The Last Laugh
The nigh omni-competent Garry Wills has a piece in the current “New York Review of Books” on the collaboration between Giuseppe Verdi and his last and greatest librettist, Arrigo Boito. The article is only available to subscribers, but it begins:
Verdi had a great advantage over Rossini’s Otello (1816) in composing his own Otello (1887). It was an advantage, even, over his earlier Shakespearean opera, Macbeth (1847). Verdi had as his librettist, by the 1880s, Arrigo Boito, a highly cultured poet and musician, a man as serious about getting to the true meaning of Shakespeare as was Verdi himself.
Their collaboration produced the two stupendous Shakespearean masterpieces of Verdi’s old age: Otello and Falstaff. The latter, the final operatic offspring of the eighty year old Verdi, ends famously with a cosmic fugue whose words are: “Everything in the world is a prank, and man is born a clown … Everyone laughs at others’ folly — but the one who laughs last, laughs best!”
Here is a fine performance of that final scene.
Periodically I sing the praises of the online musical service Rhapsody. I don’t have any stake in the company; I’m just a satisfied customer. I checked Rhapsody (which, unfortunately, is very poorly indexed) and found 21 complete recordings of the opera, among them the Metropolitan Opera Broadcasts of December 16, 1967; April 5, 1975; March 8, 1986; and April 6, 2002. Basically it’s for PC users, since functionality is limited on the Mac.
What a way to finish off one’s career, with a huge, complicated, yet humorous fugue.
But let’s also hear it for Boito, no slouch as a composer (e.g., Mefistofele). I hunted for a youtube version of the terrific prologue to that opera, but could only get a concert performance. Never mind — the music is glorious.
Sorry — omitted the link to Boito.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pasYXOAGnz0&feature=related
Nicholas,
Back, I think, in the 1970s the New York City Opera performed Boito’s “Mefistofele” to good effect. In Wills’ article he quotes a critic who has this to say:
“It was fortunate for us, and for Verdi, that among the younger generation there was this companion, so subtly intelligent, so unselfishly devoted. The more one learns of Boito the more he appears one of the noblest and purest spirits of the whole romantic movement.”
Just bought, for a song, 5 Dover scores of Verdi — Trav, Trov, Forza, Otello, Falstaff. Does Falstall shed retrospective light on comic elements in earlier works — Un ballo, Forza, but also Rigoletto (the Duke), Don Carlos (Eboli), Aida (Amneris), and Luisa Miller (the Duchess)? Even the comings and goings of Il Trovatore have a burlesque aspect.
The electrifying melodic invention of Il Trovatore is not a function of tragic passion only, but also of a devil-may-care sense of a great prank. The whole thing is gloriously over the top. The only explicit comedy is in the opening scene where the soldiers panic thinking they see the zingarella’s ghost, but the business about Leonora joining the convent, the confusions of the doddering Azucena and her naive puppet Manrico, and the impossible-to-take-seriously excitement of Di quella pira (“I must hasten to free my mother from being burnt at the stake, beloved, for I was a son ere I loved you; yes, yes I must hasten, hasten, first hear my high C!”) are the stuff of comedy. Even the infinitely touching La Traviata is not without a trace of comedy (Verdi on Violetta: “After all, she was just a floozie!”). Did he aim at a Shakespearian synthesis of tragic and comic?
Joseph,
the best way to buy Verdi is “for a song.” I’d say you got yourself quite a trov!
I like your characterization of “Il Trovatore:” “melodic invention, “gloriously over the top.”
I just came (better late than never) to the realization that “burlesque” comes from “burla.”
This …
“Everything in the world is a prank, and man is born a clown … Everyone laughs at others’ folly — but the one who laughs last, laughs best!”
… brought this to mind:
“Therefore I commend mirth, because there is nothing good for man under the sun except eating and drinking and mirth: for this is the accompaniment of his toil during the limited days of the life which God gives him under the sun.”