Il corsaro

Lord Byron, by Richard Westall, date unk.

Librettist
Francesco Maria Piave

The composer expressed interest in Byron's poem The Corsair (along with The Two Foscari and others) as early as 1844 when he was planning an opera for Venice, but a suitable baritone was not available.[1] In 1845, (before it was determined that I masnadieri was to be the opera presented in London), the composer had contracted with the Milanese publisher, Francesco Lucca, for three operas, including Attila and one for London.

Three things prevented it from being I masnadieri at that time: firstly, Verdi's illness postponed any opera for London for almost a year; secondly, he demanded that the work be Il corsaro and that it be written by Piave, who had begun work; and, thirdly, by 1846 and the planning for London continuing, Verdi became more interested in I masnadieri or Macbeth ("in that order" notes Budden),[1] but with the long-term view being that one of them would be for Florence.

However, Verdi had not lost sight of Corsaro at all, as is demonstrated in a letter he wrote to Piave. Impatient because of the delays, Piave had asked for his libretto to be returned to him in order that he might fulfill another commitment. Verdi was shocked: "Give you back Il corsaro, that Corsaro which has always fascinated me and which I've thought about so much, and which you've put into verse with more than your usual care?" The composer continues to explain details of the work on the music he has already done, but notes "I still have to write the opera for Lucca."[2] Piave relented, and he moved ahead on Macbeth's libretto. But, by the end of the year, when Lucca and the British impresario, Benjamin Lumley were raising the issue of the London contract, Verdi replied that he found Il corsaro "dull (freddo) and theatrically ineffective".[3]

Thus, I masnadieri became the opera for London, and Verdi (and his long-time assistant and student, Emanuele Muzio) traveled to that city at the end of May 1847 for the premiere performance which was held on 22 July 1847, after which the composer returned to Paris – where he remained for two years – while Muzio returned to Milan. After the Masnadieri, in order to satisfy the remaining opera contracted with Lucca, Verdi proposed Il corsaro, was offered a counter proposal which he rejected, and from Paris in February 1848 Verdi sent the completed score to Lucca via Muzio.[1] Budden comments "In no other opera of his does Verdi appear to have taken so little interest before it was staged".[4] Where and when it was to be staged, who the singers would be, and by which stage director was left to the publisher.

19th century

Marianna Barbieri-Nini

Lucca decided on the Teatro Grande (now the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi) in Trieste as the location for the Spring 1848 premiere, but political events in Lombardy postponed it until the autumn. The opera house management felt that Muzio would be capable to handling the staging, but having fled to Switzerland, he became unavailable and the task was handled by Luigi Ricci who, along with his brother Federico, were minor composers of the day.[5] Verdi did not attend the first performance. However, Verdi's biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz feels that Lucca chose a good house and a cast "almost as good as anyone could have mustered in Europe at the time."[6] In addition, she quotes from a long letter which Verdi wrote to the soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini, who had been his Lady Macbeth at the 1847 premiere of that opera. In the letter, Verdi said that he wanted "to tell you a few things about your pieces", and gives her some very explicit advice on how to sing Gulnara.[7]

As it turned out, the opera was poorly received by both the press and the public in Trieste, an unusual occurrence for Verdi. Budden notes that it "vanished from the repertoire after three performances" and that the local feeling would have been that "Trieste deserves a better opera than this".[1][8]

Relatively few performances were given in Italy after the premiere, although it was staged in Milan and Turin in 1852, and in Modena, Novara, Venice, and Vercelli in 1853. [9]

20th century and beyond

The opera was given its first performances in Britain (London) in March 1966[10] and in the US in December 1981.[10]

It was presented as part of a Verdi Festival by the San Diego Opera in 1982 with Rosalind Plowright and June Anderson,[11] and in 2004 by the Sarasota Opera as part of its "Verdi Cycle". The Teatro Regio di Parma presented it in 2008 as part of their "Festival Verdi",[12] while another company which aims to present all of the composer's operas, the ABAO in Bilbao, Spain, gave it in November 2010.

