Simon Boccanegra

Verdi in 1859

Musicologist and author Julian Budden points to three projects which the composer had in mind when, at the beginning of 1855, he turned down an invitation from La Fenice to write a new opera for them for the following year. He responded: "the chief obstacle is my unshakable determination not to bind myself anymore to a definite period for either the composition or the production".[1] While that approach did not turn out to be practicable at that time, it was an ultimate goal and, in aiming to achieve it, his partner of the previous four years, Giuseppina Strepponi greatly encouraged it when she wrote to him at the time of his frustrations two years earlier when working in Paris on Les vêpres siciliennes.

The only project for which there was forward motion was towards accomplishing his long-planned Re Lear, an opera to be based on King Lear, for which his new librettist (following Salvadore Cammarano's death) was Antonio Somma. But a year later, when overseeing a revival of La traviata at La Fenice, he agreed to a new opera for that house for the 1856/7 season,[2] and he proposed the Gutiérrez play, which Budden presumes he had read in translation. Budden also presumes that the translation had been done by Strepponi,[3] because she had been the translator of Gutiérrez' other play which had become Il trovatore.

The somewhat convoluted plot of Simon Boccanegra can be hard to follow. Budden notes: "All the characters define themselves against an ingeniously shifting pattern of intrigue such as can be highly effective in a play but well-nigh impossible to follow in an opera".[3] Verdi had gone so far as to actually write out the scenario in prose, which he then submitted to Piave in August; all that he expected from his librettist was that it would be turned into poetry, so Verdi balked somewhat when the censors demanded a complete poetic version: "what does it matter for the moment it's in prose or verse?"[4] He pushed harder, stating that "I plan to compose music for a prose libretto! What do you think of that?"[5] In the end, there was a poetic version and all was well: it was accepted by the opera house and the censors.

Beginning in July and throughout most of the period of the preparation of the libretto, the composer and Strepponi had been in Paris taking care of securing various performance and publication rights, including working on a translated version of Il trovatore, the opera which became Le trouvère. Piave was informed that Verdi's stay would need to be lengthened and everything would be handled between them and the Venetian authorities by mail.

However, Verdi's dissatisfaction with some of the librettist's work led him to find a local collaborator to help revise some of the sections. Accordingly, he called upon an Italian exile in Paris, the politician, former professor of law, poet and writer Giuseppe Montanelli,[6] to do this. Piave learned nothing of the revisions until he received a note from Verdi: "Here is the libretto, shortened and altered more or less as it must be. You can put your name to or it, just as you please". However, he also learned nothing of the anonymous collaborator either.[7] After the premiere of Le trouvère on 12 January 1857, Verdi and Strepponi left Paris to return to Italy, then both went to Venice for the March premiere.

However, the relationship was soon restored and Piave came to Sant'Agata in April to work on some revisions, but it was the libretto which came in for the heaviest criticism: "It was generally condemned as one of the most unintelligible to have reached the stage" notes Kimbell and its general dark and gloomy feel was to affect its fortunes for many years.[8]

Doge's costume for the 1881 revision

In 1868, Giulio Ricordi suggested the idea of revisions to Boccanegra; the idea was again broached ten years later, early in 1879, but was shrugged off by Verdi with a note saying that the 1857 score, which had been sent to the composer for review, would remain untouched "just as you sent it to me".[9] Persisting with further attempts to convince the composer, Ricordi had also broached the idea of a collaboration with Arrigo Boito for a new opera based on Shakespeare's Othello. Musicologist Roger Parker speculates that Verdi's final agreement to revise Boccanegra was based on a desire to "test the possibility" of working with Boito before possibly embarking on the larger project.[10]

Once Verdi began to re-look at his earlier work, objections – and new ideas – began to emerge: "the score is not possible as it stands" and "I shall have to redo all the second act [1857: act 2, which became act 1 in the 1881 revision] and give it more contrast and variety, more life" are examples of his reasoning, which he laid out in a letter to Ricordi in November 1880.[11] His principal concern was how to make changes to the 1857, act 2. "I have said in general it needs something to give life and variety to the drama's excessive gloom", he writes[11] and he continues by recalling:

two magnificent letters of Petrarch's, one addressed to [the historical] Boccanegra, the other to the [then-]Doge of Venice, warning them not to start a fratricidal war, and reminding them that both were sons of the same mother, Italy, and so on. This idea of an Italian fatherland at this time was quite sublime![11]

