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The relationship between a father and daughter, a recurring theme in so many
of Verdi's operas, is the emotional centerpiece of this highly regarded but
infrequently performed work. Dmitri Hvorostovsky expertly embodies the title
role, a noble Italian politician who is forced to deal with treachery and rebellion.
The Houston Chronicle praised the Russian baritone's "gut-grabbing vocal heft,"
adding, "his stage presence was magnetic." He will be joined by Italian soprano
Barbara Frittoli, lauded for her "impassioned lyricism" by The New York Times.
Donald Runnicles conducts this grand, expansive, yet remarkably subtle score. The relationship between a father and daughter, a recurring theme in so many
of Verdi's operas, is the emotional centerpiece of this highly regarded but
infrequently performed work. Dmitri Hvorostovsky expertly embodies the title
role, a noble Italian politician who is forced to deal with treachery and rebellion.
The Houston Chronicle praised the Russian baritone's "gut-grabbing vocal heft,"
adding, "his stage presence was magnetic." He will be joined by Italian soprano
Barbara Frittoli, lauded for her "impassioned lyricism" by The New York Times.
Donald Runnicles conducts this grand, expansive, yet remarkably subtle score.
The opera is set in Genoa at a time when the city was ruled by opposing groups of patricians and plebeians. Against the background of political conflict is the personal enmity between the plebian Simon Boccanegra and the patrician Fiesco. Boccanegra is a famous seafarer who has led successful raids on Genoa's enemies. He fell in love with Maria, Fiesco's daughter, and they had a child. Fiesco forbade Maria to marry Boccanegra, who is of lower rank, and imprisoned her in his palace; the baby is being raised by a nurse outside the city. Paolo, a plebeian, plans to exploit Boccanegra's love for Maria to gain power for himself.
Prologue
Paolo and Pietro are discussing nominations for the plebian candidate in the coming election of a Doge. Paolo's choice is Simon Boccanegra. Paolo persuades Boccanegra to stand: if he becomes Doge, Fiesco could no longer refuse him the hand of his daughter Maria. Pietro rallies a crowd of citizens and Paolo persuades them to support Boccanegra.
Maria has died, and Fiesco swears vengeance on the man who has destroyed his family. Boccanegra is confronted by Fiesco, who does not tell him of Maria's death. Boccanegra offers reconciliation but Fiesco says he will only forgive him if Boccanegra returns his granddaughter. Boccanegra is unable to comply: he explains that the child has vanished.
Boccanegra discovers Maria's body. At that moment the people hail Boccanegra as their new Doge.
Twenty-five years have elapsed. The Doge has exiled many of his political opponents and confiscated their property. Among them is Fiesco, who has been living in the Grimaldi palace, under the name Andrea Grimaldi, plotting with other nobles to overthrow Boccanegra. Years earlier, the Grimaldi family discovered an orphan being cared for in a convent: with no idea of her real identity—she was the daughter of Maria and Boccanegra—the Grimaldis adopted her. They hoped that by pretending she was their daughter Amelia, who had just died, they would have an heir to their family fortune as their sons had been exiled.
ACT I
Scene 1
Amelia is waiting for her lover, Gabriele Adorno, a nobleman whose father was killed by Boccanegra. She reflects on her own sad childhood as an orphan. Suspecting Adorno of being involved in a political conspiracy against the Doge, Amelia warns him of the possible consequences.
An unexpected visit from the Doge is announced. Amelia, who fears the Doge has come to force her to marry Paolo, urges Adorno to ask Fiesco for permission to marry her. Fiesco agrees, telling Adorno of Amelia's adoption, but Adorno is undeterred.
Boccanegra surprises Amelia by granting a pardon to her exiled "brothers." She confesses that she loves another and will not marry Paolo. She tells Boccanegra that she was adopted, and Boccanegra realizes that she is his long-lost daughter. They are overjoyed to have found each other again.
When Paolo enters, Boccanegra tells him to give up any idea of marrying Amelia. Enraged, Paolo arranges for Amelia to be kidnapped.