In concert versions, it was given by the Liceu Barcelona and the Royal Opera, London in June 1996, Corrado having been sung by José Cura. The Opera Orchestra of New York presented it in March 2004. The Washington Concert Opera in Washington, D.C. presented a concert version in March 2014 with a cast including Michael Fabiano as Corrado, Tamara Wilson as Gulnara, and Nicole Cabell as Medora.[13] Fabiano starred in a new production of the opera in April 2018 at the Palau de Les Arts, Valencia.[14]

Verdi about 1850

Place: A Greek island in the Aegean and the Turkish city of Corone.[16]

Time: The early 1800s

Il corsaro is scored for piccolo, flute, two oboes, two clarinets, two bassoons, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, cimbasso, triangle, cymbals, timpani, bass drum and cymbals, cannon, harp, strings.

When discussing the qualities of Byron's poetry in comparison with how Verdi treated it musically, Julian Budden points to one obvious problem: the opera "hardly makes for music-drama [because] it is a narrative. Not being conceived of in dramatic terms it offers no opportunity for the generation of musical power through conflict and clash of personalities."[17] He compares it unfavourably with "the steady crescendo of dramatic interest" in Ernani, or the "cut and thrust of character dialectic that informs I due Foscari and "without the sense of grand theatre that transfigures the great moments in Giovanna d'Arco and Attila. David Kimball (in Holden) also describes it in comparable terms, emphasizing that "after the weightiness of the three previous three operas [... it] seems a light, sketchy piece." But he does note that Verdi was "designing arias more imaginatively".[10] Of interest is the caution given by Roger Parker for us to be aware that the dramatic structure of the opera was finalized in 1846, before Macbeth, and therefore this might be a reason for regarding the opera as old-fashioned.[18]

• Le Corsaire, a ballet loosely based on Lord Byron's poem.

Notes

Sources

• Baldini, Gabriele (1970), (trans. Roger Parker, 1980), The Story of Giuseppe Verdi: Oberto to Un Ballo in Maschera. Cambridge, et al: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29712-5
• Budden, Julian (1984), The Operas of Verdi, Volume 1: From Oberto to Rigoletto. London: Cassell. ISBN 0-304-31058-1.
• De Van, Gilles (trans. Gilda Roberts) (1998), Verdi’s Theater: Creating Drama Through Music. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-14369-4 (hardback), ISBN 0-226-14370-8
• Gossett, Philip (2006), Divas and Scholar: Performing Italian Opera, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-30482-5
• Hudson, Elizabeth (Ed.)(1998), Il corsaro, full score critical edition, ed. Elizabeth Hudson, Chicago & Milan: University of Chicago Press & Casa Ricordi. ISBN 0-226-85317-9 (University of Chicago Press), ISBN 88-7592-521-6 (Casa Ricordi).
• Kimbell, David (2001), in Holden, Amanda (Ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. ISBN 0-14-029312-4
• Martin, George, Verdi: His Music, Life and Times (1983), New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. ISBN 0-396-08196-7
• Osborne, Charles (1969), The Complete Opera of Verdi, New York: Da Capo Press, Inc. ISBN 0-306-80072-1
• Parker, Roger (1998), "'Il corsaro" in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. One, pp. 960 – 961. London: MacMillan Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-333-73432-7 ISBN 1-56159-228-5
• Parker, Roger (2007), The New Grove Guide to Verdi and His Operas, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-531314-7
• Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane (1993), Verdi: A Biography, London & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-313204-4
• Pistone, Danièle (1995), Nineteenth-Century Italian Opera: From Rossini to Puccini, Portland, OR: Amadeus Press. ISBN 0-931340-82-9
• Toye, Francis (1931), Giuseppe Verdi: His Life and Works, New York: Knopf
• Walker, Frank, The Man Verdi (1982), New York: Knopf, 1962, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-87132-0
• Warrack, John and West, Ewan, The Oxford Dictionary of Opera New York: OUP: 1992 ISBN 0-19-869164-5
• Werfel, Franz and Stefan, Paul (1973), Verdi: The Man and His Letters, New York, Vienna House. ISBN 0-8443-0088-8

• Verdi: "The story" and "History" on giuseppeverdi.it (in English)
• Greatest Verdi singers, Verdi's friends and collaborators, genealogy project on geni.com
• Aria database
• Il corsaro: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project