Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

Author(s): Roy E. Aycock

Source: The Musical Quarterly , Oct., 1972, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Oct., 1972), pp. 588-604
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/741417

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 SHAKESPEARE, BOITO, AND VERDI
BY ROY E. AYCOCK

AT least twenty-three of Shakespeare's plays have been turned

into operas. The masters of opera - Purcell, Rossini, Bellini,
Berlioz, Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, and Britten - have directed their
talents toward Shakespeare, as have the best of the librettists -
Lorenzo da Ponte, August-Eugene Scribe, Felice Romani, and
Arrigo Boito. Only three of the adaptations - Gounod's Romeo
and Juliet and Verdi's Otello and Falstaff- have achieved a more
or less permanent place in the international repertory; and of these
three, only Otello and Falstaff have an artistic merit worthy of their
sources. Giuseppe Verdi, a lifelong student of Shakespeare, at the
age of almost seventy finally found in the forty-year-old Arrigo Boito
(1842-1918) a poet and librettist whose talents were sufficient to
inspire two of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century
Italian opera.
Verdi's love of Shakespeare, an adulation approaching idolatry,
persisted, with ever-growing fervor, all his life. References to Shake-
speare abound in the correspondence throughout the years: "Tasso's
poetry may be superior, but I prefer Ariosto a thousand times. For
the same reason I prefer Shakespeare to every other dramatist, the
Greeks not excepted."' To the accusation that his opera Macbeth
indicated he did not know Shakespeare, Verdi responded in a man-
ner as sincere as it is cavalier: "I may not have rendered Macbeth
well, but that I do not know, do not understand and feel Shake-
speare, no, by heavens, no! He is one of my very special poets, and
I have had him in my hand from my earliest youth, and I read and
1 All quotations from Verdi's letters, unless otherwise indicated, are from Franz
Werfel and Paul Stefan, eds., Verdi, The Man in His Letters, trans. Edward Downes
(New York, 1942).

588

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 Beethoven's Letter to an Unknown Woman 589

re-read him continually." An extremely interesting comm

in a letter to his publisher Ricordi: "Shakespeare was a rea
he did not know it. He was a realist by inspiration; we ar
by design, by calculation." This view, so close to Keats's j
of Shakespeare's "negative capability," is one of those ech
to the hearts of influence hunters. There is no evidence that Verdi
had read Keats's poetry, much less his letters. Another testimony to
his devotion to Shakespeare occurs in the instructions he gave to
the baritone Felice Veresi, the first Macbeth: "I would have you
serve the poet better than the composer."2 By his bedside at his
home at Sant'Agata Verdi kept a bookcase which contained the books
he most frequently read. Among these were two sets of Shakespeare's
complete works, both translated into Italian. Verdi knew very little
English, a handicap which accounts for his being drawn more to
Shakespeare the dramatist than to Shakespeare the poet.
Before the collaboration with Boito, the plays with which Verdi
was most concerned were King Lear and Macbeth. It must remain
an eternal disappointment to opera lovers, especially those who hap-
pen also to be students of Shakespeare, that the libretto for King
Lear, which Verdi wanted so desperately to set to music, ended in
flames, a destiny dictated by his will.
Verdi had submitted a detailed scenario based on King Lear to
Salvatore Cammarano in 1850. But the collaboration which resulted
in the completed libretto was with Antonio Somma, an Italian law-
yer, patriot, and author of several tragedies. The correspondence with
Somma about King Lear, an exchange which lasted about two years,
is one of the most detailed discussions Verdi had with his several
librettists. Some of Verdi's and Somma's decisions about King Lear
may not be to everyone's liking. Verdi wanted three (at the most
four) acts. He asked Somma to pay close attention to the Fool, who
was to be a contralto. He insisted on an absolutely first-class baritone
for Lear. There was no important part for a tenor. The proper kind
of soprano was indispensable for the role of Cordelia. He conceived
of Edmund as a cheerful villain. He could not bear the thought of
Cordelia in armor; he would eliminate her prayer. The opera would
open with a fanfare of trumpets. But this libretto, for which Verdi
obviously had great affection, was never to become an opera. And
it is not certain that he ever wrote any of the music.
2 Quoted by Henry W. Simon in the libretto-booklet in the RCA record album
Macbeth (LM-6147).