Scene 2
In an assembly of patrician and plebeian councilors, Boccanegra urges peace between Genoa and Venice. An angry crowd is heard outside, pursuing Adorno and another nobleman through the streets. Boccanegra admits the populace and Adorno accuses him of abducting Amelia. As Adorno attacks the Doge, Amelia rushes in to protect him, without revealing that he is her father. She tells of her capture and indicates that someone else is to blame. Fighting breaks out between the patrician and plebeian factions. Boccanegra appeals for calm as Amelia urges Fiesco to end his conspiracy against the Doge. Turning to Paolo, Boccanegra forces him to curse the man responsible for kidnapping Amelia. Paolo curses himself in terror.
ACT II
Scene 1
Paolo sends for Adorno and Fiesco, whom he has arrested for treason, and poisons the Doge's carafe of water.
Paolo urges Fiesco to murder Boccanegra. Fiesco refuses and is taken back to his cell. Paolo, suggesting to Adorno that Amelia has been brought to the Doge's apartment because she is his mistress, now hopes to incite Adorno to murder Boccanegra.
Adorno accuses Amelia of being unfaithful. She cannot fully reassure him, though, without revealing that she is Boccanegra's daughter. As Boccanegra enters, Adorno hides. When Amelia tells Boccanegra that she would die for her beloved Adorno, Boccanegra agrees to pardon him, even though he is part of the conspiracy against the Doge.
Boccanegra drinks the poisoned water and falls asleep. Adorno is about to murder him when Amelia returns. Boccanegra wakes. He tells Adorno that Amelia is his daughter. Adorno, astounded, begs Amelia's forgiveness and offers his life to the Doge.
Outside, Paolo has incited a rebellion. Boccanegra bids Adorno join his enemies, but Adorno swears allegiance to the Doge. Boccanegra orders him to quell the fighting: if he succeeds, Amelia will be his reward.
Scene 2
The uprising has been put down and Paolo is condemned to death. Paolo tells Fiesco that he has poisoned Boccanegra and that he himself was responsible for Amelia's abduction. Fiesco is horrified. A chorus for the wedding of Amelia and Adorno is heard as Paolo is taken to his execution.
Boccanegra succumbs to the effects of the poison. Fiesco confronts him and Boccanegra recognizes the voice of his old enemy. He is overjoyed that they can now be reconciled and tells Fiesco that Amelia is his granddaughter. Fiesco reveals Paolo's treachery.
Adorno and Amelia arrive from the marriage ceremony to find the old enemies at peace with one another. Boccanegra summons the strength to tell Amelia that Fiesco is not only her guardian but also her grandfather. As Boccanegra dies, he names Adorno his successor as Doge.
Simon Boccanegra: Reconciling with the Past
by Thomas May
Like the film industry today, the business of opera as Verdi encountered it in Italy (and later in Paris) was one in which familiar formulas held sway. No matter how many box office successes the composer had acquired, it remained a risky venture to frustrate certain audience expectations; an adoring public was still perfectly capable of withholding its affection and conferring the chilliest of receptions when it felt disappointed.
Even in the middle of his career in the 1850s—when he was already recognized as the pre-eminent living Italian composer—Verdi experienced the humiliation of having his work rejected. The notorious fiasco that marred the premiere of La Traviata was reversed in short order with a more competent staging one year later. But in the case of Simon Boccanegra, more than two decades had elapsed—and opera fashions had irrevocably changed—before Verdi determined to reclaim the work for the stage, from which the opera had disappeared not long after it initial outing.
The first version of Simon Boccanegra (for convenience, let’s simply call it Boccanegra I) had its premiere in March 1857 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice—the same house where La Traviata had suffered its initial disgrace in 1853. Verdi himself described the reception as a “fiasco,” although it was closer to what we might characterize as lukewarm. Boccanegra I enjoyed relatively successful brief runs at several other opera houses in Italy. But its rude rejection by audiences at La Scala in Milan rekindled painful memories of Verdi’s most crushing failure as a young composer at the same theater, when Un Giorno di Regno (the only comic opera he would essay until Falstaff) was buried after a single performance. By the 1860s it was clear that Boccanegra I simply did not have “legs.” It seemed destined to fade into obscurity.
Several possible factors have been cited to account for the lackluster reception of Boccanegra I. A good deal of criticism at the time was leveled at the libretto, with it’s series of mistaken or disguised identities and related coincidences, which was prepared by Verdi’s long-time collaborator Francesco Maria Piave, along with Giuseppe Montanelli (the latter was brought on by the composer without Piave’s consent to supplement the verse, causing an embarrassing temporary rift with Verdi). Still, the charge of an absurdly complicated plot holds even truer for Il Trovatore—which, like Simon Boccanegra, was adapted from the work of Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez (1813–1884). Yet the more conservatively structured Il Trovatore resulted in an enormous hit for Verdi, even becoming his most popular opera after it opened in 1853.