In spite of the complexity of many of Boito's proposed ideas, along with his alternative scenarios, which are expressed in a long letter to Verdi [12](most of which the composer regarded as excessive), the Council Chamber scene emerged as the focus of the new collaboration. Although he had confidence in the young librettist's abilities ("[The scene] written by you could not possibly be dull"[13]), Verdi did caution Boito that he appeared to be "aiming at a perfection impossible here. I [Verdi] aim lower and am more optimistic than you and I don't despair",[13] in essence, expressing an unwillingness to re-write the opera as completely as Boito had proposed. It would have been far more work than the composer wished to be involved in at the time.

The pair spent the latter part of 1880 and into January 1881 with back-and-forth additions and revisions (the composer in Genoa, the librettist in Milan and meeting only once),[14] all of which are heavily documented in the Verdi-Boito correspondence, the Carteggio Verdi-Boito, and significantly quoted in Budden. All this was the build-up to performances in Milan the following March, although the composer was constantly concerned about the suitability of the singers engaged there for that season, and he threatened to withdraw the opera on more than one occasion.[14]

The result was the contrast, which Parker describes, between the original 1857 act 2 finale, "set in a large square in Genoa, [as] a conventional four-movement concertante finale, a grand ceremonial scene" whereas, in the 1881 revision, "[Verdi] injected into the heart of the work an episode of enormous vividness and power, enriching the character of Boccanegra in such a way that his subsequent death scene gains considerably in impressiveness".[15] And, as Budden puts it, "Simone (sic) rises to spiritual greatness. For the first time, his moral authority puts forth all its strength, ... positively as in the appeal for peace ..."[16]

Original 1857 version

Francesco Maria Piave, librettist of the 1857 version

While not a popular success, it did garner some critical acclaim, "with the music being praised for its fidelity to the text, the orchestration for its elegance, the melody for its inspiration" noted the Gazzetta Musicale,[6] but Budden notes that "complaints of 'obscurity', 'severity', harmonic abstruseness' are heard from even the most respectful of critics".[17] And Verdi himself was fairly blunt in his assessment: "I've had a fiasco in Venice almost as great as that of La traviata" he reported to Clara Maffei.[18]

Following its 1857 premiere, Simon Boccanegra was performed in Reggio Emilia, "where it triumphed ...  ... and again in Naples in 1858 ..."[17] There was similar acclaim after the Rome presentation about the same time, but "on the other hand, Boccanegra had been laughed off the stage in Florence" and "had been a fiasco at La Scala in 1859".[17]

It was given in Malta in 1860, Madrid and Lisbon in 1861, and Buenos Aires and Montevideo in 1862, but, after that, it almost completely disappeared with only a sporadic performance or two, including Corfu in 1870 and Alexandria in late 1880.[19]

A concert performance of the original version, possibly its first hearing in 100 years (and its UK premiere), took place at the Golders Green Hippodrome in London on 2 August 1975 before an invited audience "masterminded" [19] by Julian Budden with Sesto Bruscantini in the title role and André Turp as Gabriele. This production was broadcast on 1 January 1976 and issued on CD. It was also performed by the Royal Opera, London in concert in June 1995[8] with Anthony Michaels-Moore and José Cura and staged at Covent Garden in June 1997 with Sergei Leiferkus and Plácido Domingo in the two aforementioned male roles. The Amelias in the 1995 and 1997 versions were Amanda Roocroft and Kallen Esperian respectively.[19]

Set design by Girolamo Magnani for 1881 revision

In August 1999 there was a set of performances at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca, which was recorded. That same year it was given by New York Grand Opera, this being its first New York performance.[20] Sarasota Opera, in its "Verdi Cycle" series of all of the composer's works, gave it its American premiere in 1992.[21]

Revised version of 1881

It is this later version, unveiled in 1881 in Milan, and given in Vienna and Paris in 1882 and 1883, respectively, that has become part of the standard operatic repertory.[22] The British premiere did not occur until 1948, when it was given in English at Sadler's Wells, with Arnold Matters (Simone), James Johnston (Adorno), Joyce Gartside (Amelia) and Howell Glynne (Fiesco).[23]

Time: The middle of the 14th century.

Place: In and around Genoa.

Arrigo Boito, librettist of the 1881 revision

Disegno per copertina di libretto, drawing for Simon Boccanegra (1955).

Budden makes a useful observation on the musical qualities of the original version: "all the devices that we associate with the term bel canto are sparingly used"[33] and he suggests that, at mid-century, "this amounted to a denial of Italy's national birthright"[33] for an audience brought up on the conventions employed by Vincenzo Bellini or Gaetano Donizetti. In his "Introduction to the 1881 Score", James Hepokoski emphasizes that Budden's assertion appeared to be true, since the 1857 original "resounded with clear echoes of [Verdi's] earlier style" and that he employed the known techniques but, at the same time, moved away from them, so that:

the basic musical conventions of the Risorgimento (separate numbers with breaks for applause, multi-movement arias and duets with repetitive codas, cadenzas and repeated cabalettas, static concertato ensembles, and so on) were indeed present, if usually modified [so that] the musical discourse was characteristically terse, angular, and muscular.[34]

Budden goes on to suggest the implications of this move away from the standard forms, albeit that "[it] was a daring, innovative work. Without altering the letter of the contemporary Italian forms, it certainly altered their spirit ... Quite unheard of was a protagonist without a single extended lyrical solo to himself.[16] Additionally, Budden suggests that musically "the richness and subtlety of the musical language acquired over twenty-four years suffice to fill out Simon's personality further.[16]

The 1881 revisions then, which, in most cases, did not require changes in the libretto, were made to the music by Verdi. As David Kimbell demonstrates with a few examples, areas such as which illustrate more refined use of the orchestra include the first scene of the Prologue: "the dialogue, instead of being punctuated by the customary figurations of accompanied recitative, is set against a gravely flowing orchestral theme."[35]

Notes

Cited sources

• Budden, Julian (1984), The Operas of Verdi, Volume 2: From Il Trovatore to La Forza del destino. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-0-19-520068-3 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-19-520450-6 (paperback).
• Kahn, Gary (Ed.) (2011), Simon Boccanegra: Giuseppe Verdi, (Overture Opera Guides). London, Overture Publishing in association with English National Opera. ISBN 978-1-84749-543-3
• Kimbell, David (2001), in Holden, Amanda (Ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam. ISBN 0-14-029312-4
• Loewenberg, Alfred (1978), Annals of Opera, 1597 to 1940. London, John Calder. ISBN 0-7145-3657-1 ISBN 0-7145-3657-1
• Osborne, Charles (1993), The Complete Opera of Verdi, New York: Da Capo Press, Inc. ISBN 0-306-80072-1
• Parker, Roger (1998), "Simon Boccanegra", in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. Four. London: Macmillan Publishers. 1998 ISBN 0-333-73432-7 ISBN 1-56159-228-5
• Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane (1993), Verdi: A Biography, London & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-313204-4
• Werfel, Franz and Stefan, Paul (1973), Verdi: The Man and His Letters, New York, Vienna House. ISBN 0-8443-0088-8

Other sources

• Baldini, Gabriele, (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
• Busch, Hans (1988), Verdi's Otello and Simon Boccanegra (revised version); two volumes. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-90313207-9
• Chusid, Martin, (Ed.) (1997), Verdi’s Middle Period, 1849 to 1859, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-10658-6 ISBN 0-226-10659-4
• Conati, Marcello and Mario Medici (Eds.) (Trans. William Weaver) (1994), The Verdi-Boito Correspondence, Chicago: University of Chicago Press ISBN 0-226-85304-7
• 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
• Martin, George (1983), Verdi: His Music, Life and Times. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company. ISBN 0-396-08196-7
• Parker, Roger (2007), The New Grove Guide to Verdi and His Operas, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-531314-7
• 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 (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera New York: OUP. ISBN 0-19-869164-5

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Simon Boccanegra (Verdi).

• Greatest Verdi singers, Verdi's friends and collaborators, a genealogy opera per opera project on geni.com
• Simon Boccanegra: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Arias and roles of Simon Boccanegra from aria-database.com