The wind blew fiercely. Water poured down from Heaven in cascades. It was a black day. Inside a modest abode someone was born, a male child entering the world as all children do, crying, gesticulating. Would he be destined to run a tavern, as his parents did, to earn a living? Would he become a lawyer, a politician, a merchant sailor, a physician, a soldier, a pimp? Or was he marked for the priesthood, for the beggar’s trail, or for marriage to a princess? Through small village streets, soldiers from Napoleon’s armies made their rounds, protected by thick capes. All of a sudden, the rain stopped, and the tree leaves quieted down. The sun came out, bursting out festive and joyous. It was October 10, 1813. The little town was three miles from Busseto, today’s upper central Italy and back then the Duchy of Parma. The sun’s appearance after the storm took place in the village of La Roncali—French Le Roncole. And the baby’s name was Giuseppe Verdi.

Years later, this same Verdi would witness, finally, the unification of Italy—gone were all foreign troops and rulers, French, Austrian and Spanish. Although that event would bring him happiness, his presence on Earth would mark another milestone in Italian culture. No small feat was this conquest of his, attaining a high place in the country’s history. After all, Italy had been, and is, the longest uninterrupted active culture the world has ever witnessed—from the Etruscans to today. In the realm of the arts it has produced colossus after colossus—Virgil, Giotto, Dante, Da Vinci, Palestrina, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Bellini, Manzoni, Croce, D’Annunzio, Eco, to name just a few . Verdi was to become the crowning jewel of the Italian 19th Century—a century that many consider the pinnacle of Western Culture. Life itself had determined that he was going to be a huge composer, a defining creator in the pantheon of the immortals. Interestingly, from his childhood on, Verdi himself would celebrate his birthday on the 9th of every October. His mother had told him that such was the date of his birth, and he was always, as William Berger said in 2000, “a man of habit”.

Let us review Verdi’s historical context. After Napoleon’s downfall in 1815, the Congress of Vienna rendered Parma onto Marie Louise, Napoleon’s wife and daughter of the Austrian emperor. Thus, Nabucco’s famed chorus Va pensiero would be transformed, by Verdi’s admirers and Italians at large, from the flight of the Jews from Egypt into a rallying cry against the occupying Austrians. Verdi’s biographical details, cover parallel ups and downs of Italy’s XIX century history—from his years in Busseto, first as organist and later as member of Antonio Barezzi’s prosperous household, including marriage to his daughter Margherita, going on to his meteoric career as Richard Wagner’s major rival, his many trials and tribulations, his lengthy affair with soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, first as lover later as husband; then to glorious last years in Milan and his death there in 1901. The minutiae of Verdi’s biography can of course be checked in myriads of books. More interesting, however, would be to comment briefly on some aspects of his music and his artistic legacy.

Verdi was the direct musical heir of Rossini and Donizetti. From them he learned the Italianate treatment of the human voice, the breath of an aria, the beauties of duets and trios and, above all, the concertante ensembles, ranging from five to eight or more voices—a constructive manipulation first splendidly developed by Mozart, later by Beethoven’s Fidelio, and finally in Verdi’s constant varied use. Indeed, Verdi was a superb melodist, one of the most remarkable in music history, a clear descendant of Mozart, Bellini, Chopin and Schubert. Verdi redefined the use of melody, making it directly connected to humanity, with all the color and passion of daily existence. His melodic manipulations were the language proper to a given character, and he configured his horizontal levels with care and developmental finesse, always infusing them with elements of surprise and sophistication. Verdi was able to mold time and space magically, and in such ways that even the most absurd constriction of those elements would seem invariably natural and most effective. With a few musical strokes he delineated a given character, so perfectly as to make him or her clear and ever present in the spectator’s mind. Verdi’s orchestration was never obtrusive or overwhelming. With assured hand his instruments always sounded right when underlying a dramatic situation; marks of refinement and delicacy balanced commandingly both the massive choral moments and the endings of acts. The use of the clarinet and the cello, for example, quite possibly Verdi’s favorite instruments, stress invariably some of the most poignant and tender moments in his operas, and those same instruments even paved the way for many early XX century orchestral palettes of composers like Respighi, Delius and even Debussy. Upon hearing the mighty Dies Irae of his Requiem, one feels that Verdi was updating Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

