Il corsaro (review)

Giuseppe Verdi. Il corsaro: [Melodramma tragico in Three Acts]; libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Edited by Elizabeth Hudson. (The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, ser. I: Operas, vol. 13.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Milan: Ricordi, 1998. [Pref., p. vii-viii; acknowledgments, p. ix; introd. (history; general observations on the sources; problems in editing and performing), p. xi-xxix; front matter; pref., acknowledgments, introd. in Ital., p. xxxi-liv; facsims., 5 plates; instruments of the orchestra, cast of characters, index of numbers in Eng., Ital., 2 p.; score, 364 p.; 2 appendixes, p. 365-77. Cloth. ISMN M-041-38017-9; M-041-36994-5; ISBN 0-226-85317-9; 88-7592-521-6. Critical commentary in Eng., viii, 114 p. Cloth. $250 (set).]

It is almost inconceivable that an up-and-coming composer would deliberately undermine his own efforts in order to punish his publisher, and yet that is what Giuseppe Verdi may well have done with his thirteenth opera, Il corsaro. This setting of Lord Byron's The Corsair, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, is one of Verdi's least familiar compositions, having virtually disappeared from the stage shortly after its premiere in 1848. The orchestral score of this neglected work is available for the first time in The Works of Giuseppe Verdi, published jointly by the University of Chicago Press and Ricordi in Milan. Edited by Elizabeth Hudson, the score and its accompanying volume of critical commentary present the first real opportunity for our acquaintance with a work which, though minor Verdi, is Verdi nonetheless.

Sandwiched chronologically between Jérusalem and La battaglia di Legnano, Il corsaro offers the standard melodramatic roles for heroic tenor, despotic baritone, and self-sacrificing soprano, with the bonus of a substantial comprimaria part. As a work of musical theater, it sits rather uncomfortably between Verdi's early and middle periods. As Hudson notes in the introduction, "the wealth of lyrical invention in Il corsaro exists in a somewhat incongruous conjunction with the bold and simple gestures of the composer's earlier style; the more beautiful aspects of the music have a tendency to lose their dramatic impetus" (p. xxiv). Where Il corsaro stands out is in the degree of motivic unity exhibited by many of its musical numbers, a feature that is achieved through Verdi's uncharacteristic employment of strophic variation.

The troubled genesis of Il corsaro reflects a composer victimized by his own success. Barely a quarter of the way through his self-proclaimed "years in the galley," the thirty-five-year-old Verdi raged against working arrangements that often resembled servitude more than creative enterprise. A particular target of his resentment was the publisher Francesco Lucca, to whom he had reluctantly promised three operas over three years. Hudson offers a well-researched account of Verdi's constantly changing attitude toward Il corsaro, a subject that he had initially pronounced "more beautiful, more passionate [and] more apt for music" (p. xii) than anything else he had read, but that, thanks to his soured relationship with Lucca, he soon found "cold and lacking in dramatic effect" (p. xiv). While a composer's letters often elucidate his thoughts and actions, the manipulative nature of much of Verdi's correspondence about Il corsaro makes the reader grateful for the clarity of Hudson's narrative.

Verdi's on-again, off-again interest in Il corsaro suggests that he expended little effort on this opera, but Hudson offers ample proof that he continued to refine his ideas over the nearly three years of its genesis. Once he completed the score, however, Verdi refused to have anything further to do with Il corsaro. According to Hudson, this uncharacteristic behavior resulted from bitterness towards Lucca, but ultimately it was the opera that suffered, since Verdi's conspicuous absence from rehearsals and performances amounted to abandonment in the eyes of the public. Even today, Il corsaro's orphaned status influences its fortunes. Because Verdi played no part in the opera's meager performance history, none of the manuscript scores prepared for...