the stylistic framework he has
erected."58But this, I am sure, is to confuse
deliberate paradox with ambiguity and the
Verdi of Otello and its predecessors with the
Verdi of Falstaff. It bears repeating that Verdi
was an old man when he wrote Falstaff; the
ferocity of his earlier years had much abated
and in its place we find a clear-eyed selfawareness, a subtlety of understanding which
had not been there before. One hopes that age
and experience bring wisdom; in Verdi's case
they did. Thus when he returned for the last
time to those themes which had been at the
core of his work for fifty years, he did so from
a different perspective. Verdi does not deny
the reality of Ford's feelings-once again, he
shows jealousy to be a consuming emotion,
corrosive to character and potentially dangerous. But Verdi does not lose his detachment,
for he also shows quite clearly the extravagance and irrationality of Ford's emotions. He
is made foolish by excess, by his myopic selfabsorption with his precious honor. Ford is indeed serious in his jealousy-fools, too, are
capable of passionate emotion-but he is no
less a fool for his seriousness. That Ford takes
himself seriously, then, does not mean that
Verdi or the audience must do the same.
Verdi's treatment of Ford'sjealousy seems
to me part of a larger theme, the relationship
between men and women, and in this above

bestowed
complete.

all Falstaff represents a remarkable reversal of

the past. None of the men in Falstaff, save

on his

baritones.

57Cone,"The Old Man's Toys," p. 130.

140

The

irony is

Now it must be recognized that what I

have taken as irony can also be seen as a failure on Verdi's part to resolve conflicting
dramatic demands. Charles Osborne, for
example, after noting that Ford's monologue
"would not sound out of place if transposed up
a tone and sung by Otello," writes, "Here
Verdi and Boito explore the dramatic ambiguity of Ford's feelings. We know he is serious in his jealousy, but elsewhere we are invited not to take him seriously. Here ... there

"Osbome, The Complete Operas, pp. 486-87.

Fenton, can be taken at all seriously. Bardolfo

and Pistola are parasitic clowns and Caius a
silly self-important dupe, a comic version of
Rodrigo. Ford and Falstaff are a complementary pair, each in his own characteristic way a
comic victim of personal vanity and selfdeception. All of them-and this does include
Fenton-are ineffective, quite incapable of
achieving their ends by their own efforts. The
merry wives, in contrast, are realists who see
through the egoism of the men and thus succeed in bringing the drama to a happy issue.
The difference between these women and
Verdi's long line of suffering heroines is striking. As I noted before, the action of Verdi's
preceding operas is controlled by men and the
world they create. Some of his heroines, such
as H6lne and Desdemona, struggle against
this domination, but none has the power to
escape male destructiveness; they bow to and
even accept the irrationality which surrounds
them and usually they are consumed by it. (So
too, it should be noted, are the men.) The
merry wives, however, will not play the game
by rules which are not of their own making,
rules which sacrifice their welfare to the selfinterest and thoughtless passions of men.
They are fully in accord with the sentiment of
another heroine of an operatic comedy, La
Perichole, "Mon Dieu, que les hommes sont
bates!" Their knowledge that this is so permits them to pull the strings while the men
thrash around in the dilemmas they have
created for themselves.59
Though the merry wives can be regarded
to a degree as a corporate entity, forming musically and dramatically a woman's world
which contrasts with the man's world, Mistress Ford stands out as the key figure. She is
the most fully developed of the women and
the one most clearly related to Verdi's previous heroines. She is of the same vocal cype as
her predecessors, and like so many of them
she is importuned by an unwanted lover and

59Nanetta,though on the periphery of the group, clearly

shares their sentiments: "While those old men run their
tourney, we stealthily run ours. Love doesn't hear thunder or storms, it flies to the blissful spheres and rejoices."

