Primal scenes: Verdi in analysis

Abstract

Anniversary years always prompt revaluation as well as celebration, and the centenary of Verdi's death in 2001 was no exception. The conference for which the articles in this issue were written came at the end of a year packed with Verdi celebrations in both opera houses and academic settings. In terms of performance, a handful of ostentatious critical failures in 2001 sparked new debate about two old issues – the pros and cons of revisionist staging in general, and the degree to which contemporary productions should be faithful to what we can glean of the composer's intentions. These edgy, sometimes irreverent productions prompted the critic for the New Yorker magazine, Alex Ross, to declare that Verdi should be exempt from the rigours and indignities of Regietheater. While the abstraction of Wagnerian drama might reward updated settings spiked with flashes of contemporary social critique, he suggested, Verdi's operas work because the composer ‘meant every word’ and because their dramatic force is propelled by unadulterated emotion and sharp juxtapositions, qualities too direct and ‘site-specific’ to tolerate stagings that draw out hidden contexts or ironize dramatic conventions. In what quickly began to sound like a back-handed defence, Ross pronounced: ‘To the analytical mind such music can look crude, even vulgar on the page. Only in live performances, when the momentum begins to build and the voices become urgent, does it catch fire. But how do you go about analyzing momentum and urgency?’