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I’ll tell you right away that this review is long. And I don't even know if they'll publish it, to be honest, since it's my first one...
It all started with a stroll through a bookstore in the center without wanting to buy anything, with the precise goal of mooching off a bit of reading from pages taken here and there at random (in other words, "with empirical method", as Mannheimer would say). Outside, it was pouring rain sent by God (or someone on his behalf) and, as statistics claim - according to which 8 out of 10 Italians only enter a bookstore when it rains - the place was packed with people. The various Faletti, Highsmith, Coelho, Brown, Smith, Cornwell, displayed prominently on the shelves with their good ol' "Xth edition" band, were flying off the shelves like hotcakes. It was at that very moment that I remembered what my grandmother always advised me:
"Don't buy, nor read, nor even gift books that are:
1) wrapped in a dust jacket; 2) wrapped in any kind of award ribbon; 3) written by a woman in an advanced state of menopause; 4) written by an author with a double surname; 5) equipped, on the back cover, with the enthusiastic comment of another writer; 6) defined as a "classic"; 7) written by people who appeared on the Maurizio Costanzo Show or in Vespa's living room; 8) among the top ten bestsellers; 9) written by authors from areas classified as "depressed"; 10) found by the shop assistant in less than 3 minutes and with fewer than three curses and swears".
You can understand that this strict Decalogue, which I've always tried to scrupulously follow, severely limited my search field. Beset by such regrets, I sadly made my way to the "music" section, near which I remembered I'd been looking for some opera librettos for months, which were hard to find. There were lots of them, there. Practically all of them. And my eye fell on Rigoletto. I opened it, flipped through it, read it... and fell into an indescribable state of despondency: it wasn't just a simple booklet! Oh no! It was a booklet with translation: on one side the Italian text and on the other... the Italian text!!! In two words: it translated the language of the opera into contemporary Italian. An example is needed, I realize.
Rigoletto, scene one, act one: that womanizer (can I say that?.. Or is it advertising?...) the Duke of Mantua, addressing a courtier: "Della mia bella incognita borghese toccare il fin dell'avventura io voglio"... Translation: "I'd like my flirt with that woman I know only by sight to finally conclude". Are you drunk or what? Who needs such nonsense? And then... "flirt", nowadays, only Silvana Giacobini and Cristina Parodi use that word, come on! Is this supposed to be modern?...
And I couldn't help but think back to Giuseppe Verdi’s last two compositions: Otello and Falstaff.
It was 1887 when Verdi - now 77 years old - completed the score for the first one, 16 years after his previous opera, Aida. The first photographs of this long and (musically) sterile span of time show Verdi like a postcard from the Circolo Arci: in some unspecified park, like any retiree, feeding pigeons with a happy and inconclusive look; strolling in Milan arm in arm with his ex-concubine (now legitimized) Giuseppina Strepponi; playing cards with his old friends from Busseto, drinking wine and always seeming to have a curse ready on his lips (like a Guccini ante litteram). He was even commemorated while still alive, with a bust unveiled at La Scala, with the Swan of Busseto probably burying himself in peasant exasperations.
If I’m not mistaken, Arbasino said: "An artist’s career unfolds in three stages: "brilliant promise, usual jerk, revered master". Well... Verdi had arrived at the last stage, the one where you get lifetime achievement awards and the chances of being invited by Daniele Piombi skyrocket.
The Scapigliati were already pressing on, just like the "Longhairs" in '68 (there must be some relationship between revolution and scalp...)! "Bravo, well done, encore"! Now, however, get out of the way, Maestro! Make way for the young! And these Scapigliati treat Verdi like Cesare Cremonini would treat Don Backy today. And the Cesare Cremonini of that time was named Arrigo Boito, a dandy in his thirties whose behaviors would make even Giampiero Mughini complain. And how many things he had said to Verdi! He had really gone hard on him! This pomaded character, in 1863, had even written an anthem against Peppino, accused of having "soiled the altar of Italian art as if it were a brothel wall". Today, with the hostility between these two, they would have made a Reality Show... Back then, however, two memorable works emerged: Falstaff and Otello, indeed.
