Patrick Bade
Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra: A Celebration of a United Country

Patrick Bade | Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra A Celebration of a United Country | 04.20.22

Visuals displayed and music played throughout the presentation.

- [Patrick] So I got to the last of the three operas that I’m talking about, that have the theme of liberation or aspiration for nationhood. Trudy asked me to think of three operas that would connect in theme with Passover. So I hope you realised the reason for the choice. Simon Boccanegra belongs in Verdi’s middle period. Originally, it was first performed in 1857 at the height of the Risorgimento movement. It never really took off for reasons I’ll come back to in a minute. And he decided to revise it a quarter of a century later in 1881, and he quite radically transformed it. And he added a very powerful scene, the so-called council chamber scene, which I see as a celebration of Italian unification. And it’s a very thrilling scene.

So the reasons Simon Boccanegra I would say is a connoisseurs’ opera rather than a very popular opera, it’s never going to have the widespread popularity of Rigoletto, La traviata or Aida but I’d say it’s an opera which is very highly prized by many critics and connoisseurs of operas. Many will tell you it’s their favourite Verdi opera along with Don Carlos which has something of the same kind of reputation. Both of them fell out of the repertory for quite a long time, they were only revived in the 1920s in the so-called Verdi Renaissance, which started off oddly in Germany rather than in Italy. So why did it not really take off initially?

Firstly, I think it’s got a quite a gloomy dark atmosphere and it has a rather downbeat ending. There’s a dominance of dark voices. The two most interesting roles are for the baritone and the bass. They’re somewhat meagre roles for the soprano and the tenor. They’re both rather one dimensional characters and neither is given a hit aria, the kind of aria that might turn up on a recital CD. But there are plenty of compensations as we shall see. This reminds me of the last time I saw Simon Boccanegra which is actually in Paris in the Autumn of 2019 before the pandemic. And it was at the height of the “Gilets jeunes” demonstrations and rather a tense week that we had in Paris. The insert here is my wonderful tour manager for Martin Randall, Janice Brook. I want her for Prime Minister. In fact, I’d like her to rule the world really. She’s nice about it too. And she was on her little mobile phone and she got around Paris in some very tricky circumstances.

But the evening that we saw… We saw Simon Boccanegra at the Bastille Opera and we had to fight our way through a yellow jacketed mob. We were in a coach and they’re all banging on the sides of the coach. It was a bit scary. I thought, well, I know what Mary Antoinette felt like in Paris in 1792 in her little cart. But anyway, we got there and as you shall see It was almost like a prelude to the council chamber scene in the opera itself where there is an invading mob. It was commissioned for the Venice, the Venice Opera House. Strange really, ‘cause it’s an opera about Venice’s great rival as a maritime republic, Genoa. And as always at this time, 'cause this is before the unification of Italy. The census were very Venice at this time was under Austrian rule. And the census rule was very, very careful to avoid anything that might excite the public too much.

The original version of the opera had a very conventional overture made up of themes to introduce you to the themes of the opera. But by 1881, that type of overture had really gone out of fashion. And instead the opera is introduced by a brief prelude which rather than giving all the tunes it’s there to set the mood of the opera and to tell you that you are in a maritime republic. So it’s got these, it really evokes, I’d say, the gentle motion of the waves of the sea around Genoa. Now, here the Libretto was based on a popular Spanish play by a man called Antonio Garcia Gutierrez. And he was also the author of the play that had inspired “Il trovatori” so that should tell you something. “Il trovatori,” which has one of the most complicated and unlikely plots of any Italian opera with lots of coincidences, lots of lost babies, lots of suddenly recognised relatives and so on.