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590 The Musical Quarterly

Macbeth,3 the earliest of Verdi's three complete

operas, has never received the acclaim given Otel
After the Paris production of 1865, for which he
revisions, Verdi himself said: "Taking everything i
Macbeth is a fiasco. Amen. But I confess that I di
thought I had done pretty well, but it seems I w
confession is eqpecially poignant, for in dedicating
patron and father-in-law, Antonio Barezzi, Verdi h
I send you Macbeth, which I prize above all my ot

Francis Toye's assessment is an accurate one:

Little need to be said about this libretto, for which, as has a

Verdi was himself mainly responsible, the industrious Piave
verses, in two instances touched up or supplemented by Maf
speare. Indeed, if the conventional view be adopted, that the
Shakespeare is to be sought in the beauty of his language,
moved from Shakespeare as possible, because Piave's imagin
pedestrian.4

The process of turning spoken drama into oper

one of cutting, condensing, simplifying, for the o
words set to music are of longer duration than words
It appears inevitable, therefore, that an opera ba
rarely compete in literary merit with its source.
of art must depend on the quality of its music an
attractions. Thus the ultimate test is how skillful the librettist and
the composer are in transforming the source into music drama. It
is more difficult for the opera lover who happens also to be a stu-
dent of Shakespeare to ignore this duality of composition - the
creative versus the adaptive ability - than it is for someone who
comes to, say, Verdi's Macbeth strictly as an opera lover, unburdened
with an intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare's play, especially
its poetry. Lovers of the play may not be willing to adjust themselves
to the Piave-Verdi Macbeth, the music notwithstanding. The follow-
ing is an example of Piave's operatic version of a famous passage in
the last act of the play.

3 Macbeth, opera in four acts; music by Giuseppe Verdi; verses by Francesco

Maria Piave and Andrea Maffei; first performance, Florence, March 14, 1847; re-
vised version, Paris, April 21, 1865.
4 Giuseppe Verdi, His Life and Works (New York, 1959), p. 264.

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 591

No, non temo di voi, n? del fanciullo

Che vi conduce! Raffermar sul trono

Questo assalto mi debbe,

O sbalzarmi per sempre! . . . Eppur la vita
Sento nelle mie fibre inaridital

Pieta, rispetto, amore,

Conforto a' di cadenti,
Ahl non spargeran d'un fiore
La tua canuta eta'.

Nb sul tuo regio sasso

Sperar soavi accenti;
Ah! sol la bestemmia, ahi lasso!
La nenia tua sara.5

The source in the play reads:

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? The spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus,
"Fear not, Macbeth, no man that's born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee." Then fly, false thanes.
(V, iii, 3-7)

This push
Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.
I have lived long enough. My way of life
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf,
And that which should accompany old age,
As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,
I must not look to have, but in their stead
Curses, not loud but deep ...... 6
(V, iii, 20-27)

A comparison of the operatic rendering of this passage from Macbeth

with Boito's handling of passages from Othello will demonstrate
Boito's superiority in assimilating Shakespeare.
The characters of Macbeth have been reduced from the over
twenty in the play to eight in the opera, of whom two - Du
and Fleance - are mutes. Gone entirely are Ross, Lennox, Don
5"No, no fear have I of you or of the boy who leads you. This battle will k
me on the throne or unseat me forever. Yet I feel life within me grows dry
respect, love, comfort of declining years; ah, no scattering of flowers will chee
hoary age; no one will breathe soft words on your royal tombstone; ah, only
ah, alas! A dirge will be your epitaph." (For this and subsequent translations f
the Italian I take full responsibility.)
6 All quoted passages from Shakespeare are from G. B. Harrison, ed., Shakes
The Complete Works (New York, 1952).

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592 The Musical Quarterly

bain, and the two Siwards. The most surprising

Porter, a part which the later Verdi would surely
But more significant - and perhaps more reprehen
reshaping of the characters of Macbeth and Lady
the relationship between the two. Verdi's Macbeth
cryptic prophecy of the witches to launch him on
murderer. Gone is Shakespeare's hesitating, uncer
stricken Macbeth. Gone is the Macbeth whose nature is "too full o'

