Program booklet »Simon Boccanegra«

GIUSEPPE VERDI

SIMON BOCCANEGRA

CONTENTS

P.

4

SYNOPSIS P.

6

THE TRUTH ABOUT CONVENTION PETER STEIN IN AN INTERVIEW P.

14

FAREWELL TO MAMMA ROMA JUDITH FRÖMMER

P.

22

PERFORMANCE HISTORY OF SIMON BOCCANEGRA CHRISTIAN SPRINGER P.

32

COMMENTARY ON SIMON BOCCANEGRA UWE SCHWEIKERT P.

42

IMPRINT

GIUSEPPE VERDI

SIMON BOCCANEGRA MELODRAMA in a prologue & three acts Libretto FRANCESCO MARIA PIAVE, GIUSEPPE MONTANELLI & ARRIGO BOITO Source Simón Boccanegra, drama by ANTONIO GARCÍA GUTIÉRREZ

ORCHESTRA

flute / piccolo 2 oboes / 2 clarinets 1 bass clarinet 2 bassoons / 4 horns 3 trombones / tuba timpani / big drum small drum / tom-tom / harp violin I / violin II / viola cello / double bass 4 trumpets / 4 trombones 2 tambourines / bells

STAGE ORCHESTRA

AUTOGRAPH Ricordi archives WORLD PREMIÈRE 12 MARCH 1857 Teatro La Fenice, Venice (first version) 24 MARCH 1881 La Scala Milan (second version) PREMIÈRE AT THE HOUSE ON THE RING 18 NOV 1882 Vienna Court Opera DURATION

3H

INCL. 1 INTERMISSION

SIMON BOCCANEGRA

SYNOPSIS The corsair Simon Boccanegra is elected Doge of Genoa with the help of Paolo. He believes that, thanks to this position, the patrician Jacopo Fiesco would no longer be able to refuse him the hand of his daughter Maria – Boccanegra’s lover and mother of his daughter. However, Maria passes away and Fiesco swears revenge on Boccanegra, unless he hands over his granddaughter.

Yet the girl, who was entrusted to the care of a caretaker, has disappeared.

The fate of Boccanegra’s daughter is finally resolved 25 years later. She was accepted into the Grimaldi family as foundling Amelia and fell in love with the patrician Gabriele Adorno.

Boccanegra asks her to marry Paolo, who has since become his chancellor. When father and daughter recognise each other, he gives up this plan, however. Paolo is furious and has Amelia kidnapped, but Adorno thwarts this. While the Senate is in session, he bursts into the assembly hall and wants to pounce on Bocca­ negra as the alleged instigator of this abduction. But Amelia throws herself in between them. Boccanegra, recognising Paolo as the person responsible for the abduction, asks him to cast the curse on the criminal. Paolo takes revenge by poisoning Boccanegra’s nightcap. Adorno, too, seeks to kill the doge as Paolo claims that the doge is Amelia’s lover. Yet again, Amelia throws herself in between and reveals herself to Adorno as Bocca­negra’s daughter. When the patricians approach to overthrow the doge, Gabriele sides with Simon. The rebellion is crushed, Paolo is sentenced to death, but his poison is already taking effect. Dying, Boccanegra reconciliates with Fiesco, who learns that Amelia is his granddaughter.

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Previous pages: SCENE

KS FERRUCCIO FURLANETTO as FIESCO →

DIRECTOR PETER STEIN TALKS TO PETER BLAHA

THE TRUTH ABOUT CONVENTION pb

Simon Boccanegra is nowhere near as popular as Rigoletto, La traviata or Aida and yet some connoisseurs call it Verdi’s most beautiful opera. What do you think is the reason for this idiosyn­cratic view of this opera? ps There are essentially two key factors. The first is that Simon Boccanegra is not built around arias as much as the other operas mentioned; this is why I will probably never produce these three works. Additionally, and this is the second factor, Simon Boccanegra is not an entirely consistent opera.

There is an early version dating from 1857, from which a great deal was pulled into the second version written much later, namely not until 1881, in other words when Verdi was already working on Otello. Verdi asked his colleague at the time, Arrigo Boito, to work with him on Simon Bocca­negra because La Scala wanted to perform the piece. (Boito was the librettist for Verdi’s late Shakespeare

operas Otello and Falstaff.) Boito took on the task but ultimately asked not to be listed as librettist. Overall, this second version is naturally superior to the first, but it nevertheless makes a somewhat un­even, disjunctive impression. Although the original version is a pure love story in Renaissance costume, it seems more plausible in its simple style. Boito added a completely new dimension, namely a political one, which makes Simon Boccanegra far more interesting to us today. Naturally another reason is that the the unification of Italy, or Risorgi­mento took place between the first and second version. In the second version, Verdi and Boito refer to certain deficiencies in the Risorgimento, specifically the rivalries and conflicts still smouldering between the different factions within Italy. The highlight of the second version is a huge emotional appeal for the unification of Italy. This was introduced by Boito; however, the result was that he was no longer able to tell the story correctly himself.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT CONVENTION

pb

What are the dramaturgical prob­ lems? ps They are linked first and foremost to the character of Fiesco. He vanishes from the scene after the prologue and reappears later under a different name.

The problem here is that some people recognise him as Fiesco, while others do not. How can you show that on the stage? This lack of clarity arises from the fact that several ideas from the old version were included in the new version.

In the second version, Fiesco appears in the background and only reappears at the end, although he naturally already knows that Simon must die. Picking a quarrel with the dying doge is completely unnecessary, but Fiesco does it anyway so that the great re­conciliation can take place during which the two old men sobbingly embrace. A great many tears are shed in this opera. Not only does Gabriele, the future ruler of Genoa, cry his eyes out, the doge also weeps over his inability to guide his own people to live in unity with each other, let alone make peace with other Italian nations, such as the Venetians. Nevertheless, this opera holds the insight that has been advanced in more recent times, namely that every state entity, every people, every tribe has a legend about their founding that is based on some violent act or other.

This violence is repeated every time a crisis occurs. Then a scapegoat must be sacrificed, and only once this sacrifice has been made is a new beginning possible. This is exactly what happens with Simon Boccanegra: Simon sacrifices himself or is sacrificed in order that Genoa can attempt a new beginning with Gabriele. And everything that happened before is obliterated, the memory of the conflicts, mistakes, and

crimes of the various parties. Simon Boccanegra possesses this knowledge, and this is why this work is structurally so interesting; namely as a work in which the political and the private cut through in a typically operatic but nevertheless very human way. In Simon Boccanegra we are confronted with a ruler who is trying desperately to rule well. But he fails. He must constantly keep his enemies at bay, but on the other hand, since he is a good ruler, he must show mercy. Simon Boccanegra is confronted with this conflict. It occurs even amongst those dearest to him, because his daughter, whom he has finally found, is in love with his enemy.

Simon finally succeeds in striking a balance in his own family, but that does not prevent him from being sacrificed for the state as a whole. pb Simon Boccanegra does not find his daughter until rather late.

What motivates his actions in the two decades between the prologue and the first act? He agrees to being elected doge be­ cause he hopes by doing so he will win the hand of Maria. But he is proclaimed doge just as he stands by Maria’s coffin. ps Yet it is wonderful that the characters follow their emotions first and foremost and therefore evoke the crises that make the marvellous duets and trios possible. Simon Boccanegra agrees to be elected doge because he believes this is a way to win his beloved, which the conservative nobility in power want to prevent. However, his beloved is dead, and now he is on the throne and trying to be a good ruler. It is interesting that in the time that elapses between the prologue and the first act, he has beheaded several enemies, including

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PETER STEIN IN AN INTERVIEW

Gabriele’s father. Unfortunately, that is only briefly mentioned in the second version; such things are explained more often in the original version. This does mean that Simon has stayed in power by using very cruel tactics. I have made it clear to the singer playing Simon that he is on the one hand incredibly quick-tempered and spontaneous, but must then restrain himself, in complete contrast to Gabriele. Because he is younger, Gabriele does everything wrong. He always spontaneously runs in the wrong direction and then has to laboriously find his way back. However, that is also very positive as by doing this he undergoes a kind of schooling and learns how perhaps to be a good ruler one day. pb Simon is often pitted against Ga­ briele. He is said to be conceived in modern terms, psychologi­ cally well thought through and unencumbered by convention, although it is specifically point­ ­ed out that he doesn’t even have one aria. In Gabriele by contrast we believe we have a conven­ tional opera tenor, although strictly speaking this is not true.

Completely out of keeping with conventional form, his aria is a slow cavatina/fast cabaletta. It begins at a fast tempo and then slows down. ps Verdi made brilliant use of convention to draw the characters clearly.

However, it is probably not so much the audience’s minds that he is appealing to, but rather their hearts. Gabriele’s impulsiveness, the glow, the radiance of the tenor which often causes calami­ ties and must be put back in order, is set against Simon’s baritone steadiness.

