Alessandro Manzoni (1785-1873) must not be confused with his contemporary, the republican patriot Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872), though both stand as saints in the hagiography of United Italy. Of noble Milanese blood, Manzoni began his career as a poet and playwright whose works won the admiration of Goethe. At 40 he began his greatest (and effectively his last) work, the sprawling historical novel I promessi sposi ("The Plighted Spouses," usually called "The Betrothed."
It is safe to say that I promessi sposi is the national epic of modem Italy. Set in the time of the Thirty Years War, _and originally intended to focus on a historical robber baron (or "godfather") who appears in it as "The Unnamed" (Il Innominato), it both captures the essence of Italian character, and tells us why Italian opera is what it is and why it could not be otherwise. Full of lovable peasants, selfless priests, swaggering villains, comic parsons, and authoritarian parents, it tells how, by evoking their better selves, a people survives before the onslaughts of the Four Apocalyptic Horsemen. It moves from ambush to brawl to slapstick to riot to plot and so on, through melodramatic but irresistibly gripping scenes of well-nigh miraculous conversions, deathbed repentences, and unhoped-for reunions, against an unending diorama of Italy and its people. Surely only its size has prevented its becoming a successful opera itself (Ponchielli, Pizzetti, and someone named Petrella all tried). I have taken to teaching it in recent years, in a sophomore novel course, with resounding success, and I recommend it, even in the sometimes rather flatfooted prose of the translation available in paperbacks, to anyone who can handle the novels of Scott and/or Victor Hugo.
Verdi reverenced Manzoni both as a novelist and as an inspiration for the nationalist movement, though he met him--somewhat overawed--only five years before the writer's death. That event was ostensibly the inspiration for the Requiem (often called the "Manzoni" Requiem); certainly it was its catalyst. But Verdi had had Requiem on his mind for some time. In 1868 Rossini had died. The two composers were acquainted, and corresponded occasionally (Rossini once addressed a letter from ''Rossini, one-time composer and fourth-class pianist, to the illustrious composer Verdi, fifth-class pianist"). But Verdi recognized that to the world at large, R-O-S-S-I-N-I spelled Italy as no other name then did. He reasoned therefore that a fitting tribute would be a funeral mass collaborated on by the leading Italian composers of the day. Except for the name of Verdi himself, and perhaps those of Antonio Bazzini and Federico Ricci, the list--Buzzola, Pedrotti, Cagnoni, Nini, Boucheron, Coccia, Gaspari, Plantania, Petrella (again!), end Mabellini--suggests the transitory nature of fame. The work was apparently completed, but, thanks to narrow-minded and venial performers and entrepeneurs, the scheduled performance never came off. The score is said to repose in the archives of G. Ricordi in Milan, awaiting some enterprising record producer.
When Manzoni died, Verdi decided to go it solo, using the concluding "Libera me" (Deliver me, 0 Lord, from death eternal") he had written for Rossini. But, in my opinion, Manzoni's death, (whether Verdi consciously realized it or not) really provided the occasion for him to come to artistic terms with--to make a statement about--the fact of death itself. No doubt he was feeling his sixty years, and perhaps he intuited that the Requiem might stand as a final utterance, so to speak. (Quite untypically, there was a fourteen-year lapse before the next big composition, Otello.) But--with exceptions that form parentheses at the beginning and the end--his operas are regularly more gloomladen and death-haunted than those of any major composer I can think of, and one might reasonably guess that he was haunted by death. Perhaps he was ''naturally'' of a saturnine disposition, but it is hard to believe that the loss of his young wife and their two children within a period of less than two years, and his own serious illness, did not leave his psyche irreparably disfigured; certainly they almost terminated his burgeoning career at the time. Moreover, Verdi had little use for religious dogma and less for the Church, and was, at best, an agnostic. Perhaps, like his Iago, he believed Heaven un vecchia fola (an old wives' tale); furthermore, fate deprived him of the only dependable immortality such a pragmatist might envision, for he was never to father another child. Small wonder then that the operas are filled with fathers bereft of their children, whole families extirpated, and the young cut off in their prime.