the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way." Gone

the Macbeth who says, "We will proceed no further in this business."
Gone is the Macbeth who says, "I dare do all that may becom
man. Who dares to do more is none." Verdi's Macbeth does not need
his wife's goading. There is no reluctance to overcome. And y
Verdi builds up Lady Macbeth's role. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth
once her husband has committed himself to a life of crime, practical-
ly withdraws from the action, to reappear later, of course, as a broke
human being. Verdi's Lady Macbeth is her husband's partner,
sharer of his intentions. Through the process of that inexplicab
alchemy called poetry, Shakespeare's Macbeth and Lady Macbet
both manage to emerge as sympathetic characters. Not even the
power of Verdi's music is able to achieve a similar verdict for th
co-protagonists of the opera.
Musical considerations must be offered for such a drastic altering
of the source. In the absence of a major part for a tenor, and, o
more significance, without the attractions of a love affair, Verd
concentrates his efforts on Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the witches.
Lady Macbeth's most "Shakespearean" numbers in the opera ar
her "letter scene," based closely on its source in the play, Act I,
scene 5; and, of course, her "sleep walking" scene, which is almo
word for word from the play. Her part is expanded by the expect
duets with Macbeth and by the interpolation of a not inappropria
drinking song (brindisi) during the banquet scene. Verdi's belief
in a diabolical Lady Macbeth accounts for his not wanting a cele-
brated soprano of his day - Eugenia Tadolini - to sing the rol

Mme. Tadolini looks beautiful and good, and I should like Lady Macbeth
look ugly and evil. Mme. Tadolini sings to perfection, and I should like Lady
Macbeth not to sing at all. Mme. Tadolini has a stupendous voice - clear, limpid
powerful; I should like in Lady Macbeth a voice rough, harsh, and gloomy. Mm
Tadolini's voice has angelic qualities; I should like the voice of Lady Macbeth
to have something diabolical about it.

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 593

Students of Shakespeare may justly wonder why Verdi, with s

a view of his lady-villain, ignored such lines from the play a
Macbeth's

Come, you spirits

That tend of mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, topfull
Of direst cruelty.
(I, v, 41-44)

They may wonder, too, why he did not turn the encounter between
Macbeth and Macduff into one of those magnificent tenor/baritone
duets that became a special delight in the later operas.
Even before his collaboration with Verdi, Arrigo Boito had
achieved a measure of fame as a composer, poet, musician, free-
thinker, intellectual, and librettist. He and his lifelong friend and
fellow student, the composer-conductor Franco Faccio (whose career
was climaxed by his conducting the first performance of Otello)
acquired a fashionable reputation as enfants terribles in the artistic
milieu in which they moved. Of course, Boito, even without Verdi,
has a secure place in the history of opera on the basis of his Mefisto-
fele, for which he wrote both the libretto (loosely based on Goethe)
and the music. Though Faust is the hero of this work, it is evident
that Boito's interest is in Mephistopheles. The Iago he created some
years later for Verdi's Otello owes much to the villain in his own
opera. Thus we have a full circle of influence: Goethe's Mephi-
stopheles owes something to Shakespeare's Iago as well as to Mar-
lowe's Dr. Faustus; and Boito's titular character is derived from
Goethe.

Boito's only other opera, Nerone, which he worked on for many

years, was never completed. It was produced, in its incomplete form,
at La Scala on May 1, 1924. It appears that Boito's exposure to the
genius of Shakespeare and to a musical talent vastly superior to his
own in Verdi inhibited his own creative instingts. It is a complimen
to his self-knowledge that he devoted his considerable talents to th
subservient role of librettist. Before he submitted his services to
Verdi, he had furnished Ponchielli the libretto for La Gioconda.
Boito's love for Shakespeare was as profound as Verdi's, and in 1865
he provided his composer-friend Faccio with a libretto based on
Hamlet. The opera, called Amleto, was produced at Genoa in 1865.
Since then, perhaps mercifully, it has not been heard again. Winton

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 594 The Musical Quarterly

Dean, in a stimulating essay entitled "Shakespeare a

about the Boito-Faccio A mleto:

By far the most interesting feature is the superb libretto, the first ever written
by Boito, admirable alike in language, construction and handling of the play.
Every step is clearly motivated, every character developed in action. As in 'Otello',
Boito reconciles Shakespeare with operatic conventions without debasing him,
and it is astonishing how little he needs to omit or alter. All the big scenes -
the mouse-trap play, the closet, Ophelia's funeral - fall easily into place, and
so do the soliloquies 'O that this too too solid flesh would melt' (at the beginning
of Act I) and 'To be or not to be'. There is no model for the unorthodox brindisi
in the coronation scene, led by Claudius, with Gertrude, Hamlet and Ophelia
each contributing a stanza (the last two aside) and the King at intervals repeating
his first words: 'Requie ai defunti', dutifully answered by the courtiers with
'E gloria al re!'; but it expresses the situation and the characters with singular
economy and irony. The chief differences from the play are that the Ghost
does not mention Gertrude on either of his appearances, and Boito actually
shows Ophelia's death (as described by Shakespeare), preceding and accom-
panying it with distant rumbles of revolt against Claudius. There is a telling
detail during Claudius's monologue in the closet scene: he tries to repeat the
Lord's Prayer, but repeatedly breaks down and flies in terror. At the first produc-
tion that last act followed the play almost exactly; when the opera was revived
for a single disastrous performance in 1871, a much shorter and weaker end with
only one death, that of Claudius, was substituted. We can only regret that Verdi
did not set this libretto.7