So, but the actual Libretto was prepared by the man you see on the right hand side, and this is Francesco Maria Piave, who was Verdi’s loyal slave, he was quite a bully Verdi when it came to his Librettos he was always the one in charge and he was always kind of hectoring and demanding to his librettist. But Piave succeeded in producing Libretti for some of Verdi’s most successful operas including “La traviata” and Rigoletto. The second version in 1881, Verdi re-works with the composer and man of letters, Arrigo Boito, who himself wrote two operas, one of which Mefistofele achieved a considerable measure of success. And Verdi had great trust in Boito, Verdi at this point in 1880, 1881, he hadn’t written an opera in more than a decade, the previous opera was Aida. And he seems to have been using Boito really to test the water to come back to the composition of operas. And many people have seen Simon Boccanegra as a kind of dummy run for Verdi’s two final masterpieces, Otello and Falstaff.

And in fact the two main singers in the 1881 version of Simon Boccanegra, the heroic tenor, Francesco Tamagno on the left, and the great baritone supreme singing actor, Victor Maurell on the right hand side, you can see him with Verdi at the time of the premiere of Otello. There is Maurell there as Iago, Francesco Tamagno, it was his voice, a big, juicy, thrilling voice with amazing heroic top notes. And I think it was Verdi working with him in 1881, he thought he was thinking of this voice when he conceived the role of Otello. So here we are in Genoa in the Middle Ages. And you can see Verdi is very specific about what he wants on stage. You’ve got the Palace of the Fieschi and he’s has to have a large balcony, you can see very specific. There’s an image of the virgin and so on, a small lamp burning. And Verdi was always also very… Whatever period the opera is set, he was very keen that he should create what he called the right tinta, the right colour for the period.

So he wants a colour to this opera which is quite severe as is appropriate for the Middle Ages when the action takes place. So I think if you change the period, you change the setting for Verdi operas you are always taking a big risk. So first of all, I’m going to play you this prelude, which with this gentle undulation of the waves. And then we go straight… I hope I haven’t missed. No, I haven’t. Good. So here we go.

♪ Music plays ♪

The first character we meet is Paolo and he is a conspirator that is a conspiracy in Genoa to replace the ruling patricians or aristocrats with a doge who will favour the plebe, the ordinary people. And they want to choose somebody who’s likely to be popular and get the votes with the populous. And they make the offer to Simon Boccanegra to take on the role of Doge of Genoa. He’s initially very reluctant but he’s persuaded because his great love is Maria, the daughter of Fiesco. Fiesco has rejected Simon Boccanegra as a seaman and a pirate as unworthy of his daughter, that he thinks if he becomes Doge of Venice, then Fiesco will no longer be able to reject him as a husband for his daughter.

So Verdi does wonderful conspiratorial music, he loves conspiracies. You may know that from the “Ballo in maschera.” So in this little scene we’ll hear the conspirators. Simon has agreed to take on the role of Doge, and then the conspirators disperse, they kind of scurry off in a conspiratorial kind of way. And then we hear portentous solemn chords and they characterise the other main character of this opera which is Fiesco, this aristocratic character, as he enters the stage.

♪ Music plays ♪

He needs to be a very imposing character. And this is written for a baso cantante, noble, smooth sounding bass. We’re going to hear the great Ezio Pinza in this role. And so his aria starts off with a declamatory restetif in which he expresses his grief for the death of his beloved daughter, Maria, and his anger with Simon Boccanegra, who he regards as an evil seducer. And then it moves on to this really heart rending aria, “Il lacerato spirito” which is a wonderful example I would say. And we’re going to get this again in the opera later on of weeping in song. It has this wilting, descending melody. And then at the end there is the most exquisite postlude to this aria. Verdi often gives you a very lovely, melodic postlude to an aria. It’s very irritating in the theatre if you have a popular singer and the audience applauds at the end of the aria so that you lose the postlude. if there is a popular aria in this opera, it’s this one. This is an aria you will find on a great many CD compilations of famous basses.

