The Verdi Project: Falstaff

The 87-year old composer gets the last laugh with his last opera.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Falstaff in the Laundry Basket by Johann Heinrich Füssli, painted in 1792.

(Ed. note: This is the last installment in The Verdi Project, Superconductor's deep dive into the major operas of Giuseppe Verdi. This project started with Nabucco back in February of this year and has covered fourteen (half) of the composer's twenty-eight operas. In coming weeks, Superconductor will finish The Richard Strauss Project and then figure out what composer is next.)

Sometimes the end is the beginning and sometimes the beginning is the end. In order to understand Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi's final opera and only successful comedy, one must look back to the year 1840 when the composer than a young man had a miserable failure at La Scala with Un Giorno di Regno, his second opera. This was a forgettable comedy of mistaken identities surrounding the royal court of Poland. Today, Un Giorno di Regno is infrequently revived, usually as part of "marathon" performances of all twenty-eight Verdi operas.

The Verdi Project: Otello

Verdi's penultimate opera was also the end of his 13-year retirement.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

There aren't many great Otellos so here's a lot of images of one: Anders Antonenko.
Photo © 2016 The Metropolitan Opera.

Verdi’s Otello is a colossus  of the Italian repertory, and one of the finest adaptations of Shakespeare to another medium. A triumph, it was Verdi's first opera in 13 years, and announced his final great creative partnership with librettist Arrigo Boito.

The Verdi Project: Messa di Requiem

Verdi takes on the cosmos and the Church.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

It could be argued that the Verdi Requiem is his most...monumental achievement.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons

Following the triumphant reception of Aida,, Giuseppe Verdi had no more worlds to conquer. Aida marked the culmination of a long ambition to create a successful fusion between his own style and the grand spectacles that dominated the stage at theaters like the Paris Opera. Aida, with its blend of private anguish and public spectacle, fulfilled all of those requirements.

The Verdi Project: Aida

Love, warfare, intrigue and oh yes, the pyramids.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A performance of Aida in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza, March 2018.

Throughout his career, Giuseppe Verdi was determined to follow in the footsteps of other Italian composers (most notably Rossini and Donizetti) and conquer the Parisian stage. However, his attempts at grand opera: Jerusalemme, Les vepres Sicilienes and Don Carlos were met with indifference. It was with Aida, set to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni that Verdi would incorporate the lessons of grand opera in a work that combines private anguish and public spectacle and still packs opera houses today.

The Verdi Project: Don Carlos

Verdi's last opera for Paris has a complicated history.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Troubled youth: the not-so-youthful Placido Domingo as Verdi's Don Carlos.
Photo © 1982 The Metropolitan Opera.

After the experience of Un Ballo in Maschera, Giuseppe Verdi found himself increasingly withdrawn from the world of opera. His hiatus was interrupted for the commissioning and premiere of La Forza del Destino, but the problems surrounding that opera did not encourage him to continue composing. However, he received a commission for the Paris Opera, to write a five-act grand opera in French for the 1866. That opera would be Don Carlos, and its genesis would be the most difficult of any major Verdi work.

The Verdi Project: La Forza del Destino

The one where everybody (pretty much) dies.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Bang: Verdi's La Forza del Destino opens with an accidental domestic shooting.
Art by Don Falcone.

Following the premiere of Un Ballo in Maschera, Verdi received a commission from the Imperial Russian Opera in St. Petersburg. For a subject, he came up with Don Alvaro, o La Fuerza del Sino, a Spanish play by the Duke of Rivas. This would premiere in Russia in 1862 as La Forza del Destino ("The Force of Destiny.") . It was a success but performances of the opera in Italy (retitled "Don Alvaro") were met with indifference.

The Verdi Project: Un ballo in Maschera

Giuseppe Verdi versus the censors of Naples.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Verdi (right) confronts an anonymous Neopolitan censor over the libretto to Un ballo in Maschera.
The original title Una vendetta in domino is visible. Image from 1857 by Delfico.

"Don't forget. I've got tickets for the opera tonight for Un ballo in maschera."
"Oh, stuff Un ballo in maschera!" -- John Mortimer

After the failure of the 1857 version of Simon Boccanegra, Verdi was looking for an easy success. He thought he had found it with Un Ballo in Maschera, a libretto by Antonio Somma that was itself an adaptation of an older libretto by Eugéne Scribe. Verdi had worked with that legendary (and well-named) Scribe on Les vepres sicillienes. The grand old man of the Paris Opera was the most successful librettist in Europe since Pietro Metastasio. What could go wrong?