Though Boito and Verdi had first met in 1862, the meeting
which was to have as its result the famous collaboration occurred in
1879. In a letter to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, Verdi recalls th
meeting:
You dined with me, together with a few friends. We spoke about Othello, about
Shakespeare and about Boito. The next day Faccio brought me the sketch of
Otello, which I read and found good. "Write the libretto," I told him. "It will
come in handy for yourself, for me, or for someone else."

Thus was established a relationship between two devotees of Shake-

speare, a friendship destined to give the world two of the greatest
masterpieces of the Italian repertory. Six years later, February 5,
1887, was to be a glorious event for Verdi, for Boito, and for Italian
opera.s Whether it was a glorious event for Shakespeare, however,
is a matter on which opinions vary.9

7 Phyllis Hartnoll, ed., Shakespeare in Music (New York, 1966), pp. 165-66.
8 Otello, opera in four acts; music by Giuseppe Verdi; libretto by Arrigo Boito;
first performance, Milan, February 5, 1887.
9 For an argument that the play is a far greater work of art than the opera and
that Verdi's Otello is not the flawless masterpiece that many consider it to be, see

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 595

Drastic condensing is one of the inevitable exigencies of t

forming a play into an opera. The fourteen characters or m
the play are reduced to eight principals in the opera. Elimin
entirely are Bianca and Desdemona's father, Brabantio. The s
ture of the play is altered, the first act jettisoned all togethe
opening of the opera in Cyprus corresponds to the opening
second act of the play, the necessary exposition coming intermit
ly. In his decision to begin his libretto with Shakespeare's se
act, Boito shared Dr. Johnson's view: "Had the scene open
Cypress, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related
had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scru
regularity."'1 Otello's entrance, "Esultate," surely one of the
dramatic entrances in opera, establishes him as a powerful c
mander. The first act ends with the exquisite love duet, an ex
drawn in part from the "wooing" scene of the first act of th
This duet, at the opposite end of the love scale from the impetuo
of Romeo and Juliet, is a serene expression of mature love,
votion so far advanced in mutual confidence that the lovers can

reminisce about their courtship, a reciprocal faith that ser

most poignant foreshadowing of the destruction which is t
them.

In the second act of the opera lago continues with his manipu-
lation of the others. He declaims his famous and controversial Credo

(a showpiece for the baritone); he plants his seeds of jealousy; h

acquires the ominous handkerchief; Otello (in a magnificent num
for the tenor) bids farewell to his peace of mind. Iago makes Ot
frantic with an account given by Cassio, in his sleep, of intimac
with Desdemona. The act ends with a celebrated duet for baritone
and tenor in which lago joins Otello in a pledge of vengeance.
The third act corresponds to the last scene of Act III and scen
1 and 2 of Act IV. The two scenes between Desdemona and Othello
(in Acts III and IV of the play) become one scene. This third act

Joseph Kerman, "Verdi's Otello, or Shakespeare Explained," Hudson Review, VI

(1953-54), 266-77 (reprinted in chap. 5 of Kerman's Opera as Drama [New York, 1956]).
Shaw, in an article on Verdi in The Anglo-Saxoni Review (March, 1901), wrote: "The
truth in that instead of Otello being an Italian opera written in the style of Shakespear,
Othello is a play written by Shakespear in the style of Italian opera. ... .With such
a libretto, Verdi was quite at home: his success with it proves, not that he could
occupy Shakespear's plane, but that Shakespear could on occasion occupy his, which
is a very different matter."
10 Arthur Sherbo, ed., Johnson on Shakespeare, Vol. VIII of The Yale Edition
of the Works of Samuel Johnson (8 vols.; New Haven, Conn., 1968), p. 1048.

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596 The Musical Quarterly

perhaps the most enthralling, contains the famous

scene; the contrived eavesdropping on the conver
Iago and Cassio during which Cassio produces the
Otello's increasing jealousy and his avowal to kill D
arrival of Lodovico with the news of the change of
Otello to Cassio; the public insult of Desdemona; an
triumph of lago over Otello.
Act IV of the opera is a compression of Act IV
Act V, scene 2, both in Desdemona's chamber. Shak
song remains almost intact; and appended to this be
is an equally beautiful Ave Maria, not to be found,
the play. Except that lago does not kill Emilia, the
to the play. The ending, for which Verdi was chief
Un bacio. . .. un bacio ancora. ..