♪ Music plays ♪

Dear, I seem to have cut off before the beautiful postlude. but you’ll have to take my word for that. Now, Fiesco and Simon Boccanegra confront one another, or rather Simon confronts Fiesco and says, “Where is Maria? I want Maria” and Fiesco says to him, “Well, you can’t have Maria until you produce the illegitimate daughter that you had with her.” Now there’s a problem here because unfortunately, Simon has mislaid the baby and he doesn’t know where she is either. So Fiesco then walks off and leaves Simon to enter the empty palace of the Fieschi, where he finds the dead body of Maria. So that’s the end of the prologue. And Act One takes place 25 years later. And the plot is so complicated, I thought, “Oh my God, I don’t think I can really boil this down to a few words,” so I dug out an old programme for Simon Boccanegra and I’m just going to read to you what it says in that programme.

“25 years have elapsed between the Prologue and Act One of the opera. During this period, a number of important events have taken place. The Doge has exiled many of his political opponents and confiscated their property. Fiesco has been living in the Grimaldi Palace outside of Genoa for many years under the name of Andrea, the daughter of Count Grimaldi has died in a convent in Pisa. And on the day she died, a foundling was discovered in the grounds of the convent brought up in her place adopted by Andrea, really Fiesco, her own grandfather. She was given the name Amelia Grimaldi in order to protect the property of the Grimaldi family when they were exiled for political conspiracy. In reality, Amelia is Maria Boccanegra, the daughter of Simon and Maria, Fiesco’s daughter who had died. Fiesco does not know this, nor does Simon. Amelia is loved by Genoese nobleman, Gabriele Adorno, a fellow conspirator of Andrea Fiesco, and they’ve been plotting against the Doge.” Okay, got all of that?

I told you it was going to be quite complicated. So in Act One, the first person we meet is Amelia. And she has an attractive aria. I mean, it’s not I would say a particularly interesting role from a dramatic point of view. You want a soprano with a fresh, young sounding voice. That’s really all that’s needed for this pure, youthful tone. And in her introductory aria she muses on the beauty of the dawn and she thinks about her childhood. And in the orchestra we hear the twittering of the birds of the dawn chorus. So the fresh voiced Maria La Ferragni, of course perfectly fits the bill for that. Next, Gabriela, her fiance or wants to be her fiance, he wants to marry her, he’s in love with her. He arrives and they have a duet.

But as I mentioned when talking about Nabucco it’s very strange that Verdi is not a great one for love duets. In the 35 or so operas of Verdi, there are only really two that stand out that have some kind of erotic charge them. That’s “Ballo in maschera” and “Otello.” Usually Verdi’s lovers are not talking about love, they’re talking about something else. And here, Amelia stroke, Maria expresses her worry to Gabriele about his political involvement and the conspiracies. And he says, “Oh, don’t worry your pretty little head that’s none of your business, basically.”

♪ Music plays ♪

Now, as I said, it’s intergenerational duets that really generational duets that seem to get Verdi’s creative juices going. And we’ve got a whole series of marvellous duets between the generations for the rest of this opera. And the first one is between Gabriele and Andrea stroke Fiesco. 'Cause Gabriele says, “I want to marry your granddaughter, Amelia” and Fiesco or Andrea says to him, “Well, I have to tell you a secret, she is not really my granddaughter.” She is of course, but he doesn’t think so. He thinks she’s a foundling. And Gabrieli says, “Well, I don’t care whether she’s of noble birth or not, I love her and I want to marry her.”

So Fiesco blesses the union, and their duet ends with this solemn rather hymn like melody of blessing. Now it’s in the next scene that for me, this opera really takes off. And this is an extended duet between Simon Boccanegra and Amelia stroke, Maria, who in course in reality is his daughter, though at the beginning of the duet, neither of them knows this. And Boccanegra has been tasked by Paolo, the conspirator who helped him to power as doge, to ask for the hand in marriage of Amelia.

Amelia, of course doesn’t want to marry him 'cause she’s in love with Gabriele. So she explains to Boccanegra that she is not who he thinks she is and that she is just a foundling. As she tells, and she gives detail of the detail, the penny begins to drop, he thinks, “Who is this girl? Could she possibly be my long lost daughter that I accidentally mislaid 25 years ago?”

