Opera Composer Telling Stories Through

Opera Composer

Telling stories through music and song is something that "predates history and appears to be universal" (Berger 2000). All one needs to do is a give a group of people around a campfire a guitar and -- even today -- they will shortly be telling stories through song (2000). What will culminate from these songs is a mood that will be either joyful or sad. From this idea of the campfire to the idea of just one single story that is dotted with interludes is just a short jump away. Two lovers meeting (happy song), they were so in love (sweet song), they have problems and so they break up (angry song), the two are devastated by the loss (sad song) (2000). Berger notes that the possibilities and the variations are limitless and the best part is that any style of music can be put to those variations.

Opera manages to blur the lines of the narrative and comment (the part between the songs). "Italian opera is simply a different animal from the rest of the world's narrative music traditions. It sprang out of a desire to find, explore, and revel in the music of speech. The beauty of song was something of an afterthought" (Berger 2000). but, music is universal. The biggest problem that Anglo-Saxons have with Italian operas come not from the music (as it is universal) but from the "cultural perceptions about the meaning and value of words" (2000).

This is where Verdi comes along. He had no interest in the theories and dogma that some of his contemporaries had for opera -- for example, Wagner, who could not stand having his work referred to as operas; he much more preferred the term "music dramas" (Berger 2000). Verdi was interested in only what he like and he would get rid of the rest. He was practical in the manner of country people and when he went to the operas in Milan for the first time he began to see many problems as well as strengths in the bel canto format (2000).

The key point is that Verdi was able to transform the possibilities of those conventions into a thrilling theatrical genre that event he best bel canto composers, such as Rossini and Bellini, hardly imagined possible. He did this by working with the human situations within a drama rather than by painting the individual words (Berger 2000).

After Verdi's Nabucco, Verdi was the center of attention in Milan. Nabucco was later presented at the Vienna Opera, but Verdi returned unimpressed with the country -- or for travel, in general (Berger 2000), as well as underwhelmed by Merelli's presentation of Nabucco in Vienna (2000). Shortly after this return home, Venice's Teatro la Fenice made Verdi an exciting proposition for a new opera and introduced Verdi to Francesco Maria Piave, "a neophyte jack-of-all-trades in the theatre and a budding librettist. Verdi accepted enthusiastically" (2000).

Piave was the stage director of La Fenice and his instincts concerning theatrical situation were great. Piave's life was more unruly than the way that Verdi was used to living, but he still knew how to defer to Verdi's wishes. It is believed that Piave had a way of allowing Verdi to "let his hair down" (Berger 2000) as he was often much more uptight around others. They did develop a solid working relationship and they were even known for carousing around Venice (2000) (a city that is known for carousing). Their relationship would span two decades, however, this working relationship, which sometimes involved carousing, was not necessarily equal when the two were in the theatre.

The relationship between composer and librettist in the theatre was, in general, known as one that was not one of equals and this is especially true in the relationship between Verdi and Piave. In the story of Giuseppe Verdi: oberto to un ballo in maschera by Baldini, d'Amico, and Parker (1980), the authors state that the "composer completely dominates and enslaves the librettist, who becomes scarcely more than an instrument in his hands." In the book the complete operas of Verdi, Osborne (1977) writes that "in the composer-librettist relationship with Verdi, Piave's role…was a completely subservient one."