Ahl .. . un altro bacio.

is very close to Shakespeare's

I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this,

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

This passage is accompanied by the music from the love du

ends the first act. The ending of the opera, in its return to
motif of the first act, emphasizes Otello as a tragic love sto
omits Othello's eloquent self-defense:
I have done the state some service, and they know't.
No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,
Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate,
Nor set down aught in malice. Then must you speak
Of one that loved not wisely but too well,
Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,
Perplexed in the extreme, of one whose hand,
Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all this tribe - of one whose subdued eyes
Albeit unused to the melting mood,
Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees
Their medicinal gum. Set you down this,
And say besides that in Aleppo once,
Where a malignant and turbaned Turk
Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,
I took by the throat the circumcised dog
And smote him, thus.
(V, ii, 339-56)

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 597

Thus the play, while not less a tragic love story than the opera,
giving the last scene to Othello in his grandiloquent sorrow, be
comes, far more than does the opera, a working-out of Othello
hamartia and a fulfillment of the tragic idea. Structurally, then, the
is much condensing, some rearrangement of scenes, some additio
for musical purposes. There is also much simplification of charact
It is in the characterization that the student of Shakespeare,
he happens not to be enthusiastic about opera, is likely to be di
appointed by the Boito-Verdi libretto."1 Verdi's main concerns, b
dramatically and musically, were with Otello, Desdemona, a
especially lago; with two lovers and an evil intruder, a kind of t
angle he was an old hand at manipulating.
No one denies that Shakespeare's Othello makes great demand
on plausibility. Othello, with all his nobility, is endowed wit
naivete which approaches obtuseness. And even though he speak
the finest poetry of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, and though he sure
elicits the sentiment of "the pity of it all," he rarely wins the kind
sympathy given to Hamlet or Lear. Boito's Otello, in the necessar
process of simplification, outdoes his Shakespearean prototype
gullibility. Boito's Otello is far more easily duped by lago th
Shakespeare's Othello. The Otello of the opera is significantly d
minished in stature from Shakespeare's Moor, who, it will be r
called, is "of a free and open nature"; "is of a constant, loving, no
nature"; is "one that loved not wisely but too well"; is "one n
easily jealous, but, being wrought, perplexed in the extreme." Th
is nothing latent about the jealousy of Boito's Otello. Missing fro
the libretto are some of those great passages given to Othello, li
which would seem to have inherent musical possibilities, such a
But yet the pity of it,
Iago! O Iago, the pity of it, Iagol
(IV, i, 206-7)
and
It is the cause, it is the cause, miy soul.
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause.

(V, ii, 1-3)

Boito's knowledge of English was no greater than Verdi's, and

11 I say the "Boito-Verdi" libretto because a careful reading of the correspondence

indicates that Verdi had a greater hand in shaping the libretto than is generally
believed.

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598 The Musical Quarterly

perhaps the poetic qualities of such lines escape

perhaps the equivalence of music and poetry, if th
susceptible of demonstration. Perhaps poetry and
often handmaidens, just as often have separate, inv
ties. Both lovers of spoken drama and of music d
to cherish the last act of Shakespeare's Othello and
and for the student of Shakespeare who happens a
lover the pleasure is, of course, doubled.
The simplification in the transference from pla
tinues in the characterization of Desdemona. The critical mind suc-

cumbs to the power of Verdi's music, just as it does while unde

spell of the play. The Desdemona of the libretto is a gentle, lov
obedient, befuddled, guileless wife, simple-minded to the poi
fatuousness. There is no hint in the libretto of a Desdemona str
willed enough to defy society, custom, and an overbearing fat
Gone is the Desdemona who "shunned the wealthy curl'd darl
of her nation; gone is the Desdemona whose logic and wisdom
trol her allegiances. In the play, she says to her father, before
gathered assemblage:
My noble Father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
To you I am bound for life and education,
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you, you are the lord of duty,
I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
To you, preferring you before her father
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.
(I, iii, 180-88)