What would indisputably have given audiences of the time pause with Boccanegra I was the vocal casting, featuring a single female role set against multiple leading male roles. Even more surprising was the musical delineation of the title figure, a protagonist who frequently appears on stage yet whose solo music tends to involve recitative-style declamation purged of ornamentation—and who in fact is not even given a traditional aria. Verdi was continuing along an innovative path of vivid characterization, both musically and dramatically, that he had begun to map out with Rigoletto. And despite the presence of a traditional romantic entanglement (the love story between Amelia and Gabriele), it clearly plays a secondary—at times, one might say, almost perfunctory—role and is eclipsed by the far more powerful awakening of love between father and daughter. Such thwarting of operatic convention not only must have vexed Verdi’s first audiences but continues to pose a challenge today.
The revised Simon Boccanegra (Boccanegra II)—the version that superseded Boccanegra I and is the one usually performed today, as in the present production—is often perceived as sharing the aura of the “mature” Verdi of the final years. Yet it is worth recalling that with Boccanegra I Verdi was already pushing his musical language into new territory and experimenting with the conventional forms of the day to achieve sustained dramatic aims. Some of the initial critical response took the composer to task for relying on “abstruse” and unusual harmonies, for example. Not that Verdi—an eminently practical man of the theater, after all—was cultivating an iconoclastic, revolutionary stance for its own sake. Indeed, as Budden astutely points out, Verdi’s attitude throughout his long career remained one of continual “self-renewal,” involving “a mixture of conservatism and a tendency to cautious reform.”
That very mixture, it turns out, is a fair description of the drama inherent in the opera itself—or at least in its final revised incarnation. The story draws from the life of the privateer-turned-politician Simone Boccanegra on whom Gutiérrez had based his historical drama. Boccanegra became the first of Genoa’s doges, or leaders, elected in 1339 as a representative for life of the populist Ghibellines, the opposition party to the patrician, pro-papal Guelphs. Boccanegra was forced to resign for an intervening period of a dozen years but then regained power and ruled until he was assassinated by an associate who poisoned him in 1363. In the opera, the tension between the rising plebeians and the old order that the nobles conspire to restore is ever present in the background. Boccanegra becomes reconfigured in the later version as the force who tries to mediate a new era of peace.
The dramatic potential of this visionary leader as Verdi later conceived him was a central ingredient in the inspiration for Boccanegra II. An abundance of documentation exists regarding the revision process of the opera, but we have little information about what drew the composer to this source in the first place. One factor, it seems fair to assume, might simply have been the desire to try his hand again with a playwright whose work had already given him box office gold when adapted for the opera stage. Many commentators also point to aspects of Verdi’s life with obvious relevance to the story, which likely impinged on the choice. The emotional intensity of the relationship between father and daughter that is pivotal to Simon Boccanegra is, indeed, a recurrent pattern in Verdi’s operatic psyche. Its obsessive quality may well stem from the devastating loss of his entire family to disease within the space of two years (baby daughter and son, and then his first wife) when the young Verdi was just beginning his career. Moreover, the intersection of personal and political dimensions at the heart of the opera clearly spoke to concerns that were of vital interest to the composer, for it transcends the brand of stock historical pageantry which Verdi had learned firsthand from his experiences with French grand opera. (A few years after Boccanegra I, Verdi even served for a spell in the parliament of the newly unified Italy, although he soon concluded that his contributions as an artist had more to offer.)
There was, in other words, something beyond the opera’s melodramatic conflicts that seems to have tugged at Verdi, inspiring the composer to tap into a vein deep within for its music—even though, when he looked back on what he had created, Verdi deemed the subject to be at times overwhelmingly sad: “It’s sad because it must be, but it is gripping.” An opera about a ruler who discovers ultimate refuge from his inner torment in the faithful love of a long-lost daughter, but who finds it too late: is it perhaps possible to discern here a sort of sublimation of some of the themes Verdi intended to address in a version of King Lear, which was one of his unfulfilled parallel projects from the 1850s? In any case, Simon Boccanegra already possessed a Shakespearean tinge from its inception. This was true well before Verdi returned to the score with the aid of the librettist of his final years, Arrigo Boito, for the substantial revisions of Boccanegra II, which is sometimes viewed as a test-drive for their first full collaboration in Otello.