However, I would say that the great ap-

peal for peace is not an aria in the true sense, but nonetheless a highly interesting, complicated piece of music. It starts rather aggressively when Simon calls the reluctant groups of the populace to order. It is followed by an appeal to the same groups that they are in fact extremely fortunate and live in a wonderful country where they have no reason to rise up against each other. The third part is a major emotional collapse that makes it clear that what Simon wished for will never happen. pb One character who is in part ex­ tremely problematic is Amelia.

Why does she not tell Gabriele for so long that she is Simon’s daughter? By doing that she effectively provokes Gabriele’s jeal­ous attack on Simon. ps Naturally she has reasons, and we have thought through them all. For example: if Amelia were to tell Gabriele that she is Simon’s daughter, she might well be afraid that he would no longer love her. However, it is not Amelia who is the problem. The fact that Simon does not publicly acknowledge Amelia as his daughter is in truth the real problem. There is really no reason for this.

In the Council Chamber, when Amelia rushes to him and uses her body to shield him from Gabriele’s dagger, he could say: look, here is my daughter, I have found her again. pb In the final analysis, problems of this kind have a minimal ef­ fect because in opera the most important guiding dramatic principle is the logic of the he­ art, not that of the mind. What are other differences between opera and straight theatre? You have extensive experience with both.

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THE TRUTH ABOUT CONVENTION

ps Theatre and opera are really based on two opposing principles.

Theatre has a loose spatial concept, in other words a system of coordinates for the plot which takes place in time and space, while the spatial dimension in opera is severely “damaged” simply because the singers must sing facing a certain direction. The orientation of the pronouncement towards the auditorium over the conductor and orchestra pit is simply made necessary by the music.

And naturally that affects the sequence of the action in the space.

I see my role as director also as letting the singers know that despite everything there is enough space to win back the spatial dimension, to an extent. I pass on a couple of tactics on how they can express things, even though they are focusing on singing.

One concept for example is that the movement is always a kind of continuation of singing with different means. pb Does opera not always mean re­ stricting time? In straight the­ atre it is ultimately the director who sets the tempo and rhythm.

In opera the tempo is set by the music. ps Naturally the time coordinate in opera is defined much more strictly. But that is something that suits me and appeals greatly to me. The result is namely that the singers are extremely precise, more precise than actors ever are in fact. On the other hand, I try to find opportunities for the singers where they have a degree of latitude from one performance to the next and that they can mould themselves. These are naturally very minor things; generally, we are talking about a few seconds, but nevertheless, the singer is told by the conductor or by me, here you have some

latitude, here you can determine the tempo, the conductor will follow you, you can pause there. That indirectly encourages the singer to feel freer and more challenged in their performance. pb And it counteracts the danger of getting into a rut. ps Yes, of course, although I wouldn’t call it a rut. When you are one hundred percent focused – as singers must be if they are to give an outstanding vocal performance – a great deal of their powers of concentration are required for this to happen. What never happens is that the activation of the muscles needed to produce certain vocal phenomena is such that it allows the facial expressions that would normally be necessary for expression at that particular point.

In theatre, that is different; in theatre the language can fully match the mimic expression, whereas the singer is subject to certain constraints, which I understand and take into account in my work. pb You mentioned limited facial expressions due to the physical requirements of singing. Some singers also use stereotypical opera gestures. How do you deal with that? ps I have found that even though they are vilified over and over, conventions can absolutely convey something.

In other words, certain artistic truths have turned into conventions, albeit in stiff, fossilised, or ossified form. Just because they originated in a different era does not mean that they are necessarily idiotic. I analyse conventions and check to determine the extent to which we can use them. To this extent, I am a conventional director. For example, when I need a big gesture, then I opt for one of the big gestures that were accept-

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PETER STEIN IN AN INTERVIEW

ed in the past in opera. For example, when Fiesco implores the heavens to rain down on the head of Simon, who ravished his daughter, then I would like to have a gesture that really relates to the heavens. It is fantastic when singers raise their arms to heaven as they sing. I sound out possible conventions, check their truthfulness and then either reject or use them. If a conventional gesture is simply the quirk of a singer or is used completely unconsciously, then I try either to bring out the conscious idea behind the gesture or encourage the singer to do something different. Basi­ cally, I believe that gestures in opera must be anything but realistic, namely for one simple reason: they must connect to the singing. They must prepare the singing or, when the singer stops singing, as it were to continue the song.

What very often happens is that when singers are not singing at that moment, they relax, which is deadly for the theatrical aspects of the performance. In particular in Verdi, arias often start with an orchestral prelude during

which the singer waits until he or she can start singing. Theatre is always action, but an orchestral prelude or even a closing section cuts the action off completely. In this case I ask the singer to come up with something to bridge the break. They can only convey that with gestures because of course they must be silent. Movement is the only thing to resolve this moment of monologue and link it in to the action again. These are helpful little tricks, and singers are always glad of them. However, it is still difficult. Many things in opera are stretched out more than in straight theatre, and the gestures must therefore also be completely different. They really cannot be realistic gestures. I hate that. I find it terrible when excessive actions are used in arias. You can then no longer focus on the music because you are constantly distracted by some trivia that is not reflected at all in the sensory impression of the music. What I absolutely cannot for the life of me abide is when the visual and the acoustic “bite” one another.

This interview was conducted in 2002.

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EMIL CIORAN

The key of the sea is that of eternal death, of a never-ending conclusion, of a death struggle in full bloom.

You need neither a heart suffering with nuances nor sensitivity plagued by the subtleties of rapture to catch a shudder of death in the melodies of the sea; all you need is a penchant for secrets and the calls of melancholia.

JUDITH FRÖMMER

FAREWELL TO MAMMA ROMA The tragedy of Simon Boccanegra, as is often the case with tragedies, is rooted in a previous story. Unlike Greek tragedy, where a catastrophe generally follows from the iron logic of a series of events, the previous story in Italian melodrama leaves as much unresolved as it purports to explain. The prologue that Verdi sets 25 years, or around a generation, before the start of the main action does explain how Doge Simon Boccanegra rose to his high position. The ominous death of his beloved Maria becomes the origin of his political ambition and the reason for the impla­cable hatred of his political and personal opponent, Jacopo Fiesco alias Andrea, subject to another prior history, which Verdi’s opera tells only in fragments, if at all. The audience know nothing more specific about the love affair between Boccanegra and Fiesco’s daughter Maria, which had led before the start of the opera’s action to the birth of an illegitimate daughter, nor do they learn anything about how Maria died directly before the start of the prologue.

We can only speculate about the figure of Maria Fiesco and the cause of her death. Did she become a victim of her father or some family sense of honour?

Previous pages: SCENE

Did she die a “natural” Romantic death of a broken heart, did she put an end to herself? Unlike several stagings of Simon Boccanegra, the reader of the libretto doesn’t even get to see a corpse. The only sign referring to Maria in the prologue is the “sinistra vampa”, the “sinister flame” that wanders at night like a damned soul through the “empioostello” of the Fieschi. In the Italian audience’s imagination, the seat of the Genoan Guelph family is transformed into Dante’s Inferno, where the sinners also appear as positively eloquent flames, without their loquacity being able affect the outcome of their damnation.

Fiction and reality in this palace of the damned have accordingly become indistinguishable. For the people, the patrician fortress is an “antro dei fantasmi”, a haunted place where the past casts strange shadows. The patrician Jacopo Fiesco had buried his daughter in a living grave, as the chorus of Genoans lament in the fourth scene of the prologue.

“Do you see that gloomy palace? …

It is the impious residence of the Fieschi, an unhappy beauty laments there as if buried alive. Her complaints are the only human sound to be heard in the vast, mysterious tomb.” Only the

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lamentations of Maria, who lost her heart to the buccaneer Simon Boccanegra, breathed a touch of humanity into the palace of the Fieschi, an emblem of an ossified patrician culture. The plaints of the fallen daughter, which were particularly loud in the plebeian dramas of the 18th century, have been muted for some time at the beginning of Verdi’s opera. In view of the fact that Boccanegra discovers the corpse of his beloved in the palace of the Fieschi just at the moment that the people call him onto the stage to be the Doge of Genoa, the question arises whether and how the private tragedy of this mésalliance hidden behind the palace walls is connected with the political complications surrounding the first Doge of Genoa.

Maria’s corpse is perhaps also a corpse in the basement of Verdi’s opera, as he had repeatedly presented variations of such mésalliances in his melodramas Luisa Miller or La traviata in the bourgeois theatre. In Simon Boccanegra, however, he clearly wants to stage another form of class conflict which goes beyond binary class antagonism, or possibly even overcomes it. This story can only be brought to the stage in the form of a tragedy which Verdi himself described as one of his darkest – and that even though it ends with a temporary reconciliation between patricians and plebeians through the marriage of Maria Boccanegra and Gabriele Adorno, who also takes office as doge.

Significantly, Simon Boccanegra, who rejects the plebeian office of “abbot of the people” to work as the first doge of the city state of Genoa for a balance between plebeians and patricians, does not die by the sword of his aristocratic opponent Jacopo Fiesco. Instead, this fate is refused repeatedly by Jacopo

and by his Guelph fellow patrician Gabriele Adorno. In Verdi, the doge Simon Boccanegra is not sacrificed on the altar of the class struggle between the people and the nobles, but dies by poison at the hand of his former companion Paolo Albiani, who had helped him into office in the prologue.