While Boito's Desdemona is certainly no prude, she is not Sha

speare's heroine, who is capable of exchanging lightly risque b
nage with lago, the clown, and Emilia without seeming to be
the lady. Desdemona's handling of herself in the handkerchief
- even in the play - puts a burden on one's willingness to
believe. In the libretto, her denseness is fairly incredulous. Eve
Verdi provides for the handkerchief scene one of the most dram
duets in all opera. Only the operatic Desdemona could inspire
criticism as the following:
In Shakespeare she is a bewildered innocent who understands almost anyt
of what goes on around her or in Othello. In the opera she is a full-grown I

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 599

woman, understanding jealousy, capable of adultery and of answering th

against her.12

Even a cursory reading of the play is sufficient to refute such

of Shakespeare's Desdemona. It must be confessed, however
the music Verdi writes for Desdemona, among the most poi
beautiful in the entire soprano repertory, quite disarms cri
Whether the opera Otello is superior to the play Othe
futile question. What is beyond question, however, is th
provided Verdi with the best libretto the maestro had ever
music. The following corresponding passages from the p
the opera are an example of how skillfully Boito performs h
tion as an adaptor.
Ora e per sempre addio sante memorie,
Addio, sublimi incanti del pensier!
Addio schiere fulgenti, addio vittorie,
Dardi volanti e volanti corsier!
Addio, vessillo trionfale e pio,
E diane squillanti in sul mattin!
Clamori e canti di battaglia, addio!
Della gloria d'Otello e questo il fin.13

Shakespeare's Othello says:

Oh, now forever
Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars
That make ambition virtue! Oh, farewell,
The spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
The royal banner and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, O you mortal engines, whose rude throats
The immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone.
(III, iii, 347-57)

Boito's skill reveals itself not so much in the comparison with the
source, but in comparison with any of Verdi's earlier librettos, or
with Boito's libretto for Ponchielli's La Gioconda or with the

libretto of his own Mefistofele. A creative ability super

own was necessary to prod Boito's considerable talents.
12 George Martin, Verdi, His Music, Life and Times (New York, 1963)
13 "Now and forever farewell, sacred memories; farewell, sublime enchantments
of the mind; farewell, shining troops; farewell, victories, swift-flying shafts, and racin
steeds; farewell, triumphant and sacred flag and the ringing reveilles in the morning
the clamor and song of battle, farewell. All of Otello's glory is gone."

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600 The Musical Quarterly

But the most fascinating character to both Boit

Iago. For a long time in their correspondence about
they referred to by the code name of "the chocol
called the work lago. Shakespeare's lago has ind
sea change in the hands of Boito and Verdi. That
noire of Shakespearean commentary, lago's motivatio
ily circumvented by a transparently convenien
Boito-Verdi lago has no need to call upon thwa
cuckoldry, or other untenable reasons to support h
devoted offspring of an evil god.
The most controversial episode in the opera
blatantly un-Shakespearean, is lago's famous Credo
sive baritone aria. It must be quoted in full.
Credo in un Dio crudel che m'ha creato
Simile a se e che nell'ira io nomo.

Dalla vilth d' un germe o d'un at6mo

Vile son nato.
Son scellerato
Perch? son uomo;
E sento il fango originario in me.
Sil questa ? la mia fW!
Credo con fermo cuor, siccome crede
La vedovella al tempio,
Che il mal ch'io penso e che da me procede,
Per il mio destino adempio.
Credo che il giusto e un istrion beffardo,
E nel viso e nel cour,
Che tutto ? in Jui bugiardo:
Lagrima, bacio, sguardo,
Sacrificio ed onor.

E credo l'uom gioco d'iniqua sorte

Dal germe della culla
Al verme dell'avel.

Vien dopo tanta irrision la Morte.

E poi? La Morte il Nulla,
t vecchia fola il Ciel.14

14 "I believe in a cruel God who has made me in his image and whom, in hate,
I worship. From some vile germ of nature or paltry atom I was born. I am evil be-
cause I am human. I feel the primeval slime in me. Yes, this is my creed. I believe
as firmly as ever did a little widow before the altar that whatever evil I think or do
is decreed by Fate. I believe that the honest man is but a mocking player in his
face and in his heart, that everything about him is false--tears, kiss, glance, sacri-
fice, and honor. And I believe that man is Fortune's fool from the germ of the
cradle to the worm of the tomb. After so much folly comes death. What then?
Death is nothingness, and heaven is a worn-out story."

