Verdi and Italian Opera

Romantic opera, which placed emphasis on the imagination and the emotions began to appear in the early 19th century

Romantic opera, which placed emphasis on the

and because its arias and music, gave more dimension to the extreme emotions which typified the theater of that era. In addition, it is said that fine music often excused glaring faults in character drawing and plot lines. Gioacchino Rossini (1792–1868) initiated the Romantic period. His first success was an “opera buffa” (comic opera), La Cambiale di Matrimonio (1810). His reputation still survives today through his Barber of Seville, and La Cenerentola. But he also wrote serious opera, Otello (1816) and Guillaume Tell (1829).  Rossini’s successors in the Italian bel canto  (beatifuil singing) were Vincenzo Bellini (1801–35), Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848) and Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901).

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It was Verdi,   a supporter of the  struggle for Italian Independence, who transformed the whole nature of operatic writing during the course of his long career. His first great successful opera, Nabucco (1842), caught the public fancy because of the driving vigour of its music and its great choruses. One of the chorus renditions,”Va, pensiero“,   gave advantageous meaning to the struggle for Italian independence and to unify Italy.

Verdi’s does not conform to the  cliche of the tragic life of the Romantic artist yet his life was not free from sorrow.  He  was widely appreciated and enormously successful throughout his long life.   Some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture, examples being “La donna è mobile” from Rigoletto, “Libiamo ne’ lieti calici” (The Drinking Song) from La traviata, “Va, pensiero” (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, the “Coro di zingari” (Anvil Chorus) from Il trovatoreand the

After Nabucco  (see above), Verdi often based his operas on patriotic themes and many  standard romantic literary  sources: Victor Hugo (Ernani, 1844); Byron (Il Duo Foscari, 1844); and Shakespeare (Macbeth, 1847). Verdi was experimenting with musical and dramatic forms, attempting to discover things which only opera could do. In 1877, he created Otello which completely replaced Rossini’s opera, and is described by critics as the finest of Italian romantic operas with the traditional components: the solo arias, the duets and the choruses fully integrated into the melodic and dramatic flow.

Verdi’s last opera, Falstaff (1893), broke free of conventional form altogether and finds music which follows quick flowing simple words and because of its respect for the pattern of ordinary speech, it created a threshold for a new operatic era in which speech patterns are paramount.

A testimony to his capacity outside the field of opera is the Requiem mass: Messa da Requiem   composed in 1874 in Manzoni’s honour.  This  work is regarded as a masterpiece of the oratorio tradition.  Being a visionary and politically engaged, Verdi  remained an emblematic figure of the reunification process (the Risorgimento) of the Italian Peninsula. He was a storng nationalist!