accused of infidelity by her husband. Alice,

however, is neither passive, confused, nor internally conflicted. On the contrary, she is a
self-possessed and knowing woman; her
operatic ancestry is more readily traced to
Serpina than to Lucia. Indeed, she seems quite
capable of having an affair if she chose to,
though surely not with a Falstaff. For her, as
for Meg, Falstaff merits "un gran castigo" less
for his presumption than for the affront of his
attempt to court both the ladies at the same
time and in precisely the same language.
Neither does she take Ford'sanger or his plans
for Nanetta seriously; he too deserves to be
put in his place. Unlike any other of Verdi's
heroines, then, Mistress Ford is selfdetermining-it is she who controls the action and it is she who teaches the men the lessons they need to learn.
Falstaff will, no doubt, soon unlearn his
lesson, for he is too impulsive and unreflective
to profit from his experience. He is a child
who will not bow to reality and so he refuses
to take setbacks seriously for very long. This
optimism, born of a naivet6 and a primitive
vitality, leads him into scrapes, but it also
serves to protect him from damage. By the end
of the opera his amour propre has alreadybeen
much restored, and he has succeeded in recapturing the center stage. But if Falstaff's understanding is limited to the realization that he
has been made an ass, Ford's goes deeper-he
realizes that he has made an ass of himself.
Ford, then, grows up in the course of the opera: he comes to acknowledge his irrationality
and egocentricity, to see himself and his world
with greater objectivity. Ultimately he is able
to respond to his wife's appeal, "Volgitti e
mira quell'ansie leggiadre," and to relinquish
with good humor and affection his self-serving
plans for his daughter. It has been a close
thing, however, for there can be no mistaking
the menace in his exchange with Mistress
Ford in Act II, scene ii ("Milavi! rea moglie!")
his anger at Falstaff ("se non redersi ti sconquasserei"), or his hostility to the love of Fenton and Nanetta. But Ford alone of Verdi's unvillainous villians achieves understanding
before his deranged emotions and heedless
schemes can work their damage. What makes
141

GERALDA.
MENDELSOHN
Verdithe Man
and Dramatist

19TH

CENTURY
MUSIC

this possible, of course, is the strength and

level-headedness of his wife. Alice sees her
husband's foolishness for what it is and will
not permit herself or her daughter to fall victim to his folly. She accomplishes something
else as well: she rescues Ford himself from
"the nets woven by his malice." His maturation is the product of Alice's wit and benevolence. It is satisfying to believe that embodied
in this last of Verdi's heroines is a final operatic tribute to Giuseppina.
Jealousy, female innocence, honor, and the
difficult course of true love-these are as
much the dramatic materials of Falstaff as of
its predecessors. But of course the treatment
of those themes is very different. In the operas
prior to Falstaff Verdi had accepted romantic
attitudes as givens, and had entered
wholeheartedly and personally into that world
of exacerbated emotion and conflict. From the
vantage point of old age, however, the effusions of the romantic spirit became folly, matter for comedy. Other composers, notably Offenbach and Sullivan in his collaborations
with Gilbert, likewise satirized the serious
opera of the nineteenth century, but they did
so as amused outsiders. Verdi's satire cuts
much deeper. To the degree that he identified
himself with the characters of his dramasand he did so to a considerable degree-the
folly he laughs at is also his own. It is as if
Verdi is saying "Look how silly we men are,
how vain, how weak. And to think how seriously we take ourselves." Indeed it is precisely
their seriousness, their inability to see beyond
the inner world of their passions, their selfabsorption, which makes men dangerous.
Verdi must always have known this to be true,
but he was himself too caught up in the emotions he portrayed to regard them dispassionately. It was only when his own demons had
quieted that Verdi could stand outside the
drama and reflect with humor and irony on
those themes which had preoccupied him for
so many years.
Cone has aptly described Falstaff as
"the old man's toy," but he points out, too,
that it is by no means "a trivial comedy
adorned with some exquisite music." Verdi

142

surely mellowed in his old age but he was not

prepared to regard all the world as a joke, at
least not a funny joke.60 His fundamental pessimism and his acute awareness of the grim
realities of the world never left him-they are
as much a part of Falstaff as of his other
operas. He reminds us, particularly in the
character of Ford, that self-deception, irrationality, and blind, egoistic strivings remain
disfiguring and destructive forces, the enemies
of love. Maturity does not consist in turning
these realities into jokes; it consists in the
understanding that in their vanity and oppressive seriousness all are ultimately deceived
and mocked. It is the merry wives who embody this understanding, who provide the
clear light in which folly is revealed and made
a source of merriment. This understanding
also gives them power, the power to control
events and the power to bring about the reconciliation and the fulfilment of love which
conclude the opera. It must be remembered,
though, that the happy ending is midwived by
trickery and deception and more than a little
cruelty. Sentimentality, romantic illusions
and wishful thinking play no part in this ending: for Verdi, good will and love remain hostage to darkerforces, too fragile to triumph on
their own. Although he found in knowing
laughter the means to mitigate the painfulness
of this reality, his tragic view of human affairs
was subtilized, not abandoned, in his last
work for the stage.
It is one of the many paradoxes of Falstaff
that Verdi was never more a realist than in his
most fanciful opera. Indeed the surpassing
achievement of Falstaff lies in Verdi's ability
to fuse the contending elements not only of
dream and reality, but also of tragedy and
comedy, past and present, text and music, age
and youth into a single personal and artistic
vision. It is his great and deliberate
summing-up: the "old man's toy" is at once
the old man's valedictory.
(To be continued in the next issue.)

"The final words of Falstaff are not "Tutto nel mondo

e burla" but rather "Tutti gabbati."