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 601

None of lago's soliloquies in Othello is in close correspond

with this Credo. The only suggestion of similarity occurs ne
end of Act II: "And what's he then that says I play the vill
speech which contains the curse "Divinity of Hell." The Cre
have some fleeting Shakespearean overtones. "Fortune's f
directly from Romeo and Juliet; the rationalization that a go
villain cannot help his conduct has a parallel in the opening
loquy of Richard III; the metaphor of man as an actor is a fa
with Shakespeare, most notably, of course, in As You Like
idea that men are playthings for the gods is reminiscent o
cester's "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kil
their sport." But such a transcendent villain as the Boito-Ve
is not only absent from Othello but from all Shakespeare. N
Aaron in Titus Andronicus goes through the simultaneous p
of worshiping a cruel god and denying an afterlife. On matt
theology Boito and Verdi were less reticent than Shakespear
Verdi was at first enthusiastic about Boito's melodramatic, the-
atrical Iago. He wrote to his librettist: "Most beautiful, this Credo;
most powerful and wholly Shakespearean." Verdi's enthusiasm here
renders suspect his frequent assertions that he knew his Shakespeare.
The truth of the matter - and quite understandable - is that
Verdi saw the musical possibilities of Iago's Credo - a baritone
aria. Italian operatic tradition almost prescribed a villain, a tradition
which Verdi himself was partly responsible for. Many a baritone
owes his career to Guiseppe Verdi.
It may be 'argued that Verdi did not have a very clear intellectual
conception of Shakespeare's lago. His was a thoroughly theatrical
conception. He wrote to Domenico Morelli, the Neapolitan painter:
If I had to act the part of lago, I should make him long and lean, with thin
lips, small eyes set, ape-like, too close to the nose, and a head with a receding
brow and large development at the back. His manner would be abstracted, non-
chalant, indifferent to everything, incredulous, smart in repartee, saying good
and ill alike lightly, with the air of thinking about something else. A man like
that might deceive everybody, even up to a point his own wife.

Little wonder that the famous actor Salvini bluntly told Verdi that
his lago was not Shakespeare's lago. "You, Verdi," he wrote, "have
made him a melodramatic villain with his Credo and his outcry of
'Ecco il leone.' "' Boito later admitted that the Credo and the end

15 Quoted by John Klein, "Verdi and Boito," The Musical Quarterly, XIV
(1928), 164.

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602 The Musical Quarterly

of the third act shocked him more when he saw th

than he had intended in the libretto. Boito's part in
ization of lago is easier to understand. An ardent ad
and Oscar Wilde, he was always drawn to the sensati
his lago he went straight back to his own Mefistofe
little self-plagiarism, and gave his titular hero a bro
The phenomenal success of Otello merely whet
ambitions of Boito (who now sensed immortality b
of his name, as partner and collaborator rather th
with Verdi's) and the financial ambitions of the pu
It was no secret that Verdi had long wanted to writ
It was also known that all his life he had been fond of Falstaff. It
took very little urging to get Verdi to undertake Falstaf.16 Boit
libretto, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor, is the only libre
in his long career for which Verdi did not suggest a change. Befo
he met Boito, he had had chronic frustration with his librettists.
About Falstaff, Verdi wrote, "Boito has provided me with a lyric
comedy unlike any other."
It is no literary heresy to assert that the Boito-Verdi Falstaff is
superior to its source. The chief reason, of course, is that The Merry
Wives of Windsor is probably Shakespeare's least successful comedy.
It would be lower than it is in the hierachy of English drama if
Shakespeare's name were not indisputably attached to it.
Boito's libretto, as its title promises, concentrates on Falstaff to
a greater degree than does The Merry Wives of Windsor. The prun-
ing of characters and episodes is more severe than in Otello. The
more than twenty characters in the play are reduced to ten in the
opera. Gone are Shallow, Slender, Evans, Nym, Rugby, Simple,
William Page, and Master Page. Page's daughter Anne becomes
Nannetta Ford. Also out is the whole episode of Falstaff's disguise
as Mother Prat. The most impressive feature of Boito's libretto is the
skill with which he assimilates passages from both parts of Henry IV.
Among the many borrowings, the most prominent are a version of
the "plague of all cowards" speech and the "Quand 'ero paggio Del
Duca di Norfolk ero sottile" ("When I was the Duke of Norfolk's
pageboy, I was slender"), which is a deft telescoping of Falstaff's
boast to Hal: "When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's
talon in the waist, I could have crept into any alderman's thumb

16 Falstaff, opera in three acts; music by Giuseppe Verdi; libretto by Arrigo

Boito; first performance, Milan, February 9, 1893.