This murder by Paolo, who had been refused the hand of Amelia Grimaldi alias Maria, is admittedly motivated by the love story in the private plot. However, this is not connected with the political conflict between the people and the nobles through the classic motive of class barriers. The bourgeois melodrama surrounding the mésalliance is referred to solely in the fragments of a previous story, which in the main action is literally only present as an effigy, a picture of Maria Fiesco which enables Simon Boccanegra to recognise Amelia Grimaldi as his daughter.

Despite this visual evidence, Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra avoids a clear allegorical link of Eros and Polis, of private and political tragedy. The family drama that flares up 25 years after the death of Maria Fiesco around the figure of her daughter of the same name cannot without further ado be seen as an allegory of a political history, as modern interpreters would be all too happy to do, whether as the confrontations between people and nobles, which run through the history of Italy and whose symbol the historical Simon Boccanegra became as first Doge of Genoa, or the confusion of the Italian Risorgimento and emergence of the freshly united Italian nation state, which had just formed between the versions of the opera.

Instead, Verdi seems to have avoided such allegorical interpretation to his

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annoyance, as indicated by correspondence with Francesco Maria Piave, the official author of the first libretto for Simon Boccanegra. “I am sorry that you are against the allegories, but because it’s you, I’m also arguing against them, and we need say no more about it,” Piave wrote in a letter of 27 February, 1857 in which Verdi made several proposals on the design of act 1. Clearly, Verdi – who freed his librettist shortly after this from all further work on Si­ mon Boccanegra, was not convinced by Piave’s alternatives.

However, even he was unable to win over the public for Simon Boccane­ gra with the first version of the libretto which he had completed with the help of Giuseppe Montanelli. As we know, the world première of the first version was not a great success – in Verdi’s eyes, it was a fiasco.

Despite Verdi’s rejection of contemporary versions of the allegory, which frequently interpreted the women as nations, the women – whether dead or alive – play a key role within the political action of Simon Boccanegra. With the significant weakening of the mother’s position in the family drama between the Fieschi and Boccanegra, Verdi not only adopts a structural feature of bourgeois drama, but also a motif that can be traced back to the founding acts of Italian history in ancient Rome.

The history of the Roman Empire is based on an origination myth in which the position of mother takes on a thoroughly ambivalent role. The delivery of Romulus and Remus by the Vestal Virgin Rea Silvia is itself surrounded by mystery. As a priestess, she is actually subject to a rule of chastity and accordingly (as the Roman historian Livy ironically notes in his history of

the Roman Empire “ab urbe condita” – from the foundation of the city) she gives “Mars as the father of her dubious progeny, either she really believed it, or because it was more honourable to make a god the guilty party.”

The female wolf that suckled Romulus and Remus according to the legend after they had been abandoned by their biological mother is a thoroughly shady mythical figure, because the Latin word “lupa” means not only female wolf but also whore, and could hint at the dubious lifestyle of the shepherd’s wife who raised the twins.

Such myths surrounding the dubious maternal origin of the Roman Empire can be traced in Italy into the postwar period, where for example they take on a particularly tragic figure in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Mamma Roma. The mythical mother figures as the biological origin of political communities, who are metaphorically identified all too often with the sexual flaws of a fallen or even raped woman, point to the problem of naturalising society.

The attempts to legitimate the body politic as natural through origination myths are often articulated in tales of motherhood which substitute for the inaccessible natural origin and present this basically impossible substitution through an ambivalent figure for the mother.

Interestingly, it is a form of such political allegories of motherhood which was the starting point for Verdi’s thoughts about a revision of Simon Boc­ canegra over 20 years after the world première. In the course of considering who might collaborate on this revision and how to proceed, Verdi writes on 20 November, 1880 in a letter to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi: “In this connec-

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tion I thought of two wonderful letters

by Petrarch, one to the Doge Boccanegra and other to the Doge of Venice.

In these he accuses them of committing fratricide in the impending war, as they are both sons of the same Mother Italy. How sublime is this feeling of an Italian homeland in these days! All this is political and not dramatic. But perhaps a suitably gifted man could dramatise all this.” The second version of Si­ mon Boccanegra accordingly sees itself as essentially a dramatisation of a political allegory from Petrarch’s Familiar Letters which presents the war between the city states of Venice and Genoa in an image of “dividing the limbs of their common Mother Italy” and senseless fratricide. The quote from the eighth letter of the eleventh book of Familiar Letters is not given in full in the council scene in act 1, as it is interrupted by the uprising caused by Amelia’s abduction.

Interestingly, in his second version of the libretto Arrigo Boito omits this allegorical image of Mother Italy which Verdi was so enthusiastic about.

Instead, this image is hidden in the latency of the mother image of Maria, who acts not as an allegorical image but as the hidden mover of the dramatic action. The question of the (maternal) origin of Italy and the legitimacy of its political (class) system is banished in this way to the darkness of a prior history, which the actors in the opera’s action cannot entirely see but which they equally cannot avoid.

Basically, both the personal and political intrigues can only evolve from Maria’s mysterious death. At the same time, the mother’s corpse, together with the unexplained origin of her daughter with the same name, who had to grow up in a nunnery, drives a

riddle which forms the starting point of the main action. Unlike the mother’s death, this secret is relatively quickly solved for the audience. They learn in act 1 that Simon Boccanegra’s daughter, believed to be lost, has taken the identity of Amelia Grimaldi.

This enables the patrician Grimaldi, whose sons have been banished by Simon Boccanegra, to protect the family legacy from seizure by the doge. The political dimension begins to appear at this point, which adds to Amelia’s ominous origin (alias Maria) within the opera’s action. As Maria Boccanegra, Amelia Grimaldi loses (at least temporarily) her identity as the daughter of an old established patrician family.

When the doge as the representative of new social order gives his approval to his daughter’s choice of her lover, without knowing the chosen man and prospective husband, he fundamentally challenges such class systems. The class system of the ancien régime has clearly lost its claim to absolute validity in Verdi’s opera.

The fact that Gabriele Adorno wants to marry Amelia alias Maria regardless of her actual origins shows that the aristocratic rules of marriage and the rigorous class ethic of the nobility had largely lost their binding force 25 years after Maria Fiesco’s death. Tragically, this breach with the conventions of the ancien régime led to the death of the title figure. Without knowing it, Simon Boccanegra signs his own death warrant when he agrees to his daughter marrying for love. The fact that Maria Boccanegra, unlike her mother Maria Fiesco, can overcome the class barriers of her origins by marrying Gabriele Adorno indirectly attracts the hatred of his political companion Paolo, which

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will finally cost Simon his life. It is certainly no accident that this link of love intrigue and political action (at first glance a contingent one) is created through the sole (living) female figure in the opera. Not least because she is between the nobles and the people because of her unresolved origins and her class identity remains ambivalent even after the reuniting of father and daughter, because of the noble origins of her dead mother and her plebeian father, the figure of Amelia alias Maria seems to be particularly suitable as a symbol of an Italy of class struggles. From the Roman beginnings of Italian history through the term of the historical Doge Simon Boccanegra to Verdi’s times, people and nobles have struggled for domination there.

In 1857, when the first version of Si­ mon Boccanegra was staged, this struggle was far from decided. Just a few years later the Risorgimento in 1861 will lead to the formation of an Italian nation state in which the Italian aristocratic families have largely lost their political supremacy. Paradoxically, however, the action in Simon Boccane­ gra even in the second version seems to favour the patrician party, whose representative, Gabriele Adorno, not only takes the title figure’s daughter from him, but also becomes his successor in office.

With this ending, Verdi’s opera triumphantly disregards the historical facts. The historical Gabriele Adorno who followed Simon Boccanegra in office as Doge of Genoa was not of noble origin, but came from a wealthy Genoan merchant family – apart from the fact that the nobility in Genoa traditionally had no access to the office of the doge. The role of the villain is left

with Paolo Albiani, a representative of the people. Verdi’s plan to revise Simon Boccanegra, like the success of the revival, seems to have been more than a mere knee-jerk reaction to the changed social and political environment.

Instead, as he indicated in his thoughts on the Petrarch letters, it was primarily dramaturgic and (in the broadest sense) aesthetic criteria which were the focus of Verdi’s plans for a new version of the opera. The dramatic use of the two letters from Petrarch’s Familiar Letters has cultural policy significance here which should not be underestimated.

Among other things, this is evident in the words in which his plebeian opponent comments on the doge’s plea for peace with Venice. Simon Boccanegra appeals here to the “thundering voice” of Petrarch, with which he also evokes the Rome of Cola di Rienzo. Paolo Albiani countered this appeal with the words, “Attenda alle sue rime, Il cantor della bionda Avignonese” (“He should stick to his rhyming, the troubadour of the blonde from Avignon”).