The idea came from the "producer", as we would call him today. Yes... it was Giulio Ricordi who foresaw a masterpiece (actually, two..) in that uproar and proposed the idea to both. And Peppino, at more or less 80 years old, sits down in earnest and produces two completely different works from the previous ones, capable of counterbalancing his entire past and looking at it through the eyes of the "young", and therefore, mocking himself. And that dandified Boito puts his miraculous pen at the service of the one he always opposed, providing him with words that integrate better than those he had written for his own music ("Mefistofele"). Sometimes these things happen in the world of art... Nine times out of ten we find ourselves facing a wonder.
The same thing happened to Lucio Battisti, if you think about it. Having reached the stage of "revered master", he decided to challenge himself once more. He retreated to a voluntary exile in Brianza (he evidently had to atone for some guilt...), took an unknown, baroque, hermetic lyricist (Pasquale Panella) and tailored new music around his disconnected sentences, "capable of counterbalancing his entire past" of non-sarà-un'avventura-che-ne-sai-tu-d'un-campo-di-grano-motocicletta-dieci-accapi and challenging the new. And so does Verdi, who, in Falstaff, has Mrs. Quickly say "Povera donna..." with the same repeated notes as Violetta in "Traviata" an octave lower, quoting, paraphrasing, and mocking himself.
And thus Verdi, spurred by Ricordi, sets to work with passion. And his passions have always been two: the outcasts (or the "marginalized", as we would say today...) and Shakespeare. He composed music for quite a few unfortunates, indeed... Rigoletto, La Traviata, the slave Aida. But he only did a few Shakespeares: only one, if I remember correctly (Macbeth). And so he takes the catalog of good old William Shakepearespear and decides to handle a black man (yes... "black man", not "African-American" or "person of color") and a now old fat man who, however, hasn't lost his delight for wine, women, and jesting. The differences between the two compositions are vast: for starters, the first is a serious opera. Very serious. The second is one of the funniest pieces you can listen to, if you exclude Flavia Vento's intervention at the Margherita Congress. Yet, the two works are connected by some very evident threads. The language, first and foremost. Which is something of supernatural beauty and makes Francesco Maria Piave (the greatest of Verdi's librettists) seem 200 years old. The music, secondly: those who say Verdi is for marching bands should listen to these two little works to realize how much they’re mistaken, and how capable this gentleman was of challenging himself. It’s hard to believe that the author of Falstaff is the same as Rigoletto, if not impossible. If you listen to Falstaff, there isn’t a single piece of music that stays in your head after listening. The old "closed form" has gone to be blessed.
What remains is a sensation of mixing, with the characters - and the music each finds themselves in - chasing each other, never quite meeting. Except at the end, when Boito makes Falstaff, now tired and satisfied, say "a choir and let's end the scene!", tearing him away from the stage fiction. This before all the characters come to life in the last mutual chase and meet - this time for real - on Alice's high C, which closes the opera.
At that point, with his phrase, Falstaff has released the characters from their cage, and they no longer exist. There are THE PEOPLE. Who - as was common 100 years before and which Verdi had always opposed, considering it an antitheatrical expedient - gather on the proscenium in front of the public and begin a whirlwind fugue on the words "Everything in the world is a jest".
The Falstaff, the last opera of Verdi, concludes thus, on stage. Outside, however, with the eighty-year-old composer carried in triumph through the streets of Milan by the cheering crowd. And with Arrigo Boito who, like Nanni Moretti in Ecce Bombo, a little to the side, near a backlit window, after asking himself "will I be noticed more if I come and stay on the sidelines or if I don't come at all?", seems to say... "Giuseppe knows how to play the young man very well".
p.s. I recommend two editions:
Otello: DECCA Edition with Del Monaco, Tebaldi, Protti - Conducted by von Karajan
Falstaff: DEUTSCH Edition with Taddei and Karajan again on the Podium
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