Verdi at 200: Recent Scholarship on the Composer and His Works

The 100th anniversary of Verdi’s death, observed in 2001, inspired nearly a dozen academic conferences. At the dawn of his 2013 bicentennial, a celebratory year shared with Richard Wagner, hundreds of recent studies assess Verdi’s life, his works, and his impact. The present article surveys a selection of books and articles published between these two commemorations. A popular topic is Verdi’s role as a national icon, the calculated product of Italy’s search for a postunification identity. His engagement with foreign cultures has also received attention, for his German literary sources, his forays into French grand opera, and his use of exotic settings. Recent studies of Verdi’s operas often focus on the testing of boundaries, whether between genres, genders, or psychological states. While musical analyses still engage with operatic convention, they also examine other features, such as melody, meter, and tempo. Visual aspects of performance (set design, lighting, staging), considered separately in some studies and as a unified concept in others, constitute a newer area of scholarly interest

Verdi\u27s First Willow Song : New Sketches and Drafts for \u3ci\u3eOtello\u3c/i\u3e

The genesis of Verdi\u27s Otello is a familiar episode in the history of Italian opera. The semiretired composer\u27s reluctance to reenter the operatic fray, his gradual interest in Arrigo Boito\u27s draft libretto, and the astonishing speed with which he composed the music have been the subject of both musicological and biographical study. Letters between librettist and composer detail the textual modifications that Boito made to accommodate Verdi\u27s needs. Up until now, however, we have had few corresponding musical documents readily available to illustrate how Verdi grappled with the challenges of Boito\u27s libretto. Beginning with his draft text, dispatched to Verdi in sections during the first weeks of November 1879, Boito was always willing to make changes to suit the composer\u27s needs. For the next seven years, through face-to-face meetings, correspondence, and the occasional intervention of publisher Giulio Ricordi, Boito and Verdi continued to refine the Otello libretto, even after formal musical composition had begun

Revising Cio-Cio-San

Some of the mast extensive and significant textual changes in all of Puccini\u27s operas appear in the published revisions of Madama Butterfly. Many of these verbal modifications, together with cuts and additions to the score, influence the dramatic depiction of the protagonists. Changes to Pinkerton\u27s character soften an insensitive and even offensive figure who, after all, needs to be convincing as the object of Butterfly\u27s love. For Cio-Cio-San, three rounds of revision mean a gradual loss of complexity on any fronts, bringing an exotic, mercurial heroine closer to operatic convention. The Butterfly that we know today has a more Westernized outlook than her original incarnation, and fewer distractions compete for her-- and our--attention. But revision is not always synonymous with unqualified improvement, and opera\u27s multifaceted nature ensures that even the simplest modifications sometimes have wide-ranging consequences. While transforming Cio-Cio-San\u27s character may not have been Puccini\u27s goal in every instance of revision that affects her, the changes are nonetheless apparent, and their cumulative result may have exceeded expectation

Otello

Verdi\u27s penultimate opera represents his first new work for the stage after a nearly sixteen-year hiatus. As battles raged over the future of Italian opera-whether it should remain rooted in song or follow foreign trends that assign a greater role to the orchestra-Giulio Ricordi and Boito patiently lured Verdi back into the fray. Boito\u27s libretto, an ingenious and at times eccentric adaptation of Shakespeare\u27s Othello, inspired the composer to a highly personal fusion of tradition and innovation. At its premiere Otello was widely hailed as a masterpiece, an emphatic and fundamentally Italian answer to the debate over music and drama. Although it remains both admired and respected, Otello tends not to be performed frequently, owing to the difficulty of casting its vocally demanding title role

Unni e i Romani, Gli

A censored version of Attila first performed at Palermo\u27s Teatro Carolino in 1854

The Verdi Archive at New York University: A LIst of Verdi\u27s Music

A catalog of scores and parts (mostly on microfilm, with some hard copy) for the compositions of Giuseppe Verdi in the collection of the American Institute for Verdi Studies at New York University

The Verdi Forum

The peer-reviewed journal of the AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR VERDI STUDIES (AIVS). Early issues, first titled A/VS Newsletter (1976) and later Verdi Newsletter (1977-98), were edited by the AIVS\u27s director, Martin CHUSID. They featured scholarly articles, essays of more general interest, and news items about performances, recordings, and conferences. While Nos. l-7 were issued semi-annually, beginning with No. 8 (1980) the Verdi Newsletter became an annual publication. Nos. 7 (1979), 9-ro (1981-82), and 17-18 (1989-90), collectively titled \u27The Verdi Archive at New York University,\u27 document the history and holdings of the AIVS Archive at that time

American Institute for Verdi Studies

The AIVS was founded in 1976, in response to a tide of scholarly interest in Verdi. Its first director, Martin Chusid, assembled an archive of materials at New York University\u27s Elmer Holmes Bobst Library