Carteggio Verdi-Somma

Abstract

The Verdi correspondence is enormous and enormously important. Through it we have a window into the workings of the operatic world of the last sixty years of the nineteenth century, into the thoughts and actions of a highly visible public figure living through the Risorgimento and the first forty years of the Italian state, into the artistic production of one of the greatest musical dramatists of all time. But it has also been extremely difficult to gain control over this material. The earliest significant publication, the so-called Copialettere, edited by Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio (Milan, 1913), is a deceptive book, incompletely presenting the drafts of letters present in the copy books located in the composer’s home at Sant’Agata and offering in an appendix a large assortment of documents, many partial, censored, or misdated. Translations based exclusively on the Copialettere (such as Charles Osborne’s 1972 The Letters of Giuseppe Verdi) simply perpetuate its many faults.