The Verdi Project: Simon Boccanegra

Verdi's most political opera gets it right...eventually.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The digital Doge: Simon Boccanegra as he appears in the video game
Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World. Image © 2010 Firaxis Games.

Not every great opera is a success out of the box. La Traviata is one of those major works that bombed on opening night. But that's nothing compared to the struggles that Simon Boccanegra faced on its long and torturous path into the standard operatic repertory. Verdi's eighteenth opera was a failure at its 1857 premiere. It went through heavy revisions in 1881. Those extensive revisions marked Verdi's first collaboration with librettist and composer Arrigo Boito, with whom he would later create Otello and Falstaff. The title role is one of the pillars of the baritone repertory.

The Verdi Project: La Traviata

Verdi breaks new ground and causes controversy.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

She's dying here: Angela Gheorgiu as Violetta Valéry in the Met's old La Traviata.
Photo by Ken Howard © The Metropolitan Opera.

There is so much to write about La Traviata that it's difficult to know where to begin. Verdi's 1853 adaptation of the play La Dame aux Camélias was like nothing that came beforee it: a contemporary story with a heart-rending ending that took a bold and unblinking look at a profession and a way of life that was simply not talked about in so-called "polite" society: especially not in Venice where the opera would have its premiere!

The Verdi Project: Il Trovatore

Sometimes too much popularity can be a bad thing.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

The Metropolitan Opera does the Anvil Chorus in the David Macvicar production of Il Trovatore.
Image © 2017 The Metropolitan Opera.

There is no opera that needs defending more than Il Trovatore. Verdi's eighteenth opera burst upon thestage at the Teatro Apollo in Rome like a cannon shot in 1853. It was the second of the operas still referred to as Big Three, following Rigoletto and preceding La Traviata and it quickly earned a place as one of his most popular and reliable stage works. It has some of Verdi's best tunes. It was brilliant, terrifying and original. It played everywhere.

And then came the Marx Brothers.

The Verdi Project: Rigoletto

In which our composer creates a sensation and changes the world of opera, forever.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Tito Gobbi (with Renata Scotto) looking suitably demented in a scene from Rigoletto.

There are Verdi operas and then there are those that stand as immortal pillars of the repertory. It is the opinion of this writer that the greatest of these is Rigoletto, a shattering tragedy that has captured the imagination of the public since it first took the stage in Venice in 1850. Verdi's fifteenth opera changed the art form permanently, and established him as the most beloved composer in Italy.

The Verdi Project: Macbeth

The composer escapes the galley with his first Shakespeare adaptation.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.

In his later life, Giuseppe Verdi referred to the period from 1842 to 1850 as his "galley years". In those years, the composer applied his energies to writing thirteen operas (counting revisions) for the Italian stage as well as opera houses in London and Paris. Of these, one work stands out: his 1847 adaptation of the Shakespeare tragedy Macbeth.

The Verdi Project: Ernani

The mature Verdi style emerges in the composer's fifth opera. 
by Paul J. Pelkonen

A post-horn: the instrument blown by Silva to remind Ernani that it is time to die.
Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

Following the wild success of Nabucco and its follow-up I Lombardi, Verdi was on his way as an established composer of Italian opera. And yet, those operas, while having their positive points, do not yet embody the elements that one thinks of when the name "Verdi" comes to mind. Ernani changed all that. Its premiere at La Fenice, in Venice in 1844 was Verdi's first triumph away from the stage of La Scala and cemented his reputation as Italy's newest opera sensation

The Verdi Project: Nabucco

By the waters of Babylon, Verdi's legend begins.
by Paul J. Pelkonen

Historic bas-relief of the Babylonian king Nebachudnezzar, hero of Verdi's third opera Nabucco.

Nabucco put Giuseppe Verdi on the map. The composer's third opera premiered in Milan in 1842. It was an absolute smash. Its success would not only alter Verdi's fortunes, but the popularity of its message and its famous chorus "Va, pensiero" may claim some credit for reshaping the political map of Italy. It was Verdi's music and the eventual rallying cry "Viva Verdi" (code for "Vittorio Emmanuel, Re d'Italia") that would help propel that collection of nation-states toward revolution and eventual political unity.