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 Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi 603

ring" (1 Henry IV, II, iv, 362-64) ; and Shallow's reminder to S

"Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to T
Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk" (2 Henry IV, III, ii, 27-28).
Of the borrowings from Henry IV, Part II, most importan
Falstaff's assertion near the end of the opera: "Son io che
scaltri l'arguzia mia crea l'arguzia degli altri" ("It is I who
them all clever. My wit creates wit in others"), which is a rewor
of Falstaff's famous "I am not only witty in myself, but the
that wit is in other men" (2 Henry IV, I, ii, 10-12) ; and the
ficent solo passage which opens the third act of the opera. Fa
cold from his dunking in the Thames, praises the therapeutic pro
ties of warm wine, a passage indebted to part of Falstaff's long t
to the efficacies of sack in the third scene of Act IV.

In the Merry Wives Falstaff ousts Bardolph and Pistol because

they refuse to pander for him. Boito ingeniously attaches this dis
missal to Falstaff's famous discourse on honor. Boito's Falstaff de-
claims

L'Onorel

Lardi! Voi state ligi all'onor vostro, voi!

Cloache d'ignominia, quando, non sempre, noi
Possiam star ligi al nostro. Io stesso, si, io, io,
Devo talor da un lato porre il timor di Dio
E, per necessith, sviar l'onore usare
Stratagemmi ed equivoci, destreggiar bordeggiare.
E voi, coi vostri cenci e coll'occhiata t6rta
Da gatto-pardo e i fetidi sghignazzi avete a scorta!
II vostro Onor! Che onore? che onor?
Che onor! che ciancia!

Che baja! - Pu6 l'onore riempirvi la pancia?

No. - Pu6 l'onor rimettervi uno stinco? - No pub.
Ne un piede? - No. - Ne un dito? - No. -
Ne un capello? - No!
L'onor non e chirurgo. - Ch'e dunque? - Una parola.
che c'e in questa parola? - C'? dell'aria che vola.
Bel construtto! - L'onore lo pu6 sentir chi ? morto?
No. - Vive sol coi vivi? ... Neppure: perche a torto
Lo gonfian le lusinghe, lo corrompe l'orgoglio,
L'ammorban le calumnie; e per me non ne vogliol
Non ne voglio, no, no, no!17

17 "Honor! You thieves! You, sworn to your honor? You? You sewers of ignominy,
when not even we can always live by ours? Even I on occasion must put aside the
fear of God, and must turn honor into byways and live with half-truths, stratagems,
deceit, or falsehood. And you in your rags with the crooked glance of the hyena and

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 604 The Musical Quarterly

The source in Shakespeare reads:

Honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off whe
then? Can honor set a leg? No. Or an arm? No. Or take aw
wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What
What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air. A tri
hath it? He that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Dot
'Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live w
Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it
scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.
(1 Henry IV, V, ii, 131-43)

A comparison of Boito's version with its counterpa

Part I, will corroborate Verdi's estimate of his librettist. Also, a
comparison of this rendering with a passage from the Piave-Maffei
libretto for Macbeth will indicate Boito's superiority as an adaptor
of Shakespeare.
Boito's plot - the duping of Falstaff - runs swiftly, too swiftly
for many listeners. The last scene, one of the glories of opera, is an
elaborate fugue. Structurally, it is based on its source, the end of
The Merry Wives of Windsor. But in its mysterious and fairylike
atmosphere it owes something to A Midsummer Night's Dream;
and Ford's consent to the marriage of his daughter Anne to Fenton
is an immediate reminder of Prospero's blessing- on Miranda and
Ferdinand at the end of The Tempest.
The premiere of Falstaff on February 9, 1893, was, like the
earlier premiere of Otello, one which reflected glory on Boito, on
Verdi (now eighty years old), and - this time without question -
on Shakespeare. Thus Giuseppe Verdi, during the last years of his
life, in setting Otello and Falstaff to music, fulfilled a lifelong am-
bition: to compose a fitting musical homage to his beloved Shake-
speare. The short, pointed letter he wrote to his esteemed librettist
after finishing Otello expresses his sentiments about himself, Boito,
and Shakespeare.
Dear Boito:
I have finishedl

All hail to us ... (and to Himl)

your filthy, sneering laughter. Your honor! What honor? What honor? What honor!
What nonsense! Can honor fill your belly? No! Can honor cure a broken shin? It
cannot. A foot? No. Or a finger? No. Or a hair? No. Horlor is no surgeon. What is it?
Only a word. What's in this word? Just air that floats away. A fiction. Can the dead
feel honor? No. Do only the living feel honor? No. Flattery puffs it up. Vanity cor-
rupts it. Calumny sickens it. I'll have none of it. I do not want it. No, no, no."

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