Verdi, in his early career—in the period he himself later referred to as his “galley years”—was anything but a musician’s musician. Some of us, admittedly, will be familiar with Donizetti’s unauthorized remark, said to have been made after hearing I Due Foscari, to the effect that “Really, this man is a genius.”
But few other composers and musicians would have agreed with him. A more typical remark was that of an older composer, Nicola Vaccai, made after hearing Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, at La Scala late in 1839. Writing to a lifelong friend, Girolamo Viezzoli, he said:
In this last autumn an opera called Oberto, by a certain Verdi, was much prized here: the most paltry (meschinissima) music, which boils down to two pieces which had some effect, a romanza and the adagio of a quartet. If one had to compare it with the current opera [Mercadante’s Le Due Illustri Rivali], one would call it a turnip set beside an [exotic] pineapple. Such is the taste of the public, which decides the fate of operas. Poor composers!
Felice Romani, famed both as a librettist and as an influential journalist, conducted a running battle against Verdi’s music in the Gazzetta Piemontese of Turin. As one example among many, we may cite the valediction he delivered upon Giovanna d’Arco at the end of its performances early in 1846:
Farewell, Giovanna of painful memory! Farewell, poor hoarse-throated Giovanna. The curtain descended upon you like a funeral shroud! Farewell, demon possessed, the gods struck you down in the midst of your nightly revels—out of pity for the trumpets, the horns and the drums, all of which would have burst had you lasted longer! Farewell, finally, O inglorious Giovanna, who ‘ere you died saw yourself eclipsed by the splendor of a single jewel from Beatrice di Tenda [presumably an aria borrowed from Bellini’s opera and introduced into Verdi’s]. [Pacini’s] La Regina di Cipro has taken your place, and will not be dislodged, let us hope—unless your dolorous spirit should arise from time to time out of spite from the grave, like one of those ghosts which, they say, haunt uninhabited and decayed houses.
Nowadays, when we universally recognize Verdi’s achievement, a vitriolic and rhetorical effusion such as this may seem merely funny. But at the time it seemed—indeed, the present writer is tempted to go even further and say it was—bothreasonable and justified. To anyone accustomed to the expressive instrumentation and thoughtful harmonies of preceding composers—Donizetti’s teacher Giovanni Simone Mayr, for instance, or Pietro Generali or Ferdinando Paer—Verdi’s use of pounding cabaletta rhythms, his frequent writing of choruses in bare octaves and his habit of doubling the voices in the orchestra must have seemed insufferably brash and aggressive. In Attila there is even a final movement of a duet in which the tenor and soprano sing in unison throughout. A demagogue unleashed in the theater, Verdi stormed the gallery with an arsenal of urgent rhythms and stirring but “obvious” melodies. And it is demonstrably true that his music came to demand a new style of singing, a new strength and power, particularly in the upper registers, and that as singers aimed at this, so they began to lose much of their agility, their lightness, and ability to execute the graceful divisions of older bel canto writing.
It would not be an exaggeration, therefore, to say that early Verdi was a composer whose primary appeal was to the loggioni: to the less educated and less sophisticated sections of his audience.
For attitudes to his music to change, there had to be concessions and developments on both sides: on the part of the audience, particularly its more intellectual members, and on the part of the composer. The 19th-century cognoscenti had to recognize that, in the midst of so much that seemed raw, noisy, violent, and “popular,” there was also a very real dramatic genius and a genuine creative imagination at work. And Verdi himself had to evolve—had to grind away the “spots of commonness” that so frequently disfigured his early scores and concentrate upon moving his audience through writing music that is as thoughtful and as inventive in terms of harmony and figuration as it is appealing.
That he was capable of writing such music he had already shown, albeit fitfully, right from the start of his career, in the inspired moments of such operas as Nabucco (1842) and Ernani (1844). Of all his earlier operas, however, the one that most clearly shows his advances is, by common consent, Macbeth (1847). And Macbeth was the work which immediately followed Attila. Indeed, the very real interest of Attila—forit, too, was an innovative opera—has been overshadowed by the greater and undeniable importance of its successor.
The genesis of Attila dates back a full two years before its production at the Teatro la Fenice in Venice on March 17th, 1846, for it was in 1844, just after the first performance of Ernani, that Verdi first considered setting music to the German play, Attila, König der Hunnen (1808), by Zacharias Werner. The writing of the libretto was entrusted first to Francesco Maria Piave, then to Temistocle Solera, and the whole project was shelved and postponed several times. Piave, critics generally agree, was too meek by nature to handle such a fiery subject satisfactorily; Solera was temperamentally more suited to it, but he was also unreliable. In the autumn of 1845 Solera went to Spain, leaving the libretto in an advanced but still unfinished state. In this emergency Verdi again had recourse to Piave, whose patching up of the last act, carried out under the composer’s orders, jettisoned the choral ending Solera had planned and substituted a finale for the principals. When Solera eventually saw the result, he was so taken aback that on January 12th, 1846, he wrote to Verdi:
Your letter was a shattering blow to me. How on earth could the solemnity of a final hymn fail to inspire you? ... The ending you’ve sent me seems nothing less than a parody ... It seems to me to make nonsense of the characters as I’ve portrayed them. Fiat voluntas tua ... you are the only person who has been able to convince me that the career of a librettist is not for me ...
