Verdi's Theater: Creating Drama through Music by Gilles De Van , Gilda Roberts (review)

Abstract

MLR, 96. , 200I Verdi'sTheater:Creating Drama Through Music. By GILLESDE VAN. Transl. by GILDA ROBERTS. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. I998. 424 pp. /47-95 (; 9.95 paperbound). Verdi's Theater is the Englishtranslationof an abridgedand slightlyrevisedversionof Verdi: Un Theatre enmusique, published by Fayardin 1992 and translatedinto Italian in its entirety in i994 (Florence: La Nuova Italia). Let me immediately reassure English-speakingreaders:the author's interventions have definitely improved the book. The arguments are more cogent and convincing, and the occasional referencesto the modernreceptionofVerdi'soperasin France,interestingto French readers, but rather out of place in an English translation, have been eliminated. This exploration of Verdi's dramaturgyhas much that is new to offer all readers, regardlessof theirculturalcontext. De Van teaches the history of both opera and Italian literatureat the Sorbonne Nouvelle. This fact might explain what is perhaps the most valuable aspect of his book, one that might be especiallyappealing to readersof thisjournal, namely, the author'sprofound knowledge of European literatureand the crucialpart that this knowledge plays in his investigation of Verdi'sdramaturgy.Let me hasten to add, however, that Verdi's Theater does not sufferfrom the problem that often plagues studies of opera written by scholarswhose home base is literature;never does the reader have the impressionthat he or she might have in hand an essay on spoken theatre. De Van knowsthat in opera 'drama'is the resultof the interaction of text, image and music, and he has both the technical expertiseand the criticalacumen to deal with these discoursestogether. The author's argument rests on the hypothesis that Verdi's evolution as a dramatistcan be best explained as a gradual shift between two distinct theatrical aesthetics. The first,explored in the chapter entitled 'Melodrama', is an aesthetics of monumentality, of gestures and tableaux, of fixed characters,styles and forms, whose roots are found in the dramaturgyof European popular theatre of the early nineteenth century,especiallythe melodrames of the Parisianboulevards.The second, dealt with in Chapter 7, 'Music Drama', is centrally concerned with mobility, nuance, and even contradiction, and opens up the possibility of ambiguity, detachment, and irony. This binaryoppositionmight recallthe old dichotomybetween, on the one hand, what some have described as the 'directness'and 'sincerity',others the 'bluntness' and 'vulgarity'of the trilogia popolare (Rigoletto, IItrovatore, La traviata, 185I-53), and, on the other hand, the Shakespeare-inspired'subtlety'and 'chiaroscuro'(or, in a similaropposition, 'blandness','lackof thrust'and 'intellectualism')of Otello (1887) and Falstaff(I893).The dangeris not so much in thisoppositionper se, as in the fact that it lends itself easily to master narratives of progress, from simplicity to complexity, or decay, from directnessand sincerityto obliqueness and insincerity. De Van takes fastidious care to avoid these pitfalls, constantly emphasizing that dramaturgicaldifferences are no more and no less than differences:they do not necessarilyimplyvaluejudgements. Perhapsinevitably,however, he is at his best in the two central chapters, 'Metamorphosesi' and 'Metamorphosesn', in which he explores in detail the transitionfrom the early aestheticsof melodrama to the late one of music drama.These pages abound in illuminatingdiscussionsof singleworks and of the individualnumbersthat constitutethem. I especiallyenjoyed the sections that trace the evolution of specific themes and figures in Verdi's oeuvre, such as 'Revenge and curse', 'The sorceress','The decline of the hero' and 'The advent of woman'. 223 I have only two minor reservations.First,De Van takesa rathercavalierattitude toward recent Verdian literature. Sometimes he gives the impression of having come acrossimportantessaystoo late to include them fullyin his discussion,and, as with PieroWeiss'swidely readarticleon 'Verdiand the Fusionof Genres',he simply mentions them in a footnote. Secondly, there are tracesof the old-fashioned(andto my mind no longer defensible) opinion that the language of Verdi's librettos is 'pompous' and 'meaningless' (p. 83), 'vapid' and 'rathersurrealist'(p. 85). Unless we are prepared to criticize in these terms the language of Alfieri's tragedies or Manzoni's poems, we should stop using them for Piave, Cammarano and their colleagues.Apartfrom these minor quibbles, Verdi's Theater is a very good book, one that should prove especially useful to those scholars of European literature and culture who are in search of a truly interdisciplinaryassessmentof the composer's dramaturgy. CHRISTCHURCH...