Carteggio Verdi--Somma (review)

The Verdi correspondence is enormous and enormously important. Through it we have a window into the workings of the operatic world of the last sixty years of the nineteenth century, into the thoughts and actions of a highly visible public figure living through the Risorgimento and the first forty years of the Italian state, into the artistic production of one of the greatest musical dramatists of all time. But it has also been extremely difficult to gain control over this material. The earliest significant publication, the so-called Copialettere, edited by Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio (Milan, 1913), is a deceptive book, incompletely presenting the drafts of letters present in the copy books located in the composer's home at Sant'Agata and offering in an appendix a large assortment of documents, many partial, censored, or misdated. Translations based exclusively on the Copialettere (such as Charles Osborne's 1972 The Letters of Giuseppe Verdi) simply perpetuate its many faults.

Luzio's monumental four-volume set of Carteggi verdiani (Rome, 1935–47) added new documents, but many of them are printed within a host of small articles, and so it is often difficult to locate individual letters. There are other important publications, such as Verdi intimo, Verdi's correspondence with the Florentine Count Opprandino Arrivabene, edited by Annibale Alberti (Verona, 1931), and many articles and books with groups of Verdi letters, but the overall picture was bleak indeed until the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani began its work during the 1960s.

The Istituto has been patiently gathering, photocopying, and transcribing the Verdi correspondence for some forty years. This material is now being digitized so that it will be possible to consult much of it (where owners have given permission) not only in Parma, at the home of the Istituto, but anywhere in the world. One might have argued that a publication plan should begin at the beginning and continue throughout the composer's life, but there would have been serious problems with such an approach. Many letters remain inaccessible, in private collections or making their way from one owner to another through auction catalogues, antiquarian dealers, and the internet, and new ones seem to appear weekly. Furthermore, a chronological publication would make it difficult to follow the fascinating story of the relationships between Verdi and his correspondents, especially his librettists.

The Istituto chose another path: first to publish significant volumes of Verdi's correspondence with individuals (inserting other letters or documents for reference, where appropriate), when that correspondence survives as intact as it is likely to be; miscellaneous letters and documents can be published at a later date. Five collections have appeared: the Verdi–Boito correspondence (ed. by Mario Medici and Marcello Conati in 1978), two volumes of the Verdi–Ricordi correspondence, covering 1880–1 (ed. by Pierluigi Petrobelli, Carlo Matteo Mossa, and Marisa Di Gregorio Casati in 1988) and 1882–5 (ed. by Franca Cella, Madina Ricordi, and Casati in 1994), the Verdi–Cammarano correspondence (ed. by Mossa in 2001), and now the Verdi–Somma correspondence. In the works are another volume of the Verdi–Ricordi correspondence and that between Verdi and the Roman artist Vincenzo Luccardi.

All these volumes are fascinating, but for musicians and opera-lovers the correspondence between Verdi and his librettists remains the most intriguing. Having retreated to his country estate at Sant'Agata, Verdi rarely worked in the same city as his librettists, even if they regularly trekked to his home for a few days of communal activity. Through these letters, therefore, it is possible to chart the compositional history of the librettos—and frequently of the music—for many of the composer's operas from Luisa Miller of 1849 (the first opera he composed at Busseto or Sant'Agata) to Falstaff of 1893. When Verdi's partner is a man of such intellectual stature as Arrigo Boito, the letters are as enticing as any in the history of music, but even when his correspondent is a less significant figure, there is much to learn.

As...