Not surprisingly, perhaps, Verdi and Solera were never to collaborate again.
Even when Verdi arrived in Venice for the rehearsals, things went badly. He himself was seriously ill with a gastric disorder, and was confined to bed for days at a time. Rumors began to circulate of his death. Week by week, the premiere was postponed, until the date originally fixed for the first performance had long since come and gone. In the interim, as the composer Vaccai was informed by his faithful Viezzoli in a letter of March 11th, opera at the Fenice had been seriously overshadowed by the ballet:
... The affairs of the Teatro della Fenice have limped this year where opera is concerned. Ernani ended up by being a mortal bore. La Sposa di Abido of Poniatowski is one of his usual thefts that awakens reactions neither hot nor cold. Now they are anxiously awaiting Verdi’s opera, which will be staged next Saturday and of which good hopes are held. As for the ballet, it is a marvel, since it is sustained by [Fanny] Eissler who is a real miracle. We saw her one evening, and were left amazed, transported with delight, beside ourselves ... The Theater every night is full, and the enthusiasm grows by leaps and bounds. Lanari [the impresario] rejoices and amasses fortunes; la Loewe [the prima donna who was to create the part of Odabella in Verdi’s opera] is irritated by the [nimble] legs of the ballerina and doesn’t want to sing, and the other artists appear discouraged because the public scarcely listens to them. So for Verdi, too, this is not the most propitious moment. We shall see ...
Under such daunting circumstances, Verdi’s success with Attila must be regarded as more than ever remarkable. Not, indeed, that the first evening was by any means an unqualified success. The performance began excellently, but ended on a discouragingly subdued note. As the Bolognese journal I Teatri reported, reproducing in part a review that had already appeared in the Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia:
Great expectation; the theater very crowded and overflowing with people; many demands and claims [for seats]. The opera began, then, under the most splendid omens. A most beautiful prologue, which set all minds afire with the liveliest enthusiasm, contains a cavatina sung by la Loewe and executed with great skill, a grandiose duet for Marini [Attila] and Costantini [Ezio], and a chorus of hermits followed by a piece truly magnificent for its orchestration [the passage depicting the dawn]. The prologue ends with the cavatina of the tenor, Guasco [Foresto], accompanied by a chorus of women and men, with a melody which is rather facile and light. At all these points the singers and the composer were called many times upon the stage.
During the rest of the opera the omens shone less propitiously. There was good applause for the very suave romanza of la Loewe, [and] for the first movement of a duet between her and Guasco. A concertato of beautiful and learned construction pleased in the first act, and the rich and varied work of the finale of the second act; but the music was less lively in its effect, even if the applause and the calls for the composer were no less eager, though perhaps less universal.
Justice, however, requires that it be said that not all the pieces were enjoyed in their [full] perfection: it is to be hoped that the execution will be better in the few remaining performances ... As for the third act, it is as if it was not heard, and in truth it ended in perfect silence...
Apparently, too, the candles at Attila’s feast in Act II stank most offensively when extinguished. The Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia wasted no words in declaring: “The scourge of God ought not to be the scourge of our nostrils…”
Repeatedly delayed, this premiere took place so late in the season that only six performances could be given. Nevertheless, at the end of the season I Teatri reported:
... As we hoped, maestro Verdi’s opera not only sustained itself in its later performances, but gained in the public’s favor. The applause and the acclamations were incessant, the theater every evening more delighted, every evening equally crowded, and after the third performance the composer, by way of triumph, was accompanied home with torches and music.
And indeed the prologue, upon which there was only one opinion right from the moment it was first heard, glows with strong and original beauties, including that sublime sunrise, where some wish to detect I don’t know what strange imitation—but which, as the intelligentsia are saying, is something absolutely singular, both for the novelty of its thought and the very invention of its sounds ... It is one of Verdi’s happiest inspirations. The duet for the two basses pleased more each time it was heard, as did Guasco’s cabaletta, which has already become popular, and which [one could hear] more or less sweetly sung as the audience came out of the theater each evening ...
In the rest of the work the pieces already mentioned in our first notice were enjoyed even more; except that the adagio of the finale of Act II was never heard to perfection. The singers, left to themselves without the support of the orchestra, seemed to lose their way, and came together again only in the stretta ... A trio and a quartet in Act III are also beautiful. They went unnoticed the first evening, but were heard with growing delight thereafter ...
Already in these reviews a pattern is emerging: the prologue is admired as a whole, but the rest of the opera is praised rather for individual items than for any all-embracing conception or inspiration. It was a critical reaction that was to be echoed many times as the years passed.
But perhaps the most interesting aspect of these early reviews comes under the heading of “omissions,” for there is a total absence of any reference to the patriotic, nationalistic appeal of the opera, even though Attila, as all the textbooks will tell us, has always been known as one of the most politically motivated of Verdi’s operas.