Verdi’s intrepid publisher finally succeeded in convincing him to prepare a revised version of Simon Boccanegra in 1880 so as to revive it for the stage that season. At the time the composer had just embarked on the preliminary stages of a project he was keeping secret from the public, which would eventually become Otello. It would mark his return to opera after “retiring” in 1871 with Aida. Boccanegra II thus afforded his first opportunity to see how well he and Boito could work together in the most practical sense. Verdi completed his revisions—the most far-reaching overhaul of his career, even more extensive than those he made to Don Carlos—in less than two months. When the opera was premiered this time—in March 1881, at La Scala, fittingly enough—the composer was vindicated by an unequivocal success. (In fact, Verdi was so pleased with the work of baritone Victor Maurel in the title role and Francesco Tamagno as the tenor Gabriele that he tailored the roles of Iago and Otello, respectively, for them.)
The revisions Boito contributed to Boccanegra II range from full-scale scenes to minor tweakings of dialogue. His acknowledged triumph was to introduce a powerful new finale to the first act (the so-called Council Chamber scene, which had originated in a suggestion from the composer). The result greatly enhanced the dimensions of the title character and made for a spectacular addition of scope to the opera. Similarly, Boito intensified the role of the Doge’s betrayer Paolo from a stock villain into a paragon of resentment who does indeed anticipate the “motiveless malignity” of Iago in the then-incubating Otello. While Fiesco is often considered the counterweight to Boccanegra, in the revision Paolo is thrust forward as a formidable force of his own—and the only one who remains unreconciled in the end.
Boito tends to get wholesale credit for improving the unwieldiness of Piave’s libretto, however the situation is not quite so simple. As Budden convincingly argues, Boito failed to solve several of the opera’s knotty dramaturgical problems and in fact introduced new sources of confusion—all of which continue to challenge any director seriously grappling with staging the opera. Audiences are still left wondering why Amelia insists on keeping her relationship with her real father secret until the end, thus stoking Gabriele’s jealousy. Why, for that matter, does Boccanegra tolerate Paolo even after he knows he is the culprit who ordered Amelia’s abduction? (The historical Boccanegra, it turns out, soon installed a large retinue of bodyguards following the first of many conspiracies he encountered.)
Verdi’s musical revisions also ranged from the composition of entirely new material and refinement of connections between larger structures—above all in the first act—to specific nuances in the vocal lines and the orchestral scoring (such as replacing the clarinet with an oboe solo in the accompaniment to Amelia’s narration of her orphanhood to the Doge). Some of his changes involved cutting out parts as well—more vocally exhibitionistic concluding sections of numbers, for example, as well as the original overture that paraded several principal themes one after the other. The result is a fascinating work juxtaposing traits of Verdi’s middle style in its more innovatory guise together with his late style. This overlay of styles affects every aspect of the score, from its structural cohesion to orchestral coloring. Even where few changes were made (the case with much of Gabriele’s music), we are reminded of an earlier phase of the composer’s musical thought. At times, in Budden’s memorable phrase, it seems Verdi’s revisions were “like turning a stage-coach into a steam train.” The meeting of old and new adds yet another element of tension to the existing framework of the opera.
One obstacle that Simon Boccanegra can pose for audiences today is the simple fact that so much context is implied behind the scenes rather than specifically spelled out. Indeed, the political background can actually be more confusing than the personal relationships, though both are crucial to the opera’s concerns. Genoa was a significant commercial center before it began to decline later in the fourteenth century. The climate of trade and seafaring helped lay the groundwork for a new cultural perspective that would emerge when the Renaissance began to replace medieval habits of thought. The “fratricidal” conflicts that Boccanegra rails against in the Council Chamber scene involve two levels: the local standoff between the newly ascendant commoners and the old patrician families as well as ongoing rivalry between two of Italy’s great coastal city-states, Venice and Genoa. Verdi hit on the brainstorm that led to Boito’s new finale to Act One when he recalled that the great humanist and poet Petrarch had dispatched letters to the historical Boccanegra. In these, he pleaded for an end to internecine strife among the Italians, who were forging peaceful alliances with foreign cultures while attacking one another.