This somewhat dismissive reference to Petrarch’s love poems, far more popular than Petrarch’s Latin letters because they are canzoniere written in popular language, this indirectly evokes the debate over the “questione della lingua.”

As an author writing in both Latin and the popular language, Petrarch is a figure bridging Renaissance humanism, which offered continuity through Latin between post-antiquity Italy and the Roman Empire and a budding Italian national literature in the popular tongue, which fed the self-image of the Risorgimento and the cultural policy of the Italian nation state. Even if much

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of Petrarch’s work, and particularly the political writings, was written in Latin, this Latin Petrarch was accessible at best to the educated classes, and by no means a firm element of the cultural memory.

Verdi himself read the letters cited from the Familiar Letters in the Italian translation by Giuseppe Frascassetti, who only a few years earlier had published the first complete critical education of the letters. While Verdi translates the political allegories of the Latin Petrarch into the dramatic action of an Italian opera, he also implicitly engages in the cultural policy debates of the Risorgimento and the freshly united Italy.

His opera seems to be striving for a balance between elitist humanism and popular culture, reflecting Boccanegra’s vision of a political balance between the aristocracy and the people. The Roman heritage of Italian culture is translated into an opera whose dramatic action it questions in the same breath. Like Paolo Albiani, who as a man of the people knows primarily Petrarch’s poetry in the popular tongue, the representatives of the nobility are deaf to the message of Petrarch as the humanist. They still feel that they are not sons of the com-

mon Mother Italy, but committed to Genoa as their home, calling for war against the enemy, Venice.

The political tragedy of Simon Boc­ canegra, which is based not on the resistance but on overcoming the old class system, finds a literary reflection in the figure of Petrarch, whose political appeals are not heard by either the broad mass of the people nor the elitist circles in the nobility.

We can only speculate how far Verdi saw himself reflected in the figure of the unheard Petrarch, particularly since Verdi himself – in contrast to Petrarch and the Renaissance humanists – had certainly abandoned the idea of a “renewal of Rome.” Instead, Verdi replaced the Roman origin of Italy with operas which became the epitome of the diversity of an Italian culture.

This culture of a freshly united Italy feeds on the masterpieces of a Dante or a Petrarch just as much as those from the other European literatures, using the literature of the humanist classics just as much as the literature of the popular culture. It is accordingly not committed to one origin, but leaves the insoluble question of the origin to emerge only in the effigy and image of the dead mother of Maria.

Next pages: MARINA POPLAVSKAYA as AMELIA

FRANCESCO MELI as GABRIELE ADORNO DMITRI HVOROSTOVSKY as SIMON BOCCANEGRA MARCO CARIA as PAOLO

CHRISTIAN SPRINGER

PER- FORMANCE HISTORY OF SIMON BOCCANEGRA The world première of Simon Bocca­negra took place on 12 March 1857 at the Tea­ tro La Fenice. The audience response was one of bewilderment. “Bocca­negra in Venice was almost as miserable a failure as Traviata” the vexed composer wrote to his confidante. “I thought I had written something workable, but it would seem that I was wrong.”

The world première of La traviata (Venice, 6 March 1853) mentioned by Verdi was by no means the failure that the pessimistic composer suggested and that the rumour-mill busily re­ported, but at most an initially lukewarm success that improved over the course of the first run of nine performances and earned well at the box office. With this in mind, it is interesting to look at the initial reaction to the first version of Boccanegra. (Operas that were real failures were immediately removed from the schedule.)

CUT SOMEONE’S HEAD OFF AND THEN TRY TO RECOGNISE HIM, IF YOU CAN! On 15 March 1857, the Gazzetta Musi­ cale di Milano wrote: “When you consider the anticipation with which Verdi’s new work was awaited, it seems impossible that such a select audience of people from all over the world who have come specifically to see this opera would lapse into a state of apathy, indifference and above all inattention once in the theatre. Accordingly, one can state in good conscience that the audience did not evaluate the work at all, because they did not listen to it.”

The reviewer said of the work itself: “there is something for every taste in this opera. The different colours are – as is always the case with Verdi – subordinate to the atmosphere and the logical whole in each case.”

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PERFORMANCE HISTORY OF SIMON BOCCANEGRA

By contrast, the Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia wrote on 15 March: “the ini­ tial unfavourable impression can to some extent be explained by the nature of the music, which is perhaps too heavy and stern, and by the dark colour that dominates the score, particularly in the prologue.”

This is a first indication of one aspect of reviews that find fault with the dark, gloomy colours with which Verdi painted an oversized national fresco in black – one might call it Goya black – through which the protagonists join with the masses. Another point of criticism was Piave’s text, which was not clearly enough differentiated from Gutiérrez’s source. Thus a work focused on the modern, conflicted character of the Doge Boccanegra cannot delight an audience that cannot or does not want to understand why the eponymous hero has not been given an aria, a romance, a stretta or cabaletta (possibly with a long final note) in which he can give expression to his feelings in the traditional, familiar and therefore understand­able manner. The audience also cannot appreciate why the father-daughter relation­ ship and the obligatory love story must take second place to the staging of political and personal conflicts.

It is striking that the Gazzetta Privile­giata di Venezia felt it necessary to report on what were evidently concerted attacks on the opera: “we cannot conceal the fact that Verdi or at least his opera has several enemies. However, in defence of our country we must say that certain manifestations of rather ex­plicitly expressed disapproval did not come from Venetian lips. They were imported from elsewhere.”

Verdi’s friend Cesare Vigna also talked of a “well organised hostile

clique” which Piave confirmed in a letter dated 20 March 1857, reporting on the “usual systematic opposition.”

But after just the second performance audience approval grew. Word got out that the work had novel qualities. The five curtain calls for the composer on the evening of the première grew to nineteen at the third performance. Box office revenue – always a yardstick for Verdi for the success of a new work – was satisfactory, but Boccanegra saw only six performances at the La Fenice instead of the ten to twelve that the directorate had hoped for.

When performances of Bocca­negra in Reggio Emilia, Florence, Rome, Oporto, Naples (all in 1857) and Catania (in January 1859) were only well received if Verdi himself was conducting rehearsals and the performance, as in Reggio and Naples, things came to a head on 24 January 1859 at the The­ atre alla Scala in Milan. “The fiasco of Bocca­negra in Milan was inevitable and did in fact transpire. A Boccanegra without Boccanegra! Cut someone’s head off and then try to recognise him, if you can!” Verdi wrote on 4 February 1859 to his publisher Tito Ricordi. He was referring to the performer of the title role, the baritone Sebastiano Ronconi (brother of the great Giorgio Ronconi who shone in Donizetti and Verdi baritone roles) who was not up to the task.

He continued: “we poor roma, charlatans and what you will are forced to sell our efforts, our thoughts, our delusions for gold – for three lira the audience buys the right to boo or applaud us. It is our fate to submit, that is all!

And despite everything that our friends or enemies may say, Boccanegra is no worse than many others of my happier operas, because it requires perhaps a

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CHRISTIAN SPRINGER

more meticulous performance and an audience that wants to listen. Theatre is a sad affair!”

When the experienced theatre practitioner Verdi demanded an audience that “wants to listen”, he was referring to a feature of the work that differentiates it from his popular operas: the audience is not taken unawares by Boccanegra, they cannot simply enjoy it passively, but must listen actively and stay mentally involved if they are to appreciate the beauty of the score. Twelve performances of the work took place at La Scala before it disappeared from the schedule.

When Verdi was informed by Filippo Filippi – music critic for the Perseveranza and an extremely competent expert highly regarded throughout Europe – of audience disruptions at the second and third performance, he wrote to Filippi on 9 February 1859: “I have never been surprised by theatre scandals.

Since that time (the failure of his second opera Un giorno di regno), success has never gone to my head, and failures have never discouraged me. Once the audience calms down, they will perhaps notice that there are at least several intentions in Boccanegra that should not be disparaged.”

Between 1859 and 1871 the opera was performed at large and mediumsized Italian theatres (from Genoa to Palermo, from Turin and Bologna to Catania) and elsewhere (Madrid, Lisbon, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Corfu) without really establishing itself. Then it disappeared from schedules.

BOCCANEGRA AN IMITATION OF WAGNER? When you hear the first/1857 version of Boccanegra and read the contemporary

reviews and studies (especially the famous 1859 Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi by Abramo Basevi), you cannot help but wonder about the reactions to the work mentioned there. For example, Basevi opens the chapter on Boccanegra with the assertion that he had to read the libretto “carefully, no less than six times” to “understand something or at least believe I had understood something.” That would not be so bad, had the author not claimed: “the characters of each individual are not clearly drawn, cold, often poorly conceived, with no dramatic impact”, followed by a sweeping blow: “the fact is that Verdi is growing rather close to German music. At least to judge by the prologue, I would say that he is – even if only remotely – following in the footsteps of the famous Wagner, the presentday music revolutionist.”

