5/29/2023 0 Comments 1846 verdi operaAs Budden notes, "the Italian public had taken Attila to their hearts" and he adds that a line sung by the Roman general Ezio in a duet – "Avrai tu l'universo, resta l'Italia a me" (You can have the universe, but leave Italy for me) – brought forth spontaneous cheers". Overall, the reception from the press on opening night was not as positive as that from the audience present. However, the relationship between composer and the new librettist worsened in a variety of ways, especially over the use of stage bands in the context of the composer claiming to think in terms of his work being a grand opera: "Aren't Guillaume Tell and Robert le Diable grand operas? Yet they don't contain a band." And the differences between Piave's version and what Solera (who received a copy of Piave's act 3) had originally conceived were so great as to cause a final rift between Verdi and his long-time collaborator the composer's ideas of musical theatre had moved far ahead of his older colleague. Then came the second blow: Solera left the project altogether and followed his opera singer wife to Madrid where he became director of the Royal Theatre, leaving only the draft sketch of the third act.Īs things turned out, Verdi returned to Piave for the completion of act 3 – with Solera's blessing. But the pace began to slow as, firstly, illness limited the composer's ability to do much work. These included reversing the order of key scenes and, in the case of the opening scene showing the foundation of Venice, totally inventing it. Solera's approach to the project was to emphasize an appeal to Italian, specifically Venetian, patriotism, while ignoring many of the elements of the play. No clear reason for this change seems to have emerged, except that Gabriele Baldini speculates that, in returning to Solera, he was more comfortable working with a librettist who was more suited to "sketching epic sagas and historical-religious frescoes. But, as Attila was to be the second opera Verdi would be writing for Venice, he appears to have changed his mind about working with Piave as the librettist and then convinced him to relinquish the project, seemingly preferring to work with Solera, who had been his librettist for both Nabucco and I Lombardi, two operas which employed the format of large choral tableaux and something which the librettist was prepared to re-use for the new opera.
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