Even in his most complex moments, Verdi’s music reached the Italian public directly and profoundly. Verdi’s Italian XIX Century was a triumphal one. By the end of his life Verdi had become a wealthy man. Besides being an acclaimed composer, he was a successful landlord, a member of the Italian Parliament in a unified Italy, and had enough income as to be able to build and establish that touching institution, the Casa di Riposo in Milan, destined to become the comfortable retirement dwelling of senior, retired musicians. In his own lifetime, however, Verdi’s music was mostly unknown beyond Italy’s boundaries. In Germany, for example, his music was slowly taken in, although musicologists and critics at the time put him down as a minor composer—Meyerbeer, and above all mighty Wagner, looming over largely and potently. Performances of his works ran sporadically in Saint Petersburg, Paris, New York, Buenos Aires, London, Vienna, or Rio de Janeiro. In many of the larger cities of the Americas, for example, there were operative Wagnerian Societies, but not Verdian ones. Novelist Franz Werfel, in the 1920s, wrote extensively on Verdi, and subsequently German opera houses began paying closer attention to his music. Then in the 1930s, due to the writings of Francis Toye, the English-speaking world, too, began hearing Verdi’s operas more frequently. Whatever opposition to Verdi had existed—from English critic Ernest Newman, who continued to spew forth negative opinions about that “second rate musician” named Verdi, to Pierre Boulez’ vitriolic disregard for “the um-pah-pah composer”—by the late 1950s it was obvious that Verdi’s universal appeal had won out. Writers began referring to the “Verdian Renaissance,” while discovering hidden treasures in Simon Boccanegra, praising the harmonic refinements of Otello, feeling amazed at the wildest moments of La Forza del Destino, or at the depths of Don Carlo. Even critics dared to mention that a few bars from Rigoletto outbalanced and overshadowed all the atonality and twelve-tonism of the XX Century. Verdi, undoubtedly, was not going to disappear. Scholars began to consider if they had not erred by misjudging Verdi, after all. By the 1960s, every major and minor opera house on the planet was playing Verdi’s operas, in many cases more often than the Mozart’s, Puccini’s or even Wagner’s, Verdi’s arch-rival. When in 1978 Julian Budden published his erudite and impressive three-volume analysis of Verdi’s operas, the composer from tiny Roncole had already become Italy’s most precious modern cultural asset.

Expressing concern and amazement of why even at present many scholars, musicologists and critics still keep putting down Verdi by treating him as a secondary composer. William Berger, for example, puts forward a fascinating theory: he considers Verdi’s operas dangerous…because they cannot be killed. Berger wisely remarks that, while certainly old-fashioned, Verdi’s operas are never passé. Even if today’s world today is different from Verdi’s, the humanity with which he developed his dramatic characters remains eternal and distant from fashion and changing ethics. New operas come and go, and even when launched with a marketing machinery that would have been the envy of Wagner and Stravinsky, they quickly fade away, all the while Verdi’s remain at the forefront. Other composers throughout history, operatic ones or not, have certainly produced more intricate works than Verdi’s, especially regarding construction, philosophical considerations or achievement in harmony or orchestration. Verdi’s music persists vital and alive almost two centuries after being put on paper. One wonders, then, if revolutionary composers like Machaut, De Lasso, Monteverdi, Johann Christian Bach, Beethoven, Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner or Schoenberg remain more present in the public eye than composers who inherited a given musical vocabulary and perfected it exultingly, such as the elder Bach, or Schubert, or Brahms, or Verdi. At the core of eventual permanence or disappearance remains the fact that, beyond innovation, beyond initial shock, beyond fashion, beyond fireworks, beyond biographical entrapment, the intrinsic value and honesty of any artistic creation is what persists, what remains with us throughout the ages. Verdi is one of those few composers who have managed to transcend the limits of his own time. He remains very much in the limelight, and, at present even obscure operas of his, like La Battaglia di Legnano, Stiffelio, Il Corsaro, or Alzira, his supposed ugly duckling, are part of the repertoire of many opera companies.