Very few people know of this early accusation that Verdi was imitating Wagner, and it remained largely unheeded, in part because Verdi verifiably did not hear music by Wagner for the first time until eight years later, in Paris between November 1865 and midMarch 1866. He said at that time: “I heard the overture to Tannhäuser by Wagner. He is insane!!!” Incidentally, the first Wagner opera was not performed in Italy until fourteen years after the première of Boccanegra, namely Lohengrin in Bologna on 1 November 1871. Verdi insisted on attending the performance armed with a piano score in which he wrote his critique: “OVERALL. Mediocre impression.

Music lovely: when it is intelligible, it reveals depth of thought. The action drags as much as the libretto. So tedious. Instruments create beautiful effects. Misuse of long notes and rather

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PERFORMANCE HISTORY OF SIMON BOCCANEGRA

intolerable. Mediocre performance. A great deal of verve, but without poetry and subtlety. Always poor in the difficult passages.”

By contrast the reproach that Georges Bizet brought in March 1867 at the Don Carlos première is constantly quoted: “Verdi is no longer an Italian. He is composing Wagner. He no longer makes the mistakes he is known for, but also does not have a single one of his good qualities. He has lost the battle, his opera is now in its death throes – in agony that it has to thank the World’s Fair for, which is lasting longer than usual.”

Verdi sent the following irritated response in a letter to his French publisher Escudier (1 April 1867): “so now I am an almost perfect Wagnerian. If the critics had paid slightly closer attention, they would have realised that the same intentions are present in the trio in Ernani, the sleepwalking scene in Macbet[h] and in many other pieces, etc. etc.”

After the Italian première of Aida too in 1872 and several years afterwards this rebuke was heard. In a letter to Giulio Ricordi (4 April 1875) Verdi angrily remarked: “... And finally, that I imitate Wagner!!! Now that’s real success, after a 35-year career to end up as an imitator!!!”

The unthinking accusation of Wagnerism surfaced all over, even in Otello.

It was so abstruse that even the consistent Viennese Verdi-hater Hanslick felt compelled to speak out in opposition. It should be mentioned for the record that the main reason for the work not becoming established in opera schedules was not the gloom of Boccanegra, the lack of arias and cabalettas, the supposedly confusing plot nor the poor libret-

to, compositional flaws or even Verdi’s reported eclecticism.

The real reason for the gradual disappearance of first version of Bocca­ negra, which as Verdi stated, was broadly conceived, powerful, free of any conventions, and rich in variety, was rather competition from his own new operas. When Verdi brought out Un bal­ lo in maschera in 1859, La forza del des­ tino in 1862/1869 and Don Carlos/Don Carlo in 1867, audiences – who were primarily interested in new operas – simply forgot Boccanegra.

In 1868, Giulio, son of the publisher Tito Ricordi, first suggested to the composer that he revise Simon Bocca­negra, however initially without success.

Giulio Ricordi was himself a trained and active composer; in addition to his publishing talent, he had a good nose for constellations of artists. In 1879 he hit upon the idea of bringing together Verdi and Arrigo Boito for a new project. Verdi’s previous librettists had died, and Ricordi saw in Boito more the poet than the composer.

Soon they were talking about Otello, but at first Verdi did not seem to want to make a decision. However, Ricordi had sensed an opportunity and did not give up. If he could not persuade Verdi to compose a new opera, he wanted at least to have a revised one, especially because he needed a new opera for the next season at La Scala. At the end of 1880 he sent a thick envelope to Verdi in Sant’Agata. It contained the old Simon Boccanegra and the request that he look through it. Verdi confirmed receipt of the package. “If you come to Sant’Agata in one or two years, you will find it untouched, just as you sent it. I can’t abide useless things.”

But the package preyed on his mind.

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CHRISTIAN SPRINGER

He looked through the score and saw immediately where changes could be made. He compared Piave’s libretto to a wobbly table. “If we fix one leg, it could stand firmly on the floor.” But who could implement the necessary changes?

Ricordi had an answer ready: “Boito is available and would consider himself fortunate to do something proposed by Verdi.”

On 15 August 1880 correspondence comprising 301 letters (also on the topic of Otello and Falstaff) between Verdi and his new librettist began with a letter from Verdi. The work that Boito claims not to be very enthusiastic about proceeds quickly and smoothly, the revisions are exceptionally well documented if the composer and librettist did not meet for personal discussion.

The last letter, about Boccanegra, is from Boito and is dated 15 February 1881. It mentions nagging doubts. But the last corrections still outstanding are quickly made, and the two men arrange a meeting in Milan, where Verdi is supervising rehearsals. Although Boito has made significant changes to the libretto and is responsible for major changes, he does not want his name to be listed in either the libretto or the piano score.

COMPOSURE, POISE AND STRONG STAGE PRESENCE Now the problems with the singers begin. Back in November 1880, believing that this would increase Verdi’s eagerness to work or the speed at which he worked, Ricordi sent a list with suggestions of singers. On 20 November, Verdi replied: “Either operas for the singers, or singers for the operas: an old axiom that no impresario ever has ever known

how to put into practice and without which theatre cannot be successful. To be sure, you have assembled a good ensemble for La Scala, but it isn’t one that will work for Boccanegra. Your baritone [Federico Salvati, who was ultimately cast as Paolo Albiani] would appear to be a young man. He may have a voice, talent and sensitivity, as much as you want, but he will never have the composure, the poise and the strong stage presence that are essential for the role of Simon. It is a strenuous role, like Rigoletto, but a thousand times more difficult. In Rigoletto, the role is ready to go, and with a voice and some emotion you can do a good job. In Boccanegra, voice and emotion are not enough. For Fiesco you need a deep voice, audible in the low range down to F; there must be something remorseless, prophetic in his voice: all these are things that the slightly hollow and rather more baritone voice of [Edouard] De Reszke does not have. Because of the strength of her voice and her personality, D’Angeri would also not be a suitable choice for the role of a modest girl living in seclusion, a kind of young nun. I believe that D’Angeri herself would not be happy with this role.”

Verdi wants to make his own choices, look into everything himself and take the decision. On 2 December 1880, he writes to Ricordi: “oh dear, oh dear! If we start discussing the merits of this or that singer, we will lose valuable time and achieve nothing. Boccanegra is lacking dramatics! In Forza, the roles are fully configured, in Boccanegra they must all be moulded. So, above all great performers. A voice of steel for Fiesco.

A modest, calm, slim and ethereal girl for Amelia. A passionate, fiery, and proud spirit, calm, dignified and fiery in

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PERFORMANCE HISTORY OF SIMON BOCCANEGRA

appearance (very difficult to realise) for Boccanegra. We won’t find them; I am well aware of that. But at least something that comes close...”

On 24 March 1881 the much-lauded première takes place at La Scala. The very next day, Verdi writes to his friend Arrivabene: “if I had had the time to write to you, I would have said of yesterday evening’s performance that I believe I have done a good job of mending old Boccanegra’s broken legs. The success of yesterday evening reinforces my opinion. Well then, an excellent performance on all sides: outstanding casting of the role of the protagonist, outstanding success.”

The main reason for Verdi’s satisfaction is the French baritone Victor Maurel (Marseille 1848 – New York 1923), an outstanding singer/actor who was also cast in the baritone lead roles in Otello and Falstaff – and this despite the composer’s personal dislike of him due to his unbearable personality and egotistical smugness. The opera is rehearsed and conducted by Franco Faccio (Verona 1849 – Monza 1891), the leading Italian conductor of his generation.

Although Simon Boccanegra is a huge hit with audiences at La Scala (the first run in this season is ten performances) and the critics also express their enthusiasm, the work never becomes a popular Verdi opera, even though it is regularly performed around the world. But even his absolute masterpieces Otello and Falstaff never achieved the broad popularity that for example Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata and Aida did. The revision of Boccanegra with newly composed sections must be seen separately from these two operas since it heralds de facto the launch of Verdi’s dramatic late works.

PERFORMANCE HISTORY OF THE REVISION OF BOCCANEGRA The first version of Boccanegra did not make its way to Vienna, which was influenced by Eduard Hanslick’s rabid dislike of Verdi. In Vienna only the revised opera was performed. The première took place on 18 November 1882 in a German translation by Karl Friedrich Niese. The protagonist was performed by Johann Nepomuk Beck (Budapest 1827 – Bratislava 1904) who was engaged at the Court Opera from 1853 to 1885. His voice was described as “huge” yet “flexible” and he had a vast repertoire. Amalie Materna, an extremely dramatic Wagner singer, sang Amelia, Hans Freiherr von Rokitansky sang Fiesco, František Broulík sang Gabriele. On the rostrum was opera director Wilhelm Jahn himself.

Johannes Brahms heard one of these early performances in Vienna; in 1874 he had said of Verdi’s Missa da requiem: “only a genius can write something like that.” He commented on the music, which was completely new to him, with the words: “the piece is full of brilliant, thrilling features!” How­ever, he did not look more closely into the work, as Hanslick reported, and “after some time” gave up “researching what the [libretto] was supposed to mean.”

Looking for the flaw in the plot of Boc­ canegra would be premature, because according to Hanslick: “opera music is his (Brahms’) least favourite music. He used to say ’you know I don’t understand theatre at all’ when he took off after the first act of a new opera that I was listening to with great interest.”

