Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento

Author(s): Philip Gossett

Source: Studia Musicologica , December 2011, Vol. 52, No. 1/4, OPERA AND NATION. AN
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE TO COMMEMORATE THE BICENTENARY OF FERENC
ERKEL'S BIRTH (December 2011), pp. 241-257
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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento

Philip Gossett
The University of Chicago, Department of Music
Goodspeed Hall, 1010 East 59th Str., IL-60637 Chicago, USA
E-mail: phgs44@hotmail.com

(Received: April 201 1; accepted: March 2012)

Abstract: In the effort to show the extent to which the myth-making tendencies of the
later 19th century have falsified the historical record, some non-Italian scholars have
gone so far as to assert that Giuseppe Verdi and the operas he wrote were not prime
figures in the Italian Risorgimento. But no Italian scholar has accepted this position,
since it self-evidently flies in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. This paper
will present evidence of the significance of Verdi and his music to several key
moments of the Italian Risorgimento (the period leading up to the 1 848 revolutions;
the Cinque Giornate in Milan and their influence throughout the Italian peninsula; the
strong Austrian reaction, particularly in the form of state censorship, to movements for
national unity during the 1850s; the formation of the first Italian Parliament in 1861).
Through a consideration of Verdi's music and his letters it will demonstrate Verdi's
fundamental role in the Italian Risorgimento, a role that could be explicit in moments
of relative freedom or implicit in moments of severe oppression.

Keywords: Verdi, Risorgimento, politics

Now that we are celebrating the 1 50th anniversary of the formation of the Italian
state, it may well be time to look critically again at some of the mythology that
accompanied the formation of that state. No one figures more strongly in that
mythology than the composer Giuseppe Verdi. In 1906, five years after the com-
poser's death, there was published in Milan, intended for school children, a book
entitled La vita di Giusppe Verdi narrata al popolo , by G. Bragagnolo and E. Bet-
tazzi.1 It is a Horatio Alger story, as we would say in America: a young man from
a poor family in the provinces makes his way to the big city (Milan), becomes

1. Giovanni Bragagnolo and Enrico Bettazzi, La vita di Giusppe Verdi narrata al popolo (Milano: Ricordi, 1906).

Studia Musicologica 52/1-4, 201 1, pp. 241-257

DOl: 10.1556ZSMus.52.201 1.1-4.19
1788-6244/$ 20.00 © 201 1 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest

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 242 Philip Gossett

Italy's most important composer, lat

and is fundamentally involved in the
ation of the Italian state.
Such stories were dominant in the nineteenth century, where most biographies
provided exemplary lives for a population that supposedly sought models for its
own behavior. Already in the first decades of the twentieth century, however,
there were strong reactions to such an approach. Associated with what became
known as the "new biography" was Lytton Strachey, whose Eminent Victorians,
written during World War I and published after its conclusion, pricked the images
of four "heros" of the Victorian age, including the redoutable Florence Nightingale
and the adored Cardinal Manning.2 The demolition of nineteenth-century atti-
tudes was completed a decade later when Strachey's brilliant friend, Virginia
Woolf, published a pseudo-biography of Vita Sackville-West, calling her enter-
tainment Orlando ,3 and endowing her hero/heroine with an extraordinary life of
over 300 years, during which the protagonist changes gender from a man to a
woman. In the process, Woolf makes wry observations about the biographer's art,
undermining nineteenth-century concepts of coherence and single-mindedness.
Scholars have recently taken to unravel myths that grew up around Verdi's rela-
tionship to the historical movement for Italian independence and unity known as the
Risorgimento, which dominated Italian politics and thought during the first 60 years
of the nineteenth century, and continued to accompany the country's dreams and
ideals for the rest of the century.4 We now know that the phrase "Viva Verdi" - with
"Verdi" standing for Vittorio Emanuele, Re d'Italia - was invented at the end of 1 858,
when Italian independence was becoming a reality.5 Indeed, the phrase could not have
appeared earlier, when the idea of a united Italy under the leadership of the King of
Savoy was further from realization. Myth-making decreed that the phrase must have
accompanied Verdi's path for a longer period. We remain saddled with the belief that
the 1840s represented for Verdi his "anni di galera" (galley years), with the
phrase used by critics to suggest that his early operas were inferior to his later ones.6

2. Lytton Strachey, Eminent Victorians (London: Chatto and Windus, 1918). The four subjects of his nar-
rative were: Cardinal Manning, Florence Nightingale, Thomas Arnold, and General Gordon.
3. Virginia Woolf, Orlando (London: Hogarth Press, 1928).
4. Among the most significant studies of this kind are Roger Parker, "Arpa d'or dei fatidici vati": The
Verdian Patriotic Chorus in the 1840s (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 1997), and Birgit Pauls,
Giuseppe Verdi und das Risorgimento: Ein politischer Mythos im Prozeß der Nationenbildung (Berlin: Akademie
Verlag, 1996). Several students of Parker's, such as Mary Ann Smart, have unthinkingly adopted his postion.
A more nuanced discussion, concerning the use of Verdi's music for nationalistic purposes in Germany, is found
in Gundula Kreuzer, Verdi and the Germans: From Unification to the Third Reich (Cambridge - New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
5. The finest study of the history of this phrase is Michael Sawall, '"Viva VE.R.D.I.': Origine e ricezione
di un simbolo nazionale nell'anno 1859," in Verdi 2001: Proceedings of the International Conference Parma -
New York - New Haven, 24 January-1 February 2001, ed. Fabrizio Della Seta, Roberta Montemorra Marvin,
and Marco Marica (Firenze: Olschki, 2003), vol. 1, 123-131.
6. This phrase was used by Italian writers such as Mario Rinaldi, Gli "anni di galera " di Giuseppe Verdi
(Roma: Giovanni Volpe, 1969), a defense of the earlier operas, as well as writers such as Massimo Mila, in his