♪ Music plays ♪

Well, at the climax of the duet, this a very extended duet, they finally realise that they are father and daughter and there’s a great explosion of emotion in the orchestra. 'Cause opera is full of these stories of relatives finding one another, recognising one another. I think there are plenty of these stories in real life. Well, I have actually three half-brothers who I first met when they were adults. So I think these stories are not quite as rare or improbable as some people, but here is the moment of recognition between father and daughter.

♪ Music plays ♪

But it’s the end of the duet that really makes me choke up. And I often have discussions with opera lovers, what are those moments in operas that really bring tears to the eyes that really make you cry? And for me, this, the tenderness of the end of this duet is absolutely gut wrenching, particularly the very end. Again, there’s a lovely little orchestral melodic postlude. At the very end of that he says, “Figlia”, she says “Padre.” And then one further time, Figlia, beautiful soft note. You know, it’s quite a tricky thing I think for a baritone to do, but when it comes off, it is so beautiful.

♪ Music plays ♪

That’s the end of Act One. When the curtain rises on Act Two, that’s the best of, I would say, middle period Verdi we’ve just listened. When the curtain rises on the next act, we’re suddenly in a completely different sound world. This is a new Verdi, this is the Verdi of his late works. Much more powerful use of the orchestra in particular.

♪ Music plays ♪

So that’s a sound world, I would say of Otello. And this is the moment in the council chamber scene that I referred to at the beginning when the council chamber is invaded by an angry mob. And they are angry because they’re calling for vengeance, they’ve captured Gabriele and Fiesco and they accuse them of murder and abducting Amelia. And so at this moment, we hear them in the distance and then there’s a moment of silence. And then the doge says, “Ecco le plebe” here come the rabble, and they pour into the council chamber.

♪ Music plays ♪

Amelia has indeed been abducted but of course not by Fiesco or Gabriele, she was abducted by Paolo, who won’t accept the fact that she refuses to marry him. But Gabriele, he’s a rather hotheaded, immature young man, and he assumes that it’s actually Boccanegra who’s ordered her kidnapping and that Boccanegra wishes to marry her. And he pulls out his sword and is about to attack Boccanegra, but Amelia rushes between them and she prevents this happening. And everybody then calms down, and then we have this great… It’s not really an aria, how can I describe it? It’s a great speech, a musical speech by the doge in which he calls for unity and peace. For me, this is Verdi at this stage of his career, he’s speaking directly to the inhabitants of the newly unified Italy.

♪ Music plays ♪

Grateful to cut that off, but I’m going to have to move on quickly to get through everything. Now Boccanegra understands that the guilty person, the man who has tried to abduct and wants to rape his daughter is Paolo. So he turns on Paolo and he calls out his name, “Paolo,” you want a baritone with a really big, beefy voice who can really make the rafter shake as he calls out Paolo. And Paolo says, “Mi duce”, my master. And the doge orders Paolo to curse the perpetrator of the abduction of Amelia. So this is a terrible thing 'cause Paolo is forced to curse himself. And you know in Verdi’s operas, curses they mean something, Maledizione, they really mean something. Think of Rigoletto and the curse on Rigoletto.

So I’m not going to play you this 'cause we’re running out of time, but so Paolo is, and everybody, the whole assembly, they all curse this man who has abducted Amelia and Paolo is left quivering and uttering the word “Orrore, orrore” ,horror, at the thought of cursing himself and being cursed. So the last act takes place in the doge’s palace and Paolo is in fact sentenced to death. And on his way he manages to sneak poison into a water karath that is used by the doge. And also he bumps into Fiesco and he reveals to Fiesco what he has done that he has actually poisoned the doge. Boccanegra, he’s tired, he’s exhausted, he sits down in this chair, he pours himself the water, he drinks fatal water. And then he drifts off to sleep, musing about his daughter and her relationship with a man who is his political enemy.

Next Gabriele turns up, I’m not going to play you this 'cause I find it a rather tedious aria. Anyway, as I said, he’s a very hotheaded rather immature young man and obsessed by jealousy 'cause he thinks that there’s something going on between Boccanegra and his fiance. And I will play you the beginning of this 'cause I just think this is such a wonderful moment. This is the moment when Boccanegra has drunk the fatal poisoned water and where he is drifting off into sleep. And he says the words, “Amelia, you love an enemy.” And we have a reprise in the orchestra of that very lovely melody of his duet with Amelia from the first act.

♪ Music plays ♪

So Gabriele then creeps in and he’s planning to murder Boccanegra while he sleeps and he lifts his dagger to do it, and at that moment, once again, Amelia she seems to be doing this all the time, she rushes in and thrusts herself between the two men and she saves her father’s life. And Simon wakes up and then he reveals the secret that he is not Amelia’s lover, he is her father. Of course Gabriele, he’s sorry, and he becomes completely kind of hysterical and grovelling at this point. But, so the last two excerpts I really want to play you 'cause they are so beautiful and so moving.

We have another confrontation between Fiesco and Simon Boccanegra. And once again the doge, he reveals the fact that Amelia is Maria, so she is not only his daughter, she is the long lost granddaughter of Fiesco. And so of course this is another great emotional upheaval. And Fiesco and the doge sing this duet. And it’s another, I think wonderful example of what the composer, Bellini called weeping in song, where the melodic melody expresses enormous sadness and grief. You had this very, very… Maybe for me, the most beautiful moment in the whole opera is this very unusual duet of course between a bass and a baritone.

♪ Music plays ♪

And we come to the final scene where Simon is dying from the effects of the poison and he fades away surrounded by Fiesco, Maria and Gabriele. They’re all expressing their emotions and their grief after what happens. And the he just fades into death. It’s a strangely sort of downbeat ending to the opera. I find it very beautiful, very moving with Fiesco, the plebs are outside the palace and they’re calling for the doge. And Fiesco goes to them and he says “Simon is dead, greet your new doge, Gabriele.” And that it’s strangely, strangely muted the end of the opera with the tolling of the bell. I said very beautiful, very moving. But I think it’s one reason why the opera never really took off. You think really popular operas of Verdi, Rigoletto, Il travitore, La traviata, they have much, much more kind of spectacular death scenes.

♪ Music plays ♪

I can see the questions.

Q&A and Comments

Q: Will I be reviewing some of the current opera stars and compare them? A: I can do, I do sometimes in my lectures.

I don’t know who made that. It’s not by a famous artist, the etching of the opera house. It’s just an illustration from the period. The opera was not formed in English until the early 1950s. It was at Sadler’s Wells, it was very well received. But I wouldn’t say, actually it’s done a lot. In 2019 I saw it in London and Paris and it’s going to be done in the Parma Verdi Festival this year in October.

Q: Weren’t the doges of Venice picked by the aristocrats? A: Well, this is the Doge of Genoa, not the Doge of Venice.

Herbert, liking the wonderful singing of Ezio Pinza who apparently never learned to read music. Thank you, Nemi. Thank you, Nanette. This is, oh, the bullying production. Yes, I know, I heard about that, it sounded awful.

Q: What would be my favourite all time version? A: Well, I have have to say my absolute all-time favourite, well, it’s split between two. There’s a very good 1950s version with Gobbi. In fact, my friend Mike in Munich has sort of wrapped me of the knuckles for not using that, I should have used it. Probably my all time favourite is actually a live broadcast from the Met in the late 1930s with Lawrence Tibbett, Giovanni Martinelli, Ezio Pinza absolutely in his prime, and Elizabeth . I absolutely adore that version but you have to be able to put up with some quite restricted sound from a 1930s broadcast.

Yes, that bass baritone duet is really absolutely gut-wrenchingly beautiful, I so agree with you. So this business about sound, I don’t know what to say about it. Apparently some people think it’s okay and it’s nothing I can do about it, from my end. It’s Simon Boccanegra, not Simone.

Right, thank you all very, very much and I’ll be speaking to you again from Paris next Wednesday.