LIBRETTO SPRING 2025 | ISSUE 161
THOUGHTS ON VERDI’S STIFFELIO
The Challenge of Forgiveness BY MARINA HARSS, WRITER & JOURNALIST
T
he final work in Sarasota Opera’s 2025 Winter Opera Festival is Giuseppe Verdi’s highly dramatic tale of betrayal and forgiveness, Stiffelio. Verdi’s sixteenth opera premiered in Trieste in late 1850, just a few months before Rigoletto would premiere in Venice. In fact, work on the two operas sometimes overlapped. Interestingly enough, both feature important father figures, though they represent radically opposite ideas of paternal love—in Rigoletto, the title character sacrifices everything to defend his daughter, while in Stiffelio, the father figure is unforgiving, even cruel. But the crisis at the heart of Stiffelio lies elsewhere, in the struggle experienced by its eponymous protagonist. It is the struggle between his belief, as a man of God, in the power of forgiveness, and the anger he feels as a husband who suffers betrayal at the hands of his wife.
It is this very theme that led to the opera’s difficult reception by the censors in 19thcentury Italy, a deeply Catholic country. The story was set, not in the distant past, but in the present day, somewhere in Austria. The protagonist was a Protestant minister, and the depiction of a priest suffering pangs of jealousy and desiring revenge was viewed as unseemly, as was the staging of an onstage “confession.” (The story was drawn from a French novel, Le Pasteur d’hommes, by Émile Souvestre, and a subsequent play, also by Souvestre.) The censors required changes; Verdi balked and ultimately
decided to withdraw the opera from future performances. In 1857, he created an alternate version, Aroldo, set in the 13th century. (Aroldo was staged in Sarasota in 1990 as part of the Verdi Cycle.) Because of this, Stiffelio has experienced lengthy lacunae in its performance history. In the years after Verdi withdrew the opera, the full score of the original was essentially lost. It wasn’t until the 1960s that a somewhat complete copy was found in an archive in Naples. This led to a first revival. Then, in 1992, a full autograph score was located amongst Verdi’s papers at the Villa Verdi, near Piacenza. It was only then that a full and accurate version of the opera could be brought to the stage. Sarasota Opera, who performed Stiffelio in 2005, was one of the companies that took part in a worldwide revival of this essential work from Verdi’s mature period. Now it is back for a second look. Libretto spoke with Maestro Victor DeRenzi about aspects of the opera. What is the moral dilemma at the heart of Stiffelio? Stiffelio is about a preacher who says one thing, but then feels something completely different in his heart. It’s that disconnect between his intellect and what he really feels, and how he behaves. He knows that sins should be forgiven, but if the sin is committed against him, then it’s a different matter. He finds it hard to forgive. This is very much a part of the human character.
Stiffelio is about a preacher who says one thing, but then feels something completely different in his heart. ~ VICTOR DERENZI
The story hinges on Stiffelio’s betrayal by his wife, Lina. But then it’s not clear whether she really meant to betray him. It is unclear in the opera, perhaps intentionally so. Because what mattered to Verdi was that she reveals the truth as a kind of confession, under the guidance of God. What matters in almost all of his operas is less what created the situation than how the characters react to that situation. CONTINUED ON PAGE 2
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