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 243

Yet Verdi's only use of the expression is in a letter of 12 May 1 858 to his Milanese
friend Clarina Maffei, where it refers to all his operas through Un ballo in mas-
chera: it laments the social circumstances in which Italian composers worked in
the mid-nineteenth century, rather than judging aesthetic value.7
Similarly, it has been correctly demonstrated that, despite later myth-mak-
ing, the chorus of Hebrew slaves in Verdi's Nabucco (first performed in 1842),
"Va pensiero sull'ale dorate," was not repeated at the first performance. (The
repeated chorus, "Immenso Jeovha," is found near the end of the opera.) Thus,
the alleged repetition offers no evidence that the people immediately viewed
Verdi as a leader of the Risorgimento. Still, the vision of the Italians as a cap-
tive people was a long-standing metaphor, widely available to Verdi's contem-
poraries, as has been demonstrated by the historian Alberto Banti.8 Likewise, it
has been correctly shown that in the aftermath of a period of relative freedom
in 1848, following the so-called "Cinque Giornate" of March 1848, in which the
Austrians were temporarily driven from Milan, there was no particular effort in
Milan to perform the operas by Verdi, whereas his operas were widely per-
formed after the Austrian return. This Milanese situation, however, cannot be
attributed to the hypotheses that Verdi was indifferent to the Risorgmento or that
the public was indifferent to his role, for the turn to Verdi operas in both Rome
and Naples in the aftermath of the revolutionary movements of 1 848 is strong
evidence that his works were previously considered dangerous by the authori-
ties.9
Verdi was hardly the only composer swept up in the myth-making of the Italian
Risorgimento. Gioachino Rossini was considered a conservative figure, with a cozy
relationshp to the restored monarchs in the post-Revolutionary world. Not only was
he the composer favored by the Restoration-era monarch in Naples, where his first
opera, Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, sought to curry favor with the newly restored
Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies,10 but he was also a close associate of the Austrian
statesman Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich, who explicitly invited him to

La giovinezza di Verdi (Torino: Edizioni RAI Radio e Televisione Italiana, 1974), who does not hide his impa-
tience with the earlier operas of Verdi (nor his lack of comprehension of them).
7. The letter is published in I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio
(Milano: Commissione Esecutiva per le Onoranze a Giuseppe Verdi nel primo centenario della nascita, 1913,
repr. Bologna: Forni Editore, 1968), 572. The original manuscript is in Milan, Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense:
"Dal Nabucco in poi non ho avuto, si può dire, un'ora di quiete. Sedici anni di galera!" I have addressed this
problem in my "Introduction" to An Attila Symposium: convened and co-edited by Helen Greenwald, on the
occasion of the first performance from the critical edition at the Metropolitan Opera of New York (April 2010),
Cambridge Opera Journal 21/3 (November 2009), 237-240.
8. See Alberto Mario Banti, La nazione del Risorgimento: Parentela, santità e onore alle origini dell'Italia
unita (Torino: Einaudi, 2000).
9. The presence of Verdi after the "Cinque Giornate" in Milanese theaters, in particular, is discussed by
Parker, 'Arpa d'or," 93-91.
10. The history of the opera is treated in depth in Marco Spada, "'Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra' di G.
Rossini: fonti letterarie e autoimprestito musicale," Nuova Rivista musicale Italiana 24 (1990), 147-182.

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244 Philip Gossett

compose two cantatas for the Congress o

the King of France, Charles X, became
fête Charles' coronation in 1825, and Ch
ers; through the King he received a lifelon
That the fall of the regime in the early
administrative structure and personnel
decision to abandon the theater is certai
seems likely he would have written furt
In 1848 political strife threatened B
poser sought to define himself as a libe
Civica" of Bologna;13 writing a cantata
Pio IX, who at that point was believed t
Papal leadership, and dedicating a choru
political prisoners.14 Only a few year
became clear to everyone that Pio Nono
a divided Italy. But the demonstrating
efforts to portray himself as a liberal, and
Rossini and his wife, Olympe Pélissier,
Bologna for what seemed to be a safer
Later, from Paris, Rossini continued to
liberal: he cited his father's political ac
hymn in 1815 (the music of which is los
L'Italiana in Algeri. 16 The chorus of Ita
bella, to escape from servitude and retu

1 1 . For Rossini's relationship with Metternich, see B

del centro rossiniano di studi 49 (1999), 5-20.
12. There are many written treatments of this period. S
to the edition of II viaggio a Reims in Edizione critic
Janet Johnson (Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini, 1999), an
Cagli and Sergio Ragni (Pesaro: Fondazione Rossini,
volumes which cover his active Parisian period from 1
13. This hymn is printed as Appendix II in the volum
vol. 4, ed. Denise Gallo (Kassel: Bärenreiter- Verlag,
14. The cantata was published as Cantata in onore d
opere di Gioachino Rossini, Serie il, voi. 6, ed. Maur
chorus, based on the famous "Inno dei Bardi" from L
in Philip Gossett, '"Edizioni distrutte' and the Significa
Opera and Society in Italy and France from Monteverd
Thomas Ertman (Cambridge - New York: Cambridge
204-206. The essay also appears in Italian, as "Le 'edi
Risorgimento," Il saggiatore musicale 12 (2005), 339-
15. The period is treated sensitively as chapter 24 ("1
Il furore e il silenzio: vite di Gioachino Rossini (Bolo
16. See his letter to his Palermitan friend, Filippo Sa
Rossini, ed. Giuseppe Mazzatinti and F. and G. Manis

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 245

Pronti abbiamo e ferri e mani

per fuggir con voi di qua,
quanto vaglian gl'Italiani
al cimento si vedrà.
[Our weapons and hands are ready to fly with you from here,
what Italians are worth you'll see in the moment of trial.]

The music sung by the chorus seems neutral:

Example 1 Gioachino Rossini, L'Italiana in Algeri, Chorus,

"Pronti abbiamo e ferri e mani."

But what is not neutral is the first violin melody accompanying this chorus:

Example 2 Gioachino Rossini, L'Italiana in Algeri, Chorus,

"Pronti abbiamo e ferri e mani," orchestral citation of "La Marseillaise."

It is an obvious reference to the "Marseillaise." Yet it was ironic in 1813 to

invoke the French anthem, after France had abandoned its efforts to free Italy
under Bonapartian leadership and instead was forming alliances with Italy's tra-
ditional enemies.17
Rossini also cited as a sign of his patriotism the text of Isabella's Rondò,
which begins "Pensa alla patria." He did not point out, however, that this verse -
which of course he did not himself write - was rarely heard in Italian theaters. It
was regularly substituted by "Pensa alla sposa" or "allo scampo."18
Verdi had the opposite experience. His music and personal political predilec-
tions were considered by many to be heavily influenced by the growing sentiment

17. I first pointed out this relationship in The Tragic Finale of Rossini's Tancredi (Pesaro: Fondazione
Rossini, 1977); see, in particular, 71-77.
18. There are references to the political situation of this composition in the preface to the critical edition,
in Edizione critica delle opera di Gioachino Rossini, Serie I, voi. 11, ed. Azio Corghi (Pesaro: Fondazione
Rossini, 1981); see, in particular, xxxiv-xxxv.

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 246 Philip Gossett

for Italian independence, so much so

this sentiment began circulating, my
to the documents of history. I have m
ever, it has become fashionable amon
the composer's credentials as a card-c
me as an exaggerated reaction to myt
early-twentieth-centuries and a failu
all biographical evidence. It is worth p
Italian scholar who is prepared to acc
paper I wish to focus our attention on
It is often asserted that Verdi durin
amateurs and dilettantes drawn from
city's Austrian rulers.20 There is som
Verdi wanted to establish himself as a
ing with persons and institutions who
the Italian musician who, after the "
where he spent the remainder of his
Italy.21 No, Verdi made compromises
he was unwilling in the 1 840s or 1 85
remained, in short, the sensible peasa
ther a peasant nor was he born in Bus
Austrian authorities in Milan faced e
for the performance of Verdi's early
easier for them. While the opening n
Republican tendencies by demanding
Slaves, "Va pensiero sull'ale dorate,"
"Immenso Jeovha" chorus, and I have
censorship might have encouraged so
tion. There is ample evidence in his a
set the text:

19. When I delivered an earlier form of this pap

remark. But, of course, he spoke from his experien
Union, hardly a parallel case.
20. Roger Parker has written extensively about th
Garland Publishing Inc., 1989). Recently, Anselm Ge
1840s. See his '"Cortigiani: vil razza bramata': Reti
giovane Verdi (Prima parte)," Acta musicologica 7
21. I have written about Foroni in Philip Gosse
Donizetti Society Newsletter 109 (February 2010),
22. Although the best recent biography of Verdi i
-New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), the p
anecdotes was Frank Walker, The Man Verdi (Lond
Press, 1982).

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 247

Spesso al tuo popolo

donasti il pianto;
ma i ceppi hai franto
se in te fidò.
[Often you gave your people tears, but you broke their chains if they believed
in you.]

The censors were not oveijoyed at this description of a captive people break-
ing its chains, and Verdi modified the text in his autograph manuscript:

Tu spandi un'iride?.,
tutto è ridente.
Tu vibra il fulmine?.,
l'uom più non è.
[You extend a rainbow?.. All is joyous. You launch the thunderbolt?..
Man is no more.]

Example 3 Giuseppe Verdi, Nabucco, "Immenso Jeovha."

The modification substitutes "ridente" for "pianto," and the music Verdi wrote
for "pianto" - left unchanged by an angry composer (his crossing-out is done with
a vehemence not to be found anywhere else in his autograph manuscripts) -
doesn't work at all for "ridente."23
Verdi would never have permitted such a poor word/tone relationship in
newly-composed music. Was he expressing his discontent? We'll never know.
But we do know that Francesco Maria Piave 's original verses for another cho-
rus widely regarded as "Risorgimental" were modified to make them acceptable.
The suggestion for Verdi to set Victor Hugo's Hernâni came from the Teatro La
Fenice of Venice, with which the composer had a contract.24 Verdi might never
have suggested it, since the play was banned almost immediately after its first per-
formance in Paris in 1830. It was considered revolutionary, filled with unbridled

23. For the two versions of the piece, see the critical edition of Nabucco in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi,
Series i, vol. 3, ed. Roger Parker (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press - Milano: Ricordi, 1987), 464-467
and 487-489.
24. The best treatment of Verdi's relationships with the Venetian theater, including masterly editions of the
relevant documents, is Marcello Conati, La bottega della musica: Verdi e La Fenice (Milano: Il Saggiatore,
1983). The chapter on Emani is found on 33-140.

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 248 Philip Gossett

passion and going against all the "rule

sical unities of time and place. Verdi

Oh if I could only do Emani it would be

great facility at writing verses, and in E
be to reduce and streamline: the action i

But the composer feared the Austria

always on the lookout for those who
(even using the word "libertà" was
sexually charged scenes or words.
One of the most problematic scenes
scene in which one of Elvira's three
proclaimed Holy Roman Emperor, as
acy against Carlo. The police were aw
and they wrote to the theater:

[...] where the conspirators appear let th

swords are to be unsheathed. And let t
clemency in Scene III be liberal and gre

Piave, fully cognizant of the problem

Jacopo Ferretti in Rome on 13 Novem

I believe that I have finished, but when m

only by name), I envision there will be t
ifications, etc. etc. etc. Pazienza!28

In the same letter he sent his origin

ridesti il Leon di Castiglia" and added
mit them" [non so se la Polizia vorrà pas
what Piave originally wrote and wha
Piave wrote "e col sangue de' spenti /

25. "Oh se si potesse fare l'Hernani sarebbe una

nel verseggiare, e nell' Hernâni non vi sarebbe che d
so." See Conati, La bottega, 74.
26. I have written at length about this problem in
Opera (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006);
27. "... ove compariscono i Congiurati sia breve
brandi, e liberale, e grande sia alla Scena III l'atto
Conati, La bottega, 99.
28. The letters from Piave to Ferretti were first
diente': Piave a Roma, un carteggio con Ferretti, l
dell'Istituto di Studi Verdiani - Parma 10 (1987), 1-1
do arriverà il mio maestro Verdi (che solamente c
noie di cambiamenti riduzioni etc. etc. etc. Pazienza!"

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 249

Example 4 Giuseppe Verdi, Emani, "Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia."

sol dee libertà," Verdi set a revised version: "ed il sangue de' spenti / Nuovo ar-
dire ai figliuoli viventi, / Forze nuove al pugnare darà" (Example 4).
The word "libertà," indeed all the power of the original, has been sacrificed.
Verdi must have been aware that this passage had to be changed, for his auto-
graph manuscript has only the revised text.29
In another Milanese opera, he encountered yet other problems. As Francesco
Izzo has pointed out, the cult of Maria was strong in Italy, but the Maria admired
by the Austrians was the sad mother of Christ, weeping at the foot of the cross,
not Maria Vergine (references to virginity, explicitly referring to sexuality, were
frowned upon) or the warrior Maria, fighting for Christianity (symbolically, for
Italian independence).30 At several points in Giovanna d'Arco the name "Maria"
is replaced by "la Pia," emphasizing the piety of the mother of Christ, certainly
not what Schiller's Maid of Orleans (the source of Verdi's opera) imagined. In the
key scene of the opera, however, after Joan - who has allowed her personal feel-
ings to interfere with the future of France - has been present at the coronation of
King Charles, her father-before a crowd of peasants-accuses his daughter of witch-
craft. In the censored version, he addresses her three times: "in nome del Dio vin-
dice, non sacrilega sei tu?," "per l'alma dei parenti, non sacrilega sei tu?," and
"per l'alma del tuo madre, non sacrilega sei tu?." Verdi's original text, crossed out
in his autograph by another hand, is: "in nome della Francia, pura e vergine sei
tu?," followed by "in nome della fede, pura e vergine sei tu?," and finally "in
nome di Maria, pura e vergine sei tu?."31 The fundamental question now is "pura
e vergine sei tu?," asked in ascending order of significance, "in nome della

29. The problem is discussed in the Preface and Critical Commentary to Emani, in The Works of Giuseppe
Verdi, ed. Claudio Gallico, Series i, vol. 5 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press - Milano: Ricordi, 1985).
30. Francesco Izzo, "Verdi, the Virgin, and the Censor: The Politics of the Cult of Mary in I Lombardi alla
prima crociata and Giovanna d'Arco," Journal of the American Musicological Society 60 (2007), 557-597.
31. For further details, see the Preface and Critical Commentary to the critical edition of Giovanna d'Arco
in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi , Series I, vol. 7, ed. Alberto Rizzuti (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press
- Milano: Ricordi, 2008); the passage, in the score, is given on 369-374.