Eighty-five performances of the five productions of the work had been

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CHRISTIAN SPRINGER

presented by 15 November 2000 at the Court Opera Theatre, at the Wiener Staatsoper and at the Theater an der Wien, the Opera’s temporary quarters when the house on the Ring was destroyed in the war; of these 33 were in the German translation and 52 in the original Italian. Paris, the capital of music, experienced Boccanegra in 1883. In the production led by Franco Faccio, as in Milan Victor Maurel and Edouard de Reszke were heard, Amelia was sung by Fidès Devriès, and Gabriele by the tenor Ottavio Nouvelli from Turin. In 1887 the opera opened in Lisbon, in 1889 in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and a year later in Madrid, in 1891 in Trieste.

In Italy, towards the end of the 19th century Verdi’s early and middle operas were temporarily unfashionable and were scarcely performed. Even the immensely popular Rigoletto, Traviata and Trovatore were only occasionally on the schedule. The opera house in Parma too, where Verdi enjoyed right of residence, as it were, neglected his great compositions for years.

By way of illustration, below are the performance statistics from several Italian opera houses. Between 1895 and October 1912 (apart from Otello and Falstaff) Bologna presented only two performance series of Traviata and Rigoletto, the latter as a memorial event in the year Verdi died (1901) and one of Aida (1908). In the Verdi city of Trieste, Trovatore was performed only once between 1902 and October 1911. In Parma an eight-year gap in Verdi performances was broken only in 1907 by a Rigoletto and an Aida run. And at La Scala Milan, between 1894 and 1901 (not including Otello and Falstaff revivals) only three performances of Rigoletto and one of Don Carlo were given.

In German-speaking countries, the absence of Verdi on opera schedules only came to an end with the so-called Verdi Renaissance ushered in by the libretto translations of Franz Werfel – adaptations of a high linguistic standard – and performances of Verdi operas that had been completely forgotten, such as La forza del destino, Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos, by Fritz Busch in the 1920s in Dresden.

Werfel’s text version of Boccanegra was presented in Vienna in 1930 under Clemens Krauss, then also in Berlin and Frankfurt/Main, in 1931 in Prague and Basel, in 1932 in Stuttgart and in 1935 in Zurich. Many other performances in German-speaking countries followed.

In 1932 the New York Metropolitan Opera performed the original Italian version of Boccanegra under Tullio Serafin (with Lawrence Tibbett, Maria Müller, Ezio Pinza and Giovanni Martinelli). Only after this success did Italian opera houses follow suit: La Scala Milan in 1933 under Vittorio Gui (with Carlo Galeffi, Maria Caniglia, Nazzareno de Angelis and Francesco Merli), Rome in 1934, Parma after some hesitation in 1936. Bologna, which was other­ wise open to the unknown, did not follow the trend until 1938.

After the war, Sadler’s Wells Opera in London took on Simon Boccanegra in 1948 (in English), in 1949 Cagliari and Trieste followed suit, in 1950 Mexico City, in 1952 Rome, in 1958 Naples, in 1960 Chicago, in 1961 Salzburg, in 1964 Buenos Aires, in 1965 London (Covent Garden), in 1969 Vienna, Berlin and Cleveland, in 1971 Munich, in 1973 Verona, in 1975 San Francisco, in 1976 Brussels, in 1977 Parma, in 1978 Paris, in 1979 Bilbao, in 1984 Berlin, in 1988 Florence, in 1989 Amsterdam, in

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PERFORMANCE HISTORY OF SIMON BOCCANEGRA

1990 Brussels, in 1991 London, in 1994 Frankfurt/Main etc. This list is by no means complete but shows that the reception history of Boccanegra can be classified as ongoing worldwide. At La Scala Milan three major new productions of Boccanegra were created within sixteen years: in 1955 under Fran­ cesco Molinari-Pradelli, in 1965 under Gianandrea Gavazzeni, in 1971 under Claudio Abbado. This last production

by Giorgio Strehler toured in 1976 to London and Washington, amongst

other places, and from 1984 it could be seen in Vienna.

Today Simon Boccanegra is something like the Italian Boris Godunov. As Oskar Bie said of Falstaff, it is not just “a delight for connoisseurs” but without any doubt “one of the most important and greatest Verdi operas” (Claudio Abbado) as well as a “huge, absolute masterpiece in which every aspect of the individual political and psychological situations is expressed with magnificent and complete intensity.”

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Next page: KS PLÁCIDO DOMINGO

as SIMON BOCCANEGRA

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

WE CANNOT BE HAPPY AS LONG AS EVERYTHING AROUND US IS SUFFERING AND CREATING ITS OWN SUFFERING.

UWE SCHWEIKERT

COMMENTARY ON SIMON BOCCANEGRA After Les vêpres siciliennes, composed for Paris, Verdi returned to the Italian opera stage with Simon Boccanegra.

Like Macbeth, La forza del destino and Don Carlos, the work is one of the experimental operas which only took on their final form after thorough revision.

As the gap between the first version and revised version of Simon Boccanegra was 24 years – longer than for all other revisions – the stylistic breaks (particularly in act 2) are clearly audible.

Verdi’s choice of the story by Spanish dramatist García Gutiérrez follows the success of Il trovatore. As with that piece, he was probably attracted here by the mixture of garish effects, mysterious complications, and passionate new kinds of characters. Since Rigoletto he expected material suitable for setting to have “extremely powerful situations, diversity, fire, pathos” (Verdi’s letter to Antonio Somma of 22 April, 1853). Unlike the conventional historical drama of Eugene Scribe in Les vêpres siciliennes, the Romantic Spanish drama following Victor Hugo met Verdi’s search for “new, grandiose, eventful, bold material” (Verdi’s letter to Cesare De Sanctis of 1 January, 1853).

Here as there, the political unrest is linked with the subjective passions, the historical tragedy with the personal, in a libretto vilified by almost all Verdi monographs since Abramo Basevi as

confused and even stupid, but which the music explains. In Verdi’s theatre, the story is always only playing out on the surface of the action, musical drama which proceeds through the interplay and exchange of body language and emotion, indicating the inner life of the characters. Unlike grand opéra, the civil war clashes between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, the nobles, and citizens in the city state of Genoa in the mid-14th century is only the screen on which a drama is projected of guilt and reconciliation involving five people.

Arrigo Boito tried to bring “some historical and local colour” into the action when revising the old libretto (Boito’s letter to Verdi of 8 December, 1880).

However, the new council scene as the finale of act 1 is, despite the volcanic outbreak of emotional conflicts, lacking any really concrete social and historical basis for the action in the sense of the historical panoramas displayed

by Scribe and Meyerbeer in Les hugue­ nots and Le prophète. Meyerbeer’s protagonists are impotent in the face of the history rolling over them. By contrast, Verdi’s heroes and heroines are subject to an individual guilt which always ends in death.

What Verdi found gripping in the subject of the Spanish drama is clear in his music – the confrontation between Simon Boccanegra and his mortal en-

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COMMENTARY ON SIMON BOCCANEGRA

emy Jacopo Fiesco, who pursues the low-born buccaneer, the seducer of his daughter Maria, with implacable hatred. The love of Amelia and Gabriele Adorno which finally reconciles the hostile camps, and not least a father’s search for his daughter and her recovery, depicted ecstatically in the music – the emphatic motif which belongs to the emotional pillars of Verdi’s dramatic constellation of characters up to Aïda.

In Simon Boccanegra, fatherly love even dominates physical love – a move which even further diminishes the presence of the young hothead Gabriele, already shabbily treated by the libretto.

Amelia is like most of Verdi’s heroines: the suffering, passive “angel” (he describes her as “a sort of young nun” in a letter to Giulio Ricordi of 20 November, 1880) – in total opposition incidentally to the original story, where Susana (as García Gutiérrez calls her) is at the centre of the action which she is actively hustling along. As a result, the dramatic power of the opera is based almost entirely on the conflict between Simone and Fiesco. Fiesco, like Azucena in Il trovatore, is a novel character in Verdi’s work, and the anti-hero Simone is by no means a repetition of Rigoletto.

Verdi required “calm […], gravity and […] authority on stage” for the person playing Simone, and “a sepulchral voice with something inevitable and prophetic about it” (loc. cit.) for Fiesco. Fiesco’s relentless implacability became the model for the timbre of Verdi’s later bass roles, Padre Guardano in La forza del destino, the Grand Inquisitor in Don Carlo and his Egyptian colleague Ramfis in Aïda. Of the numerous secondary characters in the Spanish drama – including Lorenzino,

only mentioned in the opera, although important in the original – Verdi took Paolo, who becomes more important particularly in the 1881 revision.

