Special: Simon Boccanegra

An opera reborn

The year was 1879. Giuseppe Verdi, by then the most revered living Italian opera composer, had retired to his country estate in a quiet village outside Parma, Italy, following the triumph of his grand-opera Aida in 1871. He was sixty-five years of age, wealthy and famous, his operas were played throughout the world — indeed several, like the famous trio of Rigoletto, La traviata, and Il trovatore, were among the most frequently performed works at many of the most important opera houses. He had nonetheless grown weary of the exhausting, often frustrating challenges of working with theater managements and the many problems of casting and staging to ensure results that would meet his uncompromisingly high expectations. In 1873 he would compose a string quartet and in 1874, a magnificent Requiem to honor the recently deceased novelist Alessandro Manzoni. Yet, as far as composing for the operatic stage, he was, to his mind, done.

Enter Giulio Ricordi. Grandson of the founder of the Milanese publishing firm that by mid century had established itself as the leading Italian music publisher, he had begun working at the company only a few years before the premiere of Aida. In their time, his grandfather Giovanni and father Tito had closely followed the careers of many great composers published by the firm – immortal geniuses like Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and, of course, Verdi – as they created new operas. Secretly, Giulio hoped to convince the Grand Old Man of opera (as Verdi was affectionately called) to come out of retirement, with a completely new work. As we know, his skillful and diplomatic work of persuasion would ultimately inspire Verdi to collaborate with Arrigo Boito in the creation the late masterpieces Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). But to reach such lofty results he would have to proceed in cautious steps, perhaps by proposing something less “imposing”, like the revision of a previous work that had not realized fully the success its composer had hoped. Giulio had just such a project in mind, which he was certain would excite the composer’s interest: Simon Boccanegra.

Premiered in 1857, the original Boccanegra was an ambitious opera filled with wonderful moments of drama and splendid music. Yet it was not a success – indeed, as Verdi would flatly state, it was a “fiasco”. Some reporters placed the blame on the densely constructed, overly complicated story line, described as an “unintelligible, intricate labyrinth”. And although one far-sighted critic would recognize the complex work as a “masterpiece”, that first version of Boccanegra would only have a few more productions, including a disastrously bad staging in 1859 at La Scala, which infuriated the composer. Soon thereafter, the opera would come to languish on the publisher’s shelves. Nonetheless Verdi insisted that Boccanegra “was not inferior to many of my other operas, which however were much more fortunate in their success” as he wrote to Tito Ricordi, “but it requires that the audience be more willing to listen”: willing, that is, to appreciate its innovative qualities. Giulio understood that a revision of this misunderstood work could be the ideal project to bring Verdi out of his retirement.

Giulio’s “diplomatic mission” on Boccanegra began while he had been tempting Verdi with the idea of collaborating with the librettist Arrigo Boito on Otello. By way of inspiring work of some kind between the two men, Giulio had casually discussed revising the earlier opera and without further discussion sent Verdi the score, to which the composer famously replied:

“Yesterday I received a large package which I assume to be the score of Simon!... If you come here in six months time, in a year, or two or three, you will find the package unopened. As I told you before detest useless things […] better that I end my career with Aida and the Mass, than with some sort of revision”

Nonetheless the seed was sown, Verdi’s creative imagination was prodded, and composer and librettist would soon begin work in earnest.

The librettist of the original version of Boccanegra was Francesco Maria Piave, to whom historians have not always been kind, considering him little more than a journeyman craftsman of verses. Even in his own day, he was lampooned in a caricature showing him slicing off one libretto after another like a butcher cutting up pieces of an endless sausage, a reference to his (perhaps overly) prolific output. Yet closer examination of his libretti reveals a wordsmith of rare sensitivity, often capable of high achievement. The issue with Boccanegra’s first version lay principally with problems of structure, which Verdi himself had laid out (with the help of another poet, Giuseppe Montanelli) and insisted that Piave follow. Yet as skilled an “opera-poet” as Piave (who died in 1876) might be, Arrigo Boito was instead a creative artist of true literary genius.

Revisions proved to be more extensive than Verdi had at first predicted. Although he originally wrote to Giulio that “for Boccanegra we mustn’t attempt a complicated revision; better to leave everything as it is and just retouch the Finale”, in the end he and Boito changed a duet and completely revised the conclusion of Act 1, and extensively altered four scenes at the end of Act 3.

For the 1881 La Scala premiere of the revised Boccanegra, considerable attention was also predictably paid to the quality of the production itself. In this the composer, librettist and publisher were all closely involved. A large number of letters between them, and especially between Verdi and Ricordi, document the exacting care with which costumes and set designs were discussed, as well as such technical details as the intricate lighting of the “illuminated port” scene of Act 3. The costumes were commissioned from Alfredo Edel, only 25 at the time and at the beginning of what would become a glorious career; his 46 designs for Boccanegra are all preserved in the Archivio Storico Ricordi of Milan. The sets were created by Girolamo Magnani, who had begun his career nearly a half-century earlier and had worked extensively throughout Europe, including for a considerable number of productions of Verdi operas, not least of which was the La Scala premiere of Verdi’s Aida.

While Giulio Ricordi’s role as the tenacious and diplomatic mediator between composer and librettist was a fundamental element in seeing that the revision was begun and successfully brought to fruition, his involvement in the project went even deeper. He conducted historical research on his own, to ensure that the sets and costumes were an accurate reflection of the period (even travelling to Genoa, the site of the opera’s action, to conduct research), and he personally “compiled and edited” the disposizione scenica – a highly detailed, 60-page “production book” that explained the most critical points of stage “choreography” for the principal singers, chorus, and supernumeraries, as well as specific aspects of the sets, costumes, and other staging matters, with numerous diagrams illustrating the work “as it was staged at the Teatro alla Scala” at its 1881 premiere. This meticulously prepared document was meant to serve as a model for future productions to ensure that Boccanegra would be staged with the same professional quality.

The 1881 performances of the revised Simon Boccanegra garnered the success this superb opera had been denied twenty-four years earlier. Verdi was very pleased with the outcome, and his publisher no less so. Just as significantly, this revision set the stage for the fruitful Verdi-Boito-Ricordi collaborations to come, that would result the composer’s great final masterpieces.

— Gabriele Dotto