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 250 Philip Gossett

Francia" "in nome della fede," and, wo

na, aware that she has fallen in love
she is taken prisoner and condemned.
sored and censored versions is not even subtle.
One could continue tracing places where censors wrought havoc on Verdi's
operas, but let us examine instead his reaction to the 1848 revolutions. Unlike
Wagner, who participated actively in revolutionary movements and was ultimately
forced to flee Dresden and take refuge in Switzerland, Verdi was in Paris when the
"Cinque Giornate" broke out, but he did not remain there. Already on 5 April he had
arrived in Milan, from whence his correspondence with his librettists Salvadore
Cammarano and Piave make clear his enthusiasm for the new political situation. His
most famous letter from this period is to Piave, written on 21 April 1848:

You can imagine if I wanted to remain in Paris when I heard of the revolution
in Milan. I left as soon as I received word, but I could only see these splendid
barricades. Honor to these heroes! Honor to all of Italy, which in this moment
is truly great.
The hour has sounded, be convinced, of its liberation. The people want it and
when the people want something there is no absolute power that can resist.
They can try, they can do what they will, even using force, but they will not
succeed in defrauding the rights of the people. Yes, yes, in a few years or even
a few months, Italy will be free, one, republican. What else could it be?
You speak to me of music! What has gotten into you?... You can't think that
now I want to occupy myself with notes, with sounds?. . . There can be only one
music grateful to the ears of Italians in 1848 the music of the cannon! I would
not write a note for all the gold in the world: I would feel immense remorse at
using music paper, which is so good for making bullets.32

That Verdi soon wished to celebrate the new political situation through his
music became clear in his correspondence with Cammarano. In a letter of 20
April Cammarano excused his previous silence because "in this era of political
movements, of anxieties, and of hopes, thoughts of citizenship take precedence

32. The letter was published first in Arnaldo Bonaventura, Una lettera di Giuseppe Verdi finora non pub-
blicata (Milano, 21 Aprile 1848) (Firenze: Gonelli, 1948). The letter is published in facsimile by Bonaventura.
Subsequent efforts to locate it have proven futile.
Figurati s'io voleva restare a Parigi sentendo una rivoluzione a Milano. Sono di là partito immediatamente
sentita la notizia, ma io non ho potuto vedere che queste stupende barricate. Onore a questi prodi! onore a tutta
l'Italia che in questo momento è veramente grande!
L'ora è suonata, siine pur persuaso, della sua liberazione. È il popolo che la vuole: e quando il popolo vuole
non avvi potere assoluto che le possa resistere.
Potranno fare, potranno brigare finché vorranno quelli che vogliono essere a viva forza necessari ma non
riesciranno a defraudare i dirittti del popolo. Sì, sì ancora pochi anni forse pochi mesi e l'Italia sarà libera, una,
repubblicana. Cosa dovrebbe essere?
Tu mi parli di musica! Cosa ti salta in capo?... Tu credi che io voglia ora occuparmi di note, di suoni?...
Non c'è né ci deve essere che una musica grata alle orecchie delli Italiani del 1848 la musica del cannone!. Io
non scriverei una nota per tutto l'oro del mondo: ne avrei un rimorso immenso consumare della carta da musi-
ca, che è sì buona da far cartuccie.

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 25 1

in me over artistic thoughts."33 Now that he is seeking a subject for a projected

new opera with Verdi, however, the changed political situation has "opened wide
the possibilities." What is the subject he really wishes to develop? "If burns in
you, as in me, the desire to treat the most glorious epoch of Italian history, let us
return to that of the Lombard League." After summarizing the subject of La
battaglia di Legnano , he concludes: "By God, such an argument must move
everyone who has in his breast an Italian soul!"
On 15 June Cammarano sent his outline to the composer in Paris. In the poetry
of the first act, which followed on 26 June, the chorus concludes its Introduction
with this strophe:

Viva Italia forte ed una

colla spada e col pensieri
Questo suol che a noi fu cuna,
tomba sia dello stranieri34
[Long live Italy, strong and united in the sword and in thought. Let this earth,
which was our cradle, be a tomb to the foreigner!]

Verdi responded to Cammarano 's libretto of Act III in a letter of 24 October: "I
received only this morning yours of 9 November. Beautiful this third Act, stupen-
dous, and be certain that I will set it to music with all my love."35 The only change
he requested was the introduction of a short scene for Lida and Rolando, so as to
give the prima donna an expanded presence. Cammarano obliged with a scene in
which Rolando tells his wife what to say to their son should Rolando die in battle:

Example 5 Giuseppe Verdi, La battaglia di Legnano,

Duetto Lida e Rolando, added phrase.

Digli ch'è sangue italico

digli ch'è sangue mio,
che dei mortali è giudice
la terra, no, ma Dio!

33. For Verdi's correspondence with Salvadore Cammarano, see Carteggio Verdi-Cammarano ( 1843-1852 ),
ed. Carlo Matteo Mossa (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2001). Cammarano 's letter to Verdi of 20
April 1848 is printed on 19-24: "in quest'era di politici sconvolgimenti, di ansie, e di speranze i pensieri cittadini
presero in me il di sopra ai pensieri artistici"; "aperto sì largo confine alla scelta"; "E se arde in voi, quale in me
il desiderio di tratteggiare l'epoca più gloriosa delle storie italiane, riportiamoci a quella della Lega lombarda";
and finally "Per Dio, che sì fatto argomento dovrà scuotere ogn'uomo che ha nel petto anima italiana!"
34. Ibid., 30.
35. Ibid., 63-64: "Ho ricevuto soltanto stamattina la vostra de 1 9. Bello questo terz'Atto, stupendo, e siate
sicuro che lo farò con tutto l'amore."

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 252 Philip Gossett

E dopo Dio la Patria

gli apprenda a rispettar.
[Tell him that he is of Italian blood, tell
judges men, not the earth! And after Go

As of January 1 849, such texts wer

had not yet returned, but were no lon
were firmly in control. Although Ric
original form, it was described in th
estera, distrutta": an edition prepare
Verdi and Cammarano's opera became
to make it acceptable to the Austrian
might prove necessary is clear in the
September 1848.37 Yet the willingness
political necessity in order to permit
enthusiasm and conviction with whic
Legnano.
Verdi's other musical commitment of 1848 was at the request of Giuseppe
Mazzini, whom the composer had met the previous summer in London, when he
supervised the premiere of I masnadieri. During Verdi's Milanese sojourn in May
1848, Mazzini - who had also returned to Milan when word of the "Cinque Gior-
nate" reached him - persuaded Verdi to set a patriotic hymn. On 6 June Mazzini
requested from Goffredo Mameli a text "that might become the Italian Marseillaise;
and in which the people, to use Verdi's phrase, might forget the composer and the
poet."38 Mameli 's text, dated 26 August 1848 was promptly forwarded to the
composer. On 18 October from Paris Verdi sent Mazzini a musical setting:

I send you the hymn, and even if it arrives a bit late I hope it will be there in
time. I tried to be as popular and simple as is possible for me. Use it however
you want. Burn it if you think it unworthy. ...
May this hymn, among the music of the cannon, soon be heard in the Lombard
plains.39

36. See Gossett, '"Edizioni distrutte'," 219-220.

37. See Carteggio Verdi-Cammarano, 51-52.
38. See Gossett, "'Edizioni distrutte'," 189-194. According to Francesco Luigi Mannucci in Goffredo
Mameli, Poesie (Torino, etc.: G. B. Paravia, 1927), 98n, the poetry was first published in Pensiero italiano of
Genoa on 18 August 1848, with the title "Canto di guerra." Mazzini's letter is published in Franco Abbiati,
Giuseppe Verdi (Milano: Ricordi, 1958), 4 vols., I: 758: "che diventi la Marsigliese italiana; e della quale il
popolo, per usare la frase di Verdi, scordi l'autore e il poeta."
39. Verdi's letter has been reprinted many times. The most convenient source for it is in I copialettere,
469-470:
Vi mando l'inno, e sebbene un po' tardi, spero vi arriverà in tempo. Ho cercato d'essere più pop
facile che mi sia stato possibile. Fatene quell'uso che credete: abbruciatelo anche se non lo credete deg
Possa quest'inno, fra la musica del cannone, essere presto cantato nelle pianure lombarde!

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 253

Example 6a Giuseppe Verdi, "Suona la tromba."

Example 6b Michele Novara, "Fratelli d'Italia."

It was not to be. Although Verdi may have tried to be "più popolare e facile
che mi sia stato possibile," his melody - not published in northern Italy until
1865 - could not compete with the ever-popular "Fratelli d'Italia," the text also
by Mameli, but set to music by Michele Novaro (Example 6a, 6b).
Whether the composer's effort was successful or not, however, Verdi's own
reaction to the "Cinque giornate" and its aftermath was similar to that of con-
temporary critics, who invited artists to write patriotic hymns and to compose
operas that directly reflected the new political reality. It was no longer time for
metaphorical references, for operas about Hebrew slaves in Babylon or Scottish
refugees weeping over their oppressed homeland or Attila and the Huns at the
outskirts of Rome, even if audiences were prepared to understand such references
(as several reviewers make clear). It was a time for direct statement.
Still, the period after 1848 and the 1850s, in general, were no longer a time
for direct statement in the world of Italian opera, nor even for veiled references,
although representing the operas of Verdi that had already been approved by the
Austrian censors was not considered seditious in Milan. After 1848, however, the
censors were even more ferocious, as Verdi learned when he produced Stiffelio in
1850 and Rigoletto in 1851 in northern Italian cities, and had hoped to produce
Gustavo III in Naples in 1858 (later transformed into Un ballo in maschera for
Rome in 1859). Although the composer allowed himself to set a libretto on the
subject of Les vêpres siciliennes for Paris in 1855, when the opera was returned
to Italy the following year, he himself arranged the text in a highly censored form
as Giovanna di Guzman.
But political events were moving fast, and Verdi's position with respect to
them leaves no doubt about his feelings. Let me say, as I quote several passages
from his correspondence, that I have a file with every document pertaining to
Verdi and these crucial years in the quest for Italian independence. The file is 300
single-spaced pages long. I can here, of course, only provide a sampling, but none
of these samples is ever contradicted by anything else in the file. Let no one think