The second scene of the prologue, for example, showing the survivors of the sack of Aquileia taking refuge in the swamps on the Adriatic shore, where they became the founders of Venice, was a nice compliment to the city in which the opera was first staged. But that was only the beginning. In the words of George Martin:
Within Italy almost the entire opera became a battle cry. When the Venetian audience saw the Huns appear on the Adriatic shore, it burst into cries of ‘Italia! Italia!’ Some of Solera’s lines passed directly into the language, such as when the Roman [Ezio] says to Attila: ‘Avrai tu l’universo, resti l’Italia a me’ (You take the universe, leave Italy to me) ... Invariably the audience shouted back at the stage: ‘A noi! L’Italia a noi!’ (Italy for us!). It seems extraordinary that the censors allowed the line, or indeed any part of the libretto, to pass.
The clue as to why the reviews were so silent regarding this aspect of the opera lies, or course, in Martin’s last sentence. Any operatic libretto, no matter in what Italian state it was presented, was examined by censors to ensure that it did not offend political, religious and moral sensibilities. In Attila it was certainly the censors who insisted, for example, that Pope Leo should appear simply as “Leone, an old Roman.” Yet for the most part the libretto could pass scrutiny because its political allusions were just that: allusions which could escape detection as explicit political references, but which, the composer and librettist hoped, an alert audience might pick up when the opera was performed. Critics in their turn also had to be wary of the authorities: they might report the beauties of the music and the performance, but they could make no reference to political implications and the reactions they provoked.
For the most part the political allusions lay, in any case, in dispersed lines such as that quoted by Martin, logically contradictory in itself, “Avrai tu l’universo, resti l’Italia a me.” Any broader attempt to read the opera as a consistent parallel to the contemporary Italian situation, and the domination of the northern part of the country by Austria, ran into difficulties since the subject was, in this sense, stubbornly intractable. Of all the characters, the only one who excites our respect and sympathy is Attila, the foreign invader and ostensibly the barbarian, the “scourge of God.” After his initial (and momentary) presentation as a blood-lusting tyrant, he acts, disconcertingly, as “nature’s gentleman,” an embodiment of nobility, generosity, and humanity. It is the Italian characters who, by contrast, are treacherous and contemptible. Ezio, when first we see him, is ready to betray his boy Emperor for his own personal aggrandizement. Foresto tries to poison Attila, and Odabella actually succeeds in murdering him—notwithstanding all the generous treatment she has received at his hands. Though she likens herself to the biblical Judith, she and her companions seem more like jackals worrying a lion—and a very gentle lion at that, as the first critics were quick to note. As the second review published in I Teatri expressed it:
Poor Attila cuts the strangest figure ... A good-natured character, he is insulted, kept waiting, and betrayed by all: I don’t know why the world calls him the scourge of God, when really he sustains the part of the scourged. When he sees himself in danger of his life, he doesn’t even have the good sense to flee and save himself; and he dies, spitted like a goose ...
We are, then, dealing with an opera that is less than satisfactory in dramatic terms, and which, musically, is more easily admired for its many fine moments than as a total entity. Yet even after qualifying our assessment in this way, there is just so much left to admire. Movements abound in which we can see Verdi reaching towards new heights of imaginative expression: the yearningly beautiful prelude; the orchestral depiction of dawn breaking over the Adriatic marshes; Odabella’s romanza, “Oh! Nel fuggente nuvolo,” with its sweeping melody set over exquisite ostinato figures for English horn, flute, cello and harp; Attila’s account of his dream, one of Verdi’s many remarkable depictions of psychological disturbance, terror, and distress; and his encounter with Leone where, eschewing a customary final stretta, Verdi ends Act I with an adagio. Elsewhere, even if on occasion the music degenerates to the “intolerably crude” (to quote one of the most responsible of present-day English critics), we are more often likely to be struck by its strength, its sinewy vigor, and its dramatic urgency. More than any other Italian composer of the last century, Verdi had the power to gather up both stage and auditorium in an onrushing wave of melody, and then to sweep us forward on a surging tide of dramatic movement.
With its popularity certainly enhanced by its political relevance, Attila soon went the rounds of the Italian theaters. It was seen outside Italy, too: in 1846 in Corfu; in 1847 in Copenhagen, Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Cadiz, and Lisbon; and in 1848 in London (where it failed to impress) and as far afield as Cuba. Its first American performance took place in New York in 1850, and its first performance in San Francisco on August 19th, 1859, when, according to the Evening Bulletin, it was “very heartily and loudly applauded.” By 1860 it had been staged throughout South America (in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela), and had even been seen as far away as Australia (in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide). Yet, widely heard though it was, its popularity on the 19th-century stage was not of long duration. In a theatrical world that was overstocked with viable operas, only the very greatest masterpieces could expect to remain long in the repertoire. And Attila, rivaled within a year by Macbeth, was inevitably eclipsed—as indeed Macbeth also was—by the three crowning achievements of Verdi’s middle years: Rigoletto, La Traviata, and Il Trovatore.
Jeremy Commons is a New Zealand opera historian, scholar, impresario, and librettist. He is an authority on 19th-century Italian opera and has published major works on the composers Gaetano Donizetti and Nicola Vaccai. This article appeared in a previous edition of San Francisco Opera Magazine.