Implied context is also contained in the time lapse of a quarter-century that separates the Prologue from the rest of the opera (which, as has been often noted, is approximately the same period dividing Boccanegra I and II). Not only does Boccanegra emerge in the interim as a powerful leader, but the dramatic gap gives a clue to the critical role time and enduring memory plays in the opera. It tells us that things cannot be forgotten or forgiven in this world; whatever has been repressed is forced to float back up to the surface as the opera proceeds.
And most importantly, the time gap allows Verdi to play up varying facets of the doge’s character. Indeed, part of what makes Boccanegra so intriguing is his capacity for change. He began as a corsair, an adventurous pirate on the seas (and looks back on those days fondly at the end); likely he had lovers spread across several ports but eventually fell whole-heartedly in love with a woman who was beyond his station. Indeed, he is convinced by Paolo to stand in the election only when he realizes one of the perks of the office is that it would give him the status he needs to win Maria’s hand from Fiesco—before he learns his beloved has died.
In the intervening years, Boccanegra has obviously decided to make the most of his role as doge. It has humanized him, and Boccanegra determines to use his power to promote reconciliation in a rapidly changing world. Yet the Doge remains a canny, calculating leader as well. Despite his enlightenment, he is willing to torture Gabriele if necessary and worries about his image. This double nature finds graphic expression in the Council Chamber scene. After his stirring call for peace, Boccanegra resorts to the old order of superstition and fear in the scene’s thrilling coda. He forces Paolo to curse Amelia’s abductor before everyone (which becomes a curse against himself, as the villain well knows). For all his visionary qualities, nothing seems to quell Boccanegra’s sense of guilt over what has occurred in his past—above all the death of Maria. The shocking juxtaposition of “a tomb/a throne” at the end of the Prologue is Verdi’s magnificently effective shorthand for the two realities that will dominate the doge’s future. “It is a part as tiring as Rigoletto,” Verdi observed, “but a thousand times more difficult.” No wonder Simon Boccanegra is a role coveted by baritones at the peak of their art. It has been assayed by the likes of Tito Gobbi, Lawrence Tibbett, Piero Cappuccilli, Sherrill Milnes, and Thomas Hampson.
The inflexible Fiesco, on the other hand, stands for the old order. His “voice of steel” (as Verdi termed it, making him reach down to a booming low F) resists Boccanegra—and the winds of change sweeping in with him—with all its furious implacability. Verdi expertly sets the two points of view side by side in the Prologue, so that we actually experience Maria’s death twice, each time from their separate perspectives. We find a similar ploy when Verdi presents Amelia’s point of view, albeit in the brighter colors that have such a striking effect in contrast to the rest of the score. Amelia is also haunted by memories of a tragic past and recalls her version of the traumatic memories that grip father and daughter alike. The opera’s first great act of transformation occurs when Verdi builds incrementally from her melancholy narrative to the glorious music of the recognition scene. One reason the score operates so powerfully here is that despite the clichés of matching lockets and rediscovered identity, Verdi writes music that brims with a sense of the present moment—all the more powerful after he has taken care to show us how oppressed these characters are by their past.
Boccanegra’s need to atone for the past comes full circle in the final scene, which completes the round of recognitions and is a counterpart to the father-daughter duet in Act One. At last Fiesco proves capable of reconciliation. Earlier, Verdi had offered a hint of this in Fiesco’s warm, fatherly reaction to Gabriele’s suit of Amelia (fittingly reverting to a touching but archaic musical code for his benediction of the union—“pious echo of ancient times”). Fiesco, it turns out, will be the agent of peace rather than vengeance. His weeping at the moment of truth in his final dialogue with his old enemy movingly signals his readiness to accept what has happened. At the same time, the last thing Verdi intends to give us is a saccharine reconciliation elegy. Part of Fiesco’s inflexibility remains as he mouths the most profoundly pessimistic lines of the opera in the final number (“Every earthly happiness is a deceptive spell”); his harsh outlook remains unabated. And a music of sepulchral gloom seems to bring us back to the world of the Prologue as bells toll against hollow chords—a subdued ending that fades into frightening silence. Simon Boccanegra: Reconciling with the Past
by Thomas May
Like the film industry today, the business of opera as Verdi encountered it in Italy (and later in Paris) was one in which familiar formulas held sway. No matter how many box office successes the composer had acquired, it remained a risky venture to frustrate certain audience expectations; an adoring public was still perfectly capable of withholding its affection and conferring the chilliest of receptions when it felt disappointed.