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254 Philip Gossett

that the picture I am drawing is the

friend and publisher, Léon Escudier,

What beautiful music and what great F

duce!... We want only that you, our fri
homeland. . . and perhaps one day we can
will take a long time) that the Italians, t

When in December 1 860 a Neapolita

ebrating the decision of the Neapolit
baldi, the composer responded:

You want me to write a hymn, when th

take? No! The national hymn must be he
lagoon, in Naples, and on the Alps. I ha
until that moment to write one, and if
live to see that day, it will be the first an

The composer here protests too mu

hymn in 1 848 to a text by Goffredo
as we have seen, although it had not y
On 6 December he wrote to anoth
asking for political news:

And how are political matters in your co

write me what you think, hope, and fea
desired a little more order and calm (that
ifested last year and which so helped our
stood the great idea of a united Italy.42

For whatever his hopes for a united

that the change occur in a well-ordere

40. This letter was sold at auction by Karl Ernst H

(London, 30 April 1980, lot 437). It is known only
bella musica, ed i bei Finali che sa fare Garibaldi! . .
in casa nostra... e forse vi persuaderete un giorn
sapranno battersi. .
41. This quotation is from a letter from Verdi (Bu
in Verdi's letter of 6 December to Cesare De Sanctis.
Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1935), 74n: "Vorre
in camicia rossa un'ultima tappa da fare? Ohibò! L'in
sulle Alpi ad un tempo solo. Ho rifiutato e rifiuterò f
zare le nostre catene ed io viva tanto da veder quel g
42. Verdi (Genoa) to Cesare De Sanctis (Naples),
le cose politiche del vostro paese? Tenetemene dun
temete. Io ne spero bene, quantunque avrei deside
dell'Italia Centrale dell'anno passato e che ha tant
grande idea della Unità italiana."

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 255

not on the basis of radical action. That is the message of the council chamber
scene in his revised Simon Boccanegra in 1881. And to Clarina Maffei he wrote
on 9 January 1861:

I am mortified that you preceded me in sending good wishes for the new year;
good wishes that I exchange with all my heart, and with the greatest desire that
in 1861 the work of our complete redemption will be concluded.43

This is the context in which one must read the letter that Camillo Benso,
Count of Cavour, who had been Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Savoy, and
who sought to bring into the new Italian government both politicians and artists,
wrote to Verdi the next day, on 10 January, inviting him to be a member of the
first national Parliament:

[Your presence] will contribute to the reputation of the Parliament both within
Italy and outside. It will give credit to the great national party that wishes to
constitute the nation on the solid bases of liberty and order. And it will help us
with our imaginative colleagues from the southern part of Italy, who are more
susceptible to the influence of artistic genius than are inhabitants of the cold
valley of the Po.44

The complex history of Verdi's candidature for the Parliament from the
Province of Borgo San Donnino (the present-day Fidenza) and his unfortunate
problems with another candidate, Giovanni Minghelli Vaini, are well known. The
composer did not want to participate, as he told the conductor Angelo Mariani on
26 January 1861:

Perhaps I will be a deputy (let Heaven forbid, for it would be a disaster for me),
but not for long, for in a few months I will give my resignation.45

When he was elected, however, he accepted and on 6 February wrote these

words to the head of the electoral process from Borgo San Donnino:

... if I cannot bring to Parliament the splendor of eloquent language, I will bring
independence of character, a scrupulous conscience, and the firm wish to work

43. A facsimile of this letter was consulted at the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani in Parma. Let me
thank most warmly Marisa Di Gregorio Casati, who facilitated greatly my work with the collection of letters in
facsimile at the Istituto: "Sono mortificato che voi m'abbiate prevenuto nel fare gli auguri pel nuovo anno;
auguri che vi contraccambio con un cuore grande grande, e col più vivo desiderio che il 61 compia l'opera della
nostra redenzione completa."
44. Cavour's invitation is printed in I copialettere, 588-589: "[La sua presenza] contribuirà al decoro del
Parlamento dentro e fuori d'Italia, essa darà credito al gran partito nazionale che vuole costituire la nazione
sulle solide basi della libertà e dell'ordine, ne imporrà ai nostri imaginosi colleghi della parte meridionale
d'Italia, suscettibili di subire l'influenza del genio artistico più assai di noi abitatori della fredda valle del Po."
45. This letter is quoted from a facsimile of the original at the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani of Parma,
with a transcription by Antonio Rostagno, who kindly gave me access to his work: "Forse sarò deputato (che il ciel
noi voglia, ché sarebbe per me una disgrazia) ma non per molto, perché fra pochi mesi darò la mia Dimissione."

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 256 Philip Gossett

with all my power for the good, the w

Country, so long under attack and
divid
Now, to satisfy this long and until now s
fortune sends us a King who loves his pe
since he will soon be acclaimed the first

Nor was the significance of his elect

wrote to the composer on 1 1 Februar

Perhaps you will not remember, but se

dicting that you would be a Deputy, and
Italian Parliament, may I be allowed to r
a bit with myself at not having been a f
My Verdi will be one of the fortunate o
Italy to the greatest of Kings! To the tru
land blessed by the Sun, by Music, by Lo
will make even stronger, if that is possibl

For the next few months, Verdi of

spondence because, according to his w
ment."48 He did indeed serve faithfully
May 1861, but before leaving for the
Cavour on 6 June, and wrote the nex

At the moment I was to depart I heard t

not have the courage to go to Turin or to a
a disaster! What an abyss of horrors!49

46. This letter, too, has been reprinted many time

it is misdated as "6 gennaio 1861": ...se non mi è
quente, vi porterò l'indipendenza di carattere, scr
mie forze al bene, al decoro, ed all'unificazione di qu
dalla prepotenza straniera, e dalle discordie civili.
Ora, per appagare questo lungo, e finora sterile
Re che ama il suo popolo! Stringiamoci dunque tu
Primo d'Italia, sarà anche forse il solo che, più del t
47. This letter is partially transcribed in Abbiati,
simile in the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani of Parma:
Forse non ricorderai, ma da più mesi ti scrissi predicendoti la Deputazione; ed ora che sei deputato al primo
parlamento italiano permetti che me ne rallegri teco per l'alto onore impartitoti, ed anche un poco con me stes-
so di non esserne stato vano profeta.
Il mio Verdi sarà uno dei fortunati che voteranno la corona d'Italia al più grande dei Re! Al vero Emanuele
mandato da Dio per redimere e tornar grande questa benedetta terra del Sole, della Musica e dell'Amore!! Ah
tale pensiero mi esalta, e sentirei, se fosse possibile, crescere in me l'orgoglio della mia affezione verso di te!!
48. See, for example, her letter to Antonio Barezzi, probably of 25 February (it is often dated 19 February,
but this is impossible, since she refers explicitly to a letter from Barezzi of 23 February), where she writes:
"Verdi, occupatissimo alla Camera, m'incarica rispondere alla di Lei preg.ma del 23 corrente." See Carteggi
verdiani, II, 17.
49. The letter is printed in Verdi intimo: carteggio di Giuseppe Verdi con il conte Opprandino Arrivabene
[1861-1886], ed. Annibale Alberti (Verona: A. Mondadori, 1931), 7; there is a facsimile of the original on 8:
"Al momento di partire sento la terribile notizia che mi uccide! Non ho coraggio di venire a Torino; né potrei
assistere ai funerali di quell'Uomo... Quale sventura! Quale abisso di guai!"

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 Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento 257

After the funeral, which he did attend, after all, he wrote on 14 June to Arriva-
bene: "... I could not hold back my tears and wept like a child. . ."50 That Cavour's
death had a profound impact on Verdi's Parliamentary life is certain, but he was
already planning a new opera for the Imperial Theater at Saint Petersburg, and by
July he was hard at work at Saint Agata with Piave.
Thereafter Verdi's participation in the Italian Parlaiment was minimal, as he
wrote to Piave on 3 February 1865:

For two long years I was absent from the Parliament! afterwards I attended only
rarely. Often I wanted to resign, but each time something intervened, and so
against my will, against my taste, without inclination, habit, or talent, I remain
a Deputy. That is everything. If someone some day wants to write a biography
of me as a member of Parliament, he needs to leave half a page blank, and
write, in large letters: "The 450 are really only 449, since Verdi, as a Deputy,
does not exist."51

Still, Cavour was right. He asked Verdi to be a member of the first Italian
Parliament because he understood the symbolic value of the gesture. However
much the image of the man and composer may have been exaggerated in the lat-
ter part of the nineteenth-century and however true Verdi's statement was that his
biography should show that as a "Deputato" he did not exist, it must also show
that he was quite rightly considered by his countrymen one of the leading figures
in the Italian Risorgimento.

50. Verdi intimo, 9: "[...] io non potei trattenere le lagrime e piansi come un ragazzo..."
51. The letter is printed in I copialettere, 601-602, from a draft. The original letter, as actually sent, is pre-
served in facsimile at the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, Parma: "Per due lunghi anni fui assente dalla
camera! e dopo non vi ho assistito che ben di rado. Più volte volle dare la mia demissione, ma qualche intop-
po è nato sempre ad impedirlo, e sono ancora Deputato contro ogni mio desiderio, contro ogni mio gusto, senza
avervi né inclinazione, né abitudine, né talento. Ecco tutto... Volendo, o dovendo fare la mia biografia come
membro del Parlamento, non vi sarebbe che a stampare nel bel mezzo di un foglio bianco, a grandi caratteri
'I 450 non sono realmente che 449, perché Verdi come deputato, non esiste.'"

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