Aroldo (review)

Aroldo. Giuseppe Verdi
Mina: Maria Vitale	Elena: Miti Truccato Pace
Aroldo: Vasco Campagnano	Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of the Italian Radio, Turin
Egberto: Rolando Panerai
Briano: Gian Felice De Manuelli	Arturo Basile, conductor
Godvino: Aldo Bertocci	Istituto Discografico Italiano (distributed by Qualiton Imports) IDIS 6359/60 (2 CDs)
Enrico: Tino Soley

Mina: Carol Vaness	Elena: Marina Comparato
Aroldo: Neil Shicoff	Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino
Egberto: Anthony Michaels-Moore
Briano: Roberto Scandiuzzi	Fabio Luisi, conductor
Godvino: Julian Gavin	Philips (distributed by Universal Classics) 462 512-2 PH2 (2 CDs)
Enrico: Sergio Spina

In recent years, Stiffelio (1850) has emerged from obscurity to claim its place as one of Verdi's most interesting and boldly experimental operas. The work was not quite a failure when it was new: some of its first audiences were open-minded enough to respond with curiosity, if not enthusiasm. But Stiffelio was doomed by its subject matter. An opera about a Protestant minister who divorces his adulterous wife but subsequently forgives her and takes her back was too much for the censors. To Verdi's disgust, he and his librettist, the ever-accommodating Piave, were forced to alter some lines of the sung text even before the Trieste premiere. Worse, in Florence in 1851, the opera could not be performed at all with its original libretto intact: there Stiffelio was transformed into Guglielmo Wellingrode, with the plot thoroughly secularized and the protagonist changed into a German politician. (The Verdi centenary has not, to my knowledge, brought with it any revivals of Guglielmo Wellingrode, although that is the form in which Stiffelio was most frequently performed during Verdi's lifetime.)

By 1854, Verdi had given up on Stiffelio. He had Piave rewrite the libretto: Stiffelio became Aroldo, an English Crusader. Verdi revised the score as well. Aroldo (first performed in 1857) enjoyed some modest success during the composer's lifetime but never established itself as a repertory work.

To create Aroldo, Verdi cannibalized his autograph score of Stiffelio, presumably discarding those pages he had no use for in the new work. As a result, it was not until the 1960s that the discovery of two copyists' scores (one of Stiffelio, the other of Guglielmo Wellingrode) made revivals of Stiffelio possible, beginning in Parma in 1968. The rediscovery of the opera in its original form has relegated Aroldo to the shelf.

The fact is that Stiffelio is simply a much more interesting opera than Aroldo. The controversial elements in the original libretto, which provoked the censors to action, are precisely those that fired Verdi's imagination. They are downplayed in Aroldo, which consistently plays it safe. Admittedly, it is rather refreshing to encounter, in a nineteenth-century Italian opera, a betrayed husband whose first reaction to the betrayal is nonviolence. But, compared to Stiffelio, whose internal struggle is so compelling, Aroldo can seem just a bit phlegmatic (particularly in act 1, where much of his solo music is new) and even prissy.

There is some interest, in Aroldo, in hearing the changes Verdi made in some of the musical numbers he retained (where the changes extend beyond mere alterations of the sung text). There is considerably more interest in the pieces newly composed for Aroldo: for example, new solos for the tenor and soprano in act 1, along with some other material; in act 2, a magnificent new cabaletta for the heroine, "Ah, dal sen di quella tomba." Most important, Verdi discarded Stiffelio's final scene (act 3, scene 2, a brief scene set in a church) and replaced it with an entirely new act 4, set in Scotland on the banks of Loch Lomond. Here, the disillusioned Aroldo and his friend Briano have become hermits. There is an elaborate scene-setting chorus for three separate choral groups (impersonating shepherds, hunters, and reapers), after which Aroldo and Briano appear and recite the Angelus (unaccompanied, with the chorus—now offstage—joining in). A storm breaks out and drives a small boat to shore: it contains Aroldo's ex-wife...