If I am right, some statement on death, some attempt, in the language he knew best, to come to terms with it, should have not been surprising, even from the a-religious Verdi. But there were those who were surprised, not to say dismayed. The piece is not the soothing lullaby that many had come to expect--far from it! The Church refused to countenance it, and the conductor Hans von Bulow, who happened to be in town during the premiere, but who stayed away, took out a newspaper ad dissociating himself from the ''spectacle'' perpetrated by this "corrupter of musical taste." (Years later Bulow was forced to eat his words, and apologized by letter.) And even today, when Verdi's star shines brighter than ever after the expectable eclipse of reaction, there are those who patronizingly call the Requiem "Verdi's greatest opera'' and snigger about the influence of Italian village bands.
I don't know about others (de gustibus non est disputandum, and I hope you'll take that rubric to heart!), but I shall unhesitatingly proclaim the Requiem the one work I would take to that mythical desert island. The first time I ever heard a note of it was the night the apartment building behind us (with a number of its inhabitants) was destroyed by fire, and Nancy Barringer, with whose family I lived, sat at the window helplessly watching and singing the Libera me to herself. The thing left an indelible impression on me and I shortly afterwards acquired the then-new Tullio Serafin recording (Caniglia-Stignani-Gigli-Pinza) on ten shellac discs, with which I once hitchhiked sixty miles to a desert island (actually the paternal farm). Since then I've heard many "live" performances and bought numberless recordings, and only once has the piece not stood my hair on end. That was a dreadfully off-night performance by the admirable Robert Shaw, redeemed for me only by the substitution of the magnificent Paul Plishka for a then more famous basso, alas! slightly over the hill; I went home greatly troubled, asking myself if my taste had really been that bad all those years, but I put on the Solti recording and was immediately reassured.
What do I like about it? Oh, so many things--the irresistible Verdian melody, the infallible and inventive orchestration, and, of course, the lacerating drama which sucks one into the work like a maelstrom. But I think what I really admire is the honesty of it--the unflinching stare into the inevitable final darkness (his own and the universe's) beyond which he can discern nothing more solid than hope. George Martin notes that Verdi evokes ''the ancient feelings and fears of primitive man peering nervously into the night," and adds that the Requiem is religious in the sense that it recognizes the fears and needs of man and suggests that there is some sort of Creator or Being with whom man ought to develop a relationship."
And then there are the innumerable high spots--the perfunctory, neutral, grey, ritual chanting of the choir at the outset, suddenly interrupted by the soloists, doubtful that death is eternal rest, each in his own way crying out in mortal anguish for mercy, only themselves to be silenced by the awesome explosion of the Dies irae--the vision of the Last Judgment with its screaming piccoios, its snarling trombones, its off-center thunderclaps from the big drum, and its ululating voices. Or the Michelangelesque fresco of angelic trumpets filling the charred sky in the Tuba mirum. Or the wreathing melody of the women's voices in the Ricordare ("Remember, Holy Jesus, that I am the reason for Your life, and so do not destroy me utterly.'') Or the infinite submission of the tenor in the Hostias ( "We offer sacrifices and prayers") which my mind's ear always hears in the molten silver of the Gigli voice. Or finally, the stark terror of the soprano in the Libera me, which no reassurances from choir or orchestra can quite allay.
I look forward to this new recording, partly because I want to see what else can be said about the score, partly because of my growing admiration of Alain Lombard (his recorded Faust is the best I've heard), and partly because I expect good things of the soloists. Pliskha I've praised repeatedly in these columns. Mignon Dunn, the Metropolitan's regal alto, who is not afraid to let her big voice sound like an alto's, had appeared on records all too infrequently. I believe this is (at least Stateside) a recording debut for Ermanno Mauro, a stalwart at the New York City Opera in recent years. Only the South Africa soprano, Joyce Barker (who has also sung at the NYCO) is unknown to me.