Historically, Verdi’s music ran parallel to the unification of Italy. The composer himself became a coalescing artistic creator on a par with Garibaldi, Vittorio Emanuelle or Count Camillo Cavour, the political dramatis personae of the final emergence of Italy as a truly independent kingdom ruled by the House of Savoy, with no more Hapsburgs, Bourbons or Louis-Philippes dictating the country’s destiny. Such socio-historical developments that framed Verdi’s musical inventiveness of course aided the composer’s career, since Verdi became a symbol of national pride and quickly became an emblematic patriotic icon. Did the historical developments of the Risorgimento influence Verdi’s music? Yes and no. While his fame in Italy rose parallel to each triumph towards Italian unification, thus making his life easier both financially and artistically, Verdi himself never changed his aesthetic or technical creeds because of what was taking place around him In reality, he kept his art and public life separate. He continued writing operas that, with the exception of La Traviata, Luisa Miller and Stiffelio (the first verismo operas ever written), all dwelt in the past.

One of the exceptions to his operatic creation was Verdi’s excursion into the realm of religious music. Verdi himself was strongly anti-clerical, yet remained a deeply religious person all his life, a Roman Catholic at heart if not in deed. Famed Italian poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni died in May 1873. The city of Milan, so centered in Manzoni’s writings, commissioned Verdi to write a Requiem to commemorate the first anniversary of the poet’s death. Some time back Verdi had written, for a project that never materialized, a Libera me segment for a Rossini Requiem, to be created by several Italian composers of the time. That earlier piece became the inspirational spark for Verdi’s acclaimed Requiem, one of his most moving works, unequaled in the genre with the possible exceptions of Mozart’s and Berlioz’s. There were to be a few more digressions into the vastness of sacred Christian music. A Pater Noster from 1873, the same year of his Requiem, for five-part chorus, and an Ave Maria from 1880, for soprano and strings, were to be followed by Quattro pezzi sacri, composed between 1886 and 1897. They consisted of Laudi alla Vergine Maria (1886, for unaccompanied female chorus), another Ave Maria (1889, for unaccompanied chorus—the most musically advanced piece that Verdi ever wrote), Te Deum (1895-1896, for double chorus and orchestra) and Stabat Mater (1896-1897, for chorus and orchestra). Published in 1896 by Ricordi, they were premiered at La Scala through the good deeds of Arrigo Boito—the composer of Mefistofele and the librettist of Verdi’s two last operas, an inseparable amico of Verdi during his Winter years who helped so dearly in the dissemination and publication of the composer’s works.

Verdi’s other non-operatic works constitute a catalogue that by itself would be the pride of many composers. Nineteen songs, composed between 1838 and 1894, two piano works (Valzer, 1852, resurrected by Nino Rota in 1963 and orchestrated by him as the music for the film Il Leopardo, and Romanza senza parole, 1884), a well-known, much performed String Quartet in E minor (1873), and five works for orchestra, including three symphonies. To this extra catalogue, one must add two non-sacred choral works: Suona la tromba (1848), a hymn for chorus—Verdi’s only foray into patriotic music—and Inno delle Nazioni (1862), a cantata for tenor, chorus and orchestra on a text by Boito.

Would it be possible for a new Verdi to be born today, to create and to prosper in today’s Italy? Impossible!. Verdi was the culmination of a privileged moment in Western Culture that no longer exists. The structure and characteristics that nurtured and formed him have totally disappeared.

Music is the most complex of all the arts, the most abstract, the last to materialize in its most decanted manifestation in any given civilized time. Witness any moment of Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and you’ll observe that, while theatre, sculpture, painting, poetry and even philosophy turn up splendidly active and developed, music is the last indicator of the human intellect to appear fully matured. Great composers were the pinnacle of one single moment in Western Culture. Bach was not born in the Amazon jungle, Haydn did not manifest himself on the steppes of Mongolia, nor Bruckner the product of the heart of Africa. All the important composers in history were the handiwork of very sophisticated and evolved societies, and those societies needed to have the structural and socio-economic enhancement required to nurture those composers.

The type of music Giuseppe Verdi gave us was the direct exudate of Italy’s 19th Century: a stratified, non-equalitarian community where religion was still a powerful ingredient not only of cult but of creativity. Theatres and publishers promoted operas, and the populace demanded that musical medium as an everyday form of entertainment within an educational system that taught the young the meaning and worth of artistic expressions, and with a citizenry that learned to respect, value and applaud the most illustrious creators. Verdi was born, grew and flourished in the midst of that fellowship. Today’s cultural climate is radically different. Hierarchical values are no longer accepted, and one hears continuous proclamations of a tabula rasa formula that proclaims that Beethoven’s art is as valid as the utilitarian furniture concocted by a carpenter, Handel is today’s commercial composer, and Mahler is substituted by the local rapper. Today’s equivalents of the old opera lovers are crowds that digest doses of car chase and super explosion movies. God has been replaced by recreational drugs, and the new coterie’s role models are the baseball player, the rock-and-roll semi-naked guitarist or the boxer capable of inflicting bloody punches that grossly disfigure the faces of opponents. On top of it all, the speed of life demands all things short, fast, explosive, clip-like, shattering, rapidly changing, visually kaleidoscopic. All these lineaments have produced a hysterical, non-developmental, repetitive loud noise, accompanied by clapping of hands, tribal body movements and hypnotic rhythmic drones—elements, all of them, entirely alien to Verdi’s art.

It took centuries of artistic development to arrive at Verdi. With all its evident faults, Western Culture was an awe-inspiring pyramid, and out of its tip protruded the great artists. The First World War shattered the pyramid; the Second one leveled whatever remained. It will take long hundreds of years to rebuild that Culture, although it will be quite different from the one now gone. Verdi’s music remains at present a resplendent legacy enjoyed by survival minorities, but it cannot be the forceful and real expression of the dissonant present, so devoid of long hours of reflection and peaceful bliss, of romantic utterances, elegance, reposeful pulse—so given to irreverence, to cynicism, histrionics, and sadly disrespectful of history.

When life left Verdi in Milan that early afternoon of January 27, 1901, the entire city went on a death vigil. Boito, Teresa Stolz (the Czech soprano who was briefly Verdi’s lover and then friend of his and of Giuseppina Strepponi), the Ricordis, Maria Carrara and her family, and a few close friends were all present. Silent crowds gathered in front of the Grand Hotel, where Verdi spent his last days. The government declared two days of National Mourning. The funeral cortege paraded through the city’s streets, filled with two hundred thousand people, and, after a brief blessing at a church, entered the Cimitero Monumentale, where Verdi’s body was placed next to that of his wife Giuseppina. Thirty-two days later, both bodies were re-entombed in a crypt at the Casa di Riposo. This time the crowd swelled to three hundred thousand. Toscanini conducted a chorus of eight hundred and twenty singers who intoned Va pensiero. An impressive chapter of Italian history had come to a close.

Giuseppe Verdi must have been very conscious of his own importance and of the measure and meaning of his legacy. His gift to Italy, through his music, was immense. What he probably never envisioned was the permanent omnipresence of his artistic creation and the absolute universality that his music would attain. All throughout the 20th century, his operas swept aside doubts, criticisms, wrong evaluations and ephemeral artistic fads of every kind. His overtures, his arias, his ensemble numbers, his choruses invaded all of Europe, the Americas and both the Far and Near East. Like scimitars, they crossed plains, climbed mountains and put to rest many other radical compositional voices that had tried so fervently to dismiss him. In the threshold of the present century Verdi reigns more supreme than ever, his operas more performed than ever. The composer who Gabriele D’Annunzio described as “a man who sang and wept for all,” entered history as an Italian modern pillar of a multi-millenary culture. That man, Giuseppe Verdi Uttini, gifted the world a glorious treasure of sound and emotional charge that transcends aesthetic pronouncements and geographical location. For that we are most grateful, a debt full of admiration, joy, exultation and beauty.

Santa Fe, NM, August of 2013

Copyright © 2013 by Aurelio de la Vega