In addition, Verdi seems to have been attracted from the start by the gloomy atmosphere, epic heaviness and tortuous lack of development in the fatalistic tale. Even in his operas in the 1840s – just think of I due Fos­ cari, Macbeth and Stiffelio – he knew how to present the depths of the human soul through music. In Simon Boccanegra he makes deeper use of the ability of his psychological orchestral language to express what moves people in their innermost hearts. From the first bars of the overture, the musical colour (the tinta musicale) has a tone of melancholy which seems to have a pinch of salty and visionary acerbity mixed in for the sea mood of acts 1 and 3, starting with the introduction to Amelia’s cavatina (in the 1881 version) and extending to Simon’s arioso in act 3 ( “Oh! rifrigerio! … la marina brezza!”), in which sea breezes musically captured by strings and woodwind cool him.

Luigi Dallapiccola called the brief passage “one of the greatest examples of landscape painting or natural sound that you can industry in the history of Italian opera.” Conversely, in Simon Boccanegra Verdi reins in the melodic enthusiasm that fills Il trovatore, for example and restrains his striking lyrical inventiveness– a deliberate focus on the inner expression of a musical psychoanalysis, which brought him severe criticism as early s 1859 from Abramo Basevi for having come up with “ugly, poorly developed melodies”, unjustly but understandably, given contemporary expectations of a music drama.

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“The piece,” Verdi wrote while working on the revision, “is gloomy because it has to be gloomy, but it is gripping” (letter to Opprandino Arrivabene of 2 February, 1881). Verdi had to look for extreme, almost ritual and ritually repeating situations, set emotional gestures and rhetorical signals which gave his musical dramaturgy the opportunity to bring together the innermost being and most extreme sufferings of people as expressed in their actions, and make it sensuously perceptible and acoustically audible. It almost seems that action and music in Simon Boc­ canegra could only gather up the fragments after Simon’s life had been shattered in the prologue by Maria’s death ( Julian Budden).

As if moved by a ritual, traumatic compulsion, action, and music recall the same gestures and signs. Simon returns twice from Savona, Amelia saves him twice from Gabriele’s sword, Simon bares his breast three times to meet his desired death, three times we hear how the illegitimate child of Simon and Maria vanished without trace after the death of the nurse, and three times Amelia’s true identity is revealed.

Such frequency of repetition (mostly in the musical form of a racconto) cannot be accidental. Even less so is the fact that the lever first motivating the action is that a daughter stands between father and lover twice.

The unique nature of the action goes with a change in the musical dramaturgy. Verdi had already started with Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La travi­ ata to finally free shake off the traditional conventions of Italia melodrama.

The call for novelty and variation in both the material and the forms runs through his letters in the 1850s, and is

then joined by the demand for brevity, which he had virtually beaten into Piave since their collaboration on Ernani as the foremost maxim for a librettist.

None of Verdi’s previous operas had shown such a decisive step towards design which embraces a whole scene or even a whole act. This applies not just for the new version in the wake of the planned Otello, which is the start of his late style, but even for the first version performed in Venice in 1857.

It is true that the structure – as confirmed by the allocation of numbers in the piano score – still follows the traditional forms of Italian opera. However, the scenic and musical planning is already unusual in the strong reduction in the arias. Only three of the four protagonists – Amelia, Gabriele and Fiesco – have solo scenes. Two of these are double arias. Fiesco’s romanza (“A te l’estremo addio”) in the prologue – as a lament and mourning for the death of his daughter, which the chorus joins in – goes beyond the self-expression of the monologue to provide dramatic music which accompanies the action It was taken over unchanged in the new version in 1881. Amelia’s entrance aria (“Come in quest’ora”) was rewritten on the basis of the old melodic material, the virtuoso but “pretty ugly” cabaletta (Verdi’s letter to Arrigo Boito of 8 January, 1881) was replaced by a brief allegro agitato, a procedure which he also used in the subsequent duet between Amelia and Gabriele, where he exchanged the cabaletta with a brief stretta.

The new version of the music also changes the dramatic importance of the entrance aria, and with it the depiction of the character. The new orchestral introduction, whose wave-like movement Verdi also uses below the two verses of

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the adagio, puts Amelia in relation to the sea and Simon, a move which also enhances her depth of feeling and emphasises her seriousness beyond showy vocal displays. Finally, Gabriele’s jealousy aria in act 2 (“Sento avvampar”) is also completely unchanged – an agitated piece with a powerful accompaniment in Verdi’s middle style. The piece cannot be called conventional with its original inversion of the traditional functions of a two-part aria, with the fast cabaletta placed before the adagio.

The title figure himself does not have an aria, even a musically fully-formed monologue comparable with Macbeth’s “Mi si affaccia un pugnal?” or Rigoletto’s “Pari siamo! … Io la lingua, egli ha il pugnale”, both in act 1. This unusual treatment is unique in Verdi’s entire operatic output. Verdi has particularly emphasised in Simon the resigned, painful and tragic features, for example in the brief dream scene in act 2 (“Doge! ancor proveran la tua clemenza”) and the entrance of the already condemned in act 3 (“M’ardon le tempia ... un atra vampa sento”) – parlante passages whose free treatment come closest in form to an arioso.

The newly-composed great council scene gave Verdi the opportunity to upgrade Simon with his intervention in the threatening confrontation between citizens and patricians (“Plebe! Patrizi!

– Popolo”) and also show him as an active statesman whose only purpose is to reconcile disputes and keep the peace.

But even this solo with its authoritative manner has no independent formal function – like the entrance of the conquered Ethiopian king Amonasro in the triumphal scene in Aïda (“Quest’assisa ch’io vesto vi dica”) it leads to the mighty pezzo concertato.

Like Rigoletto, Don Carlo and Aïda, Si­ mon Boccanegra is an opera of duets.

Verdi developed the figure of the unhappy doge, torn by his love, in confrontation with his opponents. The two duets between Simon and Fiesco – the first in the prologue, the second in act 3 – set the dramatic and musical end­pieces of the action. Equally important is the great three-part recognition scene between Simon and Amelia, father, and daughter, in act 1 scene 1, which is treated even more freely, particularly in the minimal revision for the new version. Verdi does not stage a dramatic confrontation here, as in the comparable soprano-baritone duets in the second acts of Rigoletto and La travi­ ata, but musically creates an emotional opening and even agreement.

Here again, he has shortened the cabaletta (“Figlia! … a tal nome palpito”) in the revision and added in the sequel the ecstatic outbursts supported by heavenly harp arpeggios, the visionary, and even hallucinatory raptures of Simon, which summarise in the one word “Figlia!” (“daughter”) the father’s shock at surprisingly finding his daughter, long believed dead, and the only memory of his dead beloved. Similar musical weight to these three duets is limited to the great ensemble scenes at the end of acts 1 and 3, while the duets between Amelia and Gabriele in acts 1 and 2 seem clearly secondary.

The duettino between Gabriele and Fiesco in act 1 was composed later and replaces the very dull revenge duet in the first version, softens Fiesco’s character and attracts attention through its archaic cadence. “The piece has a quiet, ceremonial, slightly religious, slightly old-fashioned character.” (Verdi’s letter to Arrigo Boito of 11 January, 1881.)

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UWE SCHWEIKERT

The dramatic dialogue is given greater importance in Simon Boccanegra even in the first version. The start of the prologue puts the audience in the middle of the action. They become as if accidentally witnesses of a confidential discussion that was already in progress before the curtain rose (“Che dicesti?” – “What did you say?”). Comparing the new and first versions, there is a tendency here as in similar passages to make the declamatory intonation musically smoother on the lines of parlante.

Where Verdi rewrote the dialogue – for example, at the start of the prologue or the beginning of act 3 – he not only set a framework in the psychological orchestral commentary but also sharpened the vocal diction in the interests of a more concise melodic setting of the words. The two short monologues already mentioned also have an arioso character. In these, we see Simon alone – freely composed scenes which no longer fit any closed form and yet have lost any reminder of the conventional “dry” recitative.

Speech to music is above all Paolo’s domain. Simon’s treacherous henchman, who Boito turned from a conventional thug into a power-hungry schemer, turned traitor by spurned love, is accompanied whenever he is in the centre of the action after the prologue – at the end of the council scene, the poisoning of the doge and the march to the scaffold – by the recollection motif that accompanies his cursing by Simon.

This is a chromatically descending quaver movement in minor seconds, whose bass clarinet timbre gives it a thoroughly lurking and devious nature.

When Paolo trickles the poison secretly into Simon’s goblet at the start of act 2 – an act that only appears in the

new version – the creeping mood of the motif is not only slowed but given syncopated accents on the unstressed beats of the bar: three beats are emphasised by pizzicato in the double basses and tam tam, while the fourth beat is marked as a pause – as if the music is holding its breath at the deed. The motif sounds again at the entrance of the poisoned Simon in act 3, this time inverted. In its basic form, as played by the bass clarinet for the curse, it is derived directly from the melisma that Amelia sings in her plea for “pace” (peace) in the pezzo concertato in the council scene.

In this way, love and hate are musi­ cally linked as siblings, an example of how Verdi delves into the depth of the subconscious to link the relation­ ships between the characters musically.

Amelia’s melodic range is broadest and presents the widest selection of images.