Even in the middle of his career in the 1850s—when he was already recognized as the pre-eminent living Italian composer—Verdi experienced the humiliation of having his work rejected. The notorious fiasco that marred the premiere of La Traviata was reversed in short order with a more competent staging one year later. But in the case of Simon Boccanegra, more than two decades had elapsed—and opera fashions had irrevocably changed—before Verdi determined to reclaim the work for the stage, from which the opera had disappeared not long after it initial outing.
The first version of Simon Boccanegra (for convenience, let’s simply call it Boccanegra I) had its premiere in March 1857 at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice—the same house where La Traviata had suffered its initial disgrace in 1853. Verdi himself described the reception as a “fiasco,” although it was closer to what we might characterize as lukewarm. Boccanegra I enjoyed relatively successful brief runs at several other opera houses in Italy. But its rude rejection by audiences at La Scala in Milan rekindled painful memories of Verdi’s most crushing failure as a young composer at the same theater, when Un Giorno di Regno (the only comic opera he would essay until Falstaff) was buried after a single performance. By the 1860s it was clear that Boccanegra I simply did not have “legs.” It seemed destined to fade into obscurity.
Several possible factors have been cited to account for the lackluster reception of Boccanegra I. A good deal of criticism at the time was leveled at the libretto, with it’s series of mistaken or disguised identities and related coincidences, which was prepared by Verdi’s long-time collaborator Francesco Maria Piave, along with Giuseppe Montanelli (the latter was brought on by the composer without Piave’s consent to supplement the verse, causing an embarrassing temporary rift with Verdi). Still, the charge of an absurdly complicated plot holds even truer for Il Trovatore—which, like Simon Boccanegra, was adapted from the work of Spanish playwright Antonio García Gutiérrez (1813–1884). Yet the more conservatively structured Il Trovatore resulted in an enormous hit for Verdi, even becoming his most popular opera after it opened in 1853.
What would indisputably have given audiences of the time pause with Boccanegra I was the vocal casting, featuring a single female role set against multiple leading male roles. Even more surprising was the musical delineation of the title figure, a protagonist who frequently appears on stage yet whose solo music tends to involve recitative-style declamation purged of ornamentation—and who in fact is not even given a traditional aria. Verdi was continuing along an innovative path of vivid characterization, both musically and dramatically, that he had begun to map out with Rigoletto. And despite the presence of a traditional romantic entanglement (the love story between Amelia and Gabriele), it clearly plays a secondary—at times, one might say, almost perfunctory—role and is eclipsed by the far more powerful awakening of love between father and daughter. Such thwarting of operatic convention not only must have vexed Verdi’s first audiences but continues to pose a challenge today.
The revised Simon Boccanegra (Boccanegra II)—the version that superseded Boccanegra I and is the one usually performed today, as in the present production—is often perceived as sharing the aura of the “mature” Verdi of the final years. Yet it is worth recalling that with Boccanegra I Verdi was already pushing his musical language into new territory and experimenting with the conventional forms of the day to achieve sustained dramatic aims. Some of the initial critical response took the composer to task for relying on “abstruse” and unusual harmonies, for example. Not that Verdi—an eminently practical man of the theater, after all—was cultivating an iconoclastic, revolutionary stance for its own sake. Indeed, as Budden astutely points out, Verdi’s attitude throughout his long career remained one of continual “self-renewal,” involving “a mixture of conservatism and a tendency to cautious reform.”
That very mixture, it turns out, is a fair description of the drama inherent in the opera itself—or at least in its final revised incarnation. The story draws from the life of the privateer-turned-politician Simone Boccanegra on whom Gutiérrez had based his historical drama. Boccanegra became the first of Genoa’s doges, or leaders, elected in 1339 as a representative for life of the populist Ghibellines, the opposition party to the patrician, pro-papal Guelphs. Boccanegra was forced to resign for an intervening period of a dozen years but then regained power and ruled until he was assassinated by an associate who poisoned him in 1363. In the opera, the tension between the rising plebeians and the old order that the nobles conspire to restore is ever present in the background. Boccanegra becomes reconfigured in the later version as the force who tries to mediate a new era of peace.
The dramatic potential of this visionary leader as Verdