Boroson on Music

September 2014

What You Never Knew

About Giuseppe Verdi

By Warren Boroson

There’s an easy-to-read, informative book about Giuseppe Verdi just out, full of forthright opinions and possibly some surprises, even for Verdi aficionados.

   What might people not have known about Verdi?

    According to the book, he was a non-believer. He was, “quite exceptionally for a nineteenth century Italian, an atheist,” the book’s author, Victor Lederer, writes. (“Verdi: The Operas and Choral Works,” Amadeus Press, 2014.) Apparently, like his Iago, he didn’t even believe in an afterlife. As he wrote to a friend, “But after all, in life isn’t everything death? What else exists?”

   What else might surprise? Although our impression may be that he was a generous, good-natured fellow, “he behaved tyrannically at home with his second wife, Giuseppina, and their servants.”

   When he applied for admission to the Milan Conservatory, his application was turned down.

     His early opera, “Giovanna d’Arco,” has Joan of Arc die—but not be burned at the stake.

    He was thinking of writing an opera based on Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” but never wrote music for the libretto he had commissioned.

     He may have had an affair with a Czech soprano, Teresa Stolz, who sang Aida in the Italian premiere. Certainly his wife, Peppina, was jealous.

    “Aida” has been criticized for its militarism. Lederer finds fault with it because, he argues, only Amneris comes fully to life. “Radames is flat,” and “Aida somehow remains pallid.”

   As for “Rigoletto,” Gilda—besides being (in my opinion) the dumbest bimbo in all of opera--makes a “pointless sacrifice” of her life for that of the loathesome Duke of Mantua.

  Leverer admires “Il Trovatore,” despite his acknowledgement that much of the opera seems ridiculous. I myself tell people that I have days when I, too, am so discombobulated that, like Azucena, I throw the wrong damn baby into the fire. (“Jeez, did I do that again?”)

   Verdi held a grudge against Arrigo Boito, the composer/librettist, because of articles Boito had written seemingly critical of Verdi. (Boito wrote the fine opera, “Mefistofele.” But as a composer, Lederer writes, “he’s good, not great.”)

     I agree with Lederer’s claim that “La Traviata” is the best-loved of Verdi’s operas. I even admire the Franco Zeffirelli production, where Violetta is NOT visited by Alfredo and his father on her deathbed. She only hallucinates their visit.  (Watch his filmed version of the opera; she dies alone.)

     A wonderful present accompanying the book is a disk containing Verdi arias sung by some glorious voices from the past: Rosa Ponselle, Claudia Muzio, Boris Christoff, Meta Seinemeyer, Mattia Battistini, Edmond Clement, Enrico Caruso, and Ernestine Schumann-Heink. But I missed arias sung Elisabeth Rethberg, about whom a critic wrote that he didn’t know that such beautiful sounds could come out of the human throat.