In the overture to act 1 her song soars over sea and sky, cloaked in the orchestra, while Paolo’s music has the narrowest scope. As so often in Verdi, the vocal range is decisive in showing the characters. When Boito took on Piave’s libretto for Simon Boccanegra at Verdi’s request, he complained above all that there “is not a single event that’s really fateful, in other words essential and strong, created by an inescapable tragic fate. [...] There are a lot of intrigues and not much connection.

Everything in this play is superficial, all these events seem to stand still, to have been made up to pack the stage, they have neither deep roots nor strong ties, they’re not the result of characters, they’re external appearances of events.

To correct a drama like this, you have to change it.” (Boito’s letter to Verdi of 8 December, 1880.)

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COMMENTARY ON SIMON BOCCANEGRA

Piave’s original libretto had looked for typical operatic opportunities for music, including the great final number. Such a pragmatic restriction was no longer enough for Boito and Verdi, who at the time were already working on compressing Shakespeare’s Otello into a musical drama. So, Boito gave the drama of the action and Verdi the drama of the music a completely new turn, with the invention and new composition of the great council scene. This replaces the originally planned festival scene at the end of act 1. Piave and Verdi had mixed choruses and dances in a festive scene, not without dramatic and musical skill, which is then abruptly disrupted by Amelia’s abduction and the resulting uproar.

Boito and Verdi instead created a scene which no longer relied on personal intrigues to bring developing antagonisms to a head, but is based on ideological and tragic conflicts, in the process creating a categorically different starting situation for the further course of the music drama. They clearly had the great act 3 finale to Otello, which Boito had drafted in summer 1880 in mind as a model. As in that case the action centred here on a real conflict – the outbreak of civil war between the nobles and the plebeians, for which Amelia’s abduction was merely an opportunity, and not the cause.

The scene is completely composed in the style of Otello and breaks all the shackles of convention. As in the prologue the individual formal elements – the actual council scene, the uprising, Amelia’s racconto, Simon’s arioso and the powerful pezzo concertato, whose musical arc embraces friend and foe – are still recognisable in their outlines but follow each other with an inner logic

and consequence. And like Otello’s act 3 this finale does not end with a static stretta, but with a coup de théâtre – the cursing of Paolo, seen through by Simon, who forces him to agree with it.

In the first version a pallid tradesman, Paolo takes on almost demonic features in the curse, hammered out with the power of the full orchestra, tutta forza, unison over two and a half octaves in a seething sustained trill – a creation of Boito who undoubtedly had the Iago from Otello in mind. The curse now becomes the mover of the catastrophe, which it duly unleashes.

In its exemplary dramaturgy of contrast, the new finale to act 1 links directly to the prologue, and carries the arc over to the last act. One cannot understand the action and the music drama that underlies it if it isn’t clear that the final act refers back to the “really beautiful” prologue, “strong in its utter darkness, hard and dark like a piece of basalt” (Arrigo Boito’s letter to Verdi of 8 December, 1880). Simon Boccanegra not only ends but begins with death – something which otherwise happens in Verdi’s œuvre only in La forza del destino – the death of someone absent, who dominates the prologue and whose shadow lies over the entire action. It is the invisible corpse of Maria, daughter of the patrician Fiesco, beloved of the plebeian parvenue Simon, and mother of Amelia.

Her death, in which the antagonisms of a sorrow dominated by male warrior notions have literally written themselves, is marked by Fiesco’s romanza, accompanied by the chorus “Miserere” – revenge aria and dirge in one. When Simon forces his way into the palace of the Fieschi, after the confrontation with Fiesco in a duet where the voices are irreconcilably opposed,

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he finds the catafalque of the dead woman. The merciless fate that determines the greatness and tragedy of the anti-hero Simon and with it the course of the opera expresses itself at the end of the prologue in a dialogue consisting of just four words.

Simon flees the empty palace of the Fieschi, filled with horror, while at the same time Paolo arrives with the crowd to tell Simon he has been elected doge – “un trono” the tradesman proclaims, “una tomba” the buccaneer replies. The “throne” as “grave” in this verbal climax to a tragic constellation (taken from the original drama) is an instructive example of the parola scenica Verdi always appreciated, the stage phrase which captures a situation and makes it clear and visible. The disruptive dualism of throne and grave becomes the driver of the inner tragedy, Simon’s innermost, wish, and will develop its gruesome truth in the final act.

Like the prologue, the final act of Simon Boccanegra is under the sign of death. In contrast to the explosive action of the previous scenes in acts 1 and 2, there is almost no action, it is static – a crippling silence which gradually brings the music to a half. After the noisy presto of the brief orchestral overture the tempo of the music slows, until it stops altogether in the andante sostenuto assai of the last finale. Andreas Soport has noted that the last scene “either draws out painfully or tends to stagnation in permanent repetition.”

In revising the opera Verdi and Boito made few changes, but these were decisive – the references back to the past action, and the strengthening of the fatalistic endgame.

When the curtain goes up, we hear the repeat of the battle music with the

victory cries of the people sounding above it. Paolo, sentenced to death as the instigator, enters the scene – the anacrustic figure which the orchestra announces him with evokes the blow of the guillotine that awaits him. In masterly contrast with the pale scene, Verdi has interwoven the wedding chorus for Amelia and Gabriele Adorno as a lightning major trio with Paolo’s walk to his execution. Chromatic ascending and descending sixths in the strings accompany Simon’s entrance, a musical configuration of the creeping death which all unsuspecting is already overtaking him.

The doge longs for the sea and freedom. Shimmering demisemiquaver figures in the strings and endless flute trills evoke a vibrant soundscape which Simon’s song floats over like a breeze.

The vocal line drops from F4, the highest note, an octave and a half to C3. The word “tomba” on this note is also the keyword for the entire act, the death wish which was Simon’s only comment at the end of the prologue on his election as doge. It is also the keyword for Fiesco, who has previously been lurking in the background and now appears for a final confrontation.

For Boito this scene was “the best in the drama” (Boito’s letter to Verdi of 7 February, 1881) because the two opponents are standing face to face for the first time since the events of the prologue 25 years earlier, “as masters of their actions and their words, isolated and free from external influences and episodes” (Boito’s letter to Verdi of 15 February, 1881). In this three-part duet – two grave largo sections flank an allegro assai racing in hectic figuration and full of tragic irony – Fiesco’s words are heard, “O pain! Death is waiting …

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COMMENTARY ON SIMON BOCCANEGRA

a traitor has poisoned you”, with the striking death figure familiar from the finale of La traviata or the “Miserere” in part 4 of Il trovatore, which cuts heavily into the music.

At the same time, in a light drama precisely planned by Verdi, all the lights gradually go out, until at the doge’s death the scene is completely dark. Ostinato block chords over a foundation of low strings and the bronze tone of the cimbasso, the lowest brass, reminiscent of a knell, ushers in the closing pezzo concertato.

In this final scene the voices of the dying doge and the lovers Amelia and Gabriele, united by his passing, join for the last time above the song of the chorus – a scene without action in which time stands still and is dissolved into emotion, into music. Simon dies with the name “Maria” on his lips, which

closes the circle of death in the action.

Like Verdi’s Messa da Requiem, created in 1874, the opera ends on a pianissimo in powerless silence. The tolling of the knell and painfully emphasised minor grace notes on the weak beats of the bar further darken the tone almost until the final chord. No work had ever died away in opera history with a darker, more pallid finale closing with empty fifths.

The uncompromising seriousness of Verdi’s theatre of death stood in the way of popularity, for Simon Boccanegra as it had done previously for Macbeth. It has remained an opera for connoisseurs to the present day. In the composer’s development, Simon Boccanegra marks a decisive step from the traditional number opera to a music drama which is no longer oriented towards preset forms but sets its own aesthetic standards.

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Next page: KS THOMAS HAMPSON

as SIMON BOCCANEGRA

ARRIGO BOITO

No one understood or expressed the meaning of life better than Verdi.

He was a human among humans, and he dared to be just that.

If he had been offered the chance of being a god, he would have declined, because he wanted to feel like a human and a winner in the fiery sphere of earthly tests.

IMPRINT GIUSEPPE VERDI

SIMON BOCCANEGRA SEASON 2023/24 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION 14 OCTOBER 2002 Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Wien Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General Editors SERGIO MORABITO, PETER BLAHA, ANDREAS LÁNG, OLIVER LÁNG Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Image concept MARTIN CONRADS, BERLIN (Cover) All performance fotos by MICHAEL PÖHN Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU TEXT REFERENCES All texts were taken from the Simon Boccanegra-programme of the Wiener Staatsoper, 2002. Judith Frömmer: FAREWELL TO MAMMA ROMA, from: programme of the Bayerische Staatsoper, 2013 - Uwe Schweikert: COMMENTARY ON SIMON BOCCANEGRA, from: Uwe Schweikert, Das Wahre erfinden, Simon Boccanegra, Königshausen & Neumann, 2013. IMAGE REFERENCE (COVER) Hamed Alaei. ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS Andrew Smith.

Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Holders of rights who were unavailable regarding retrospect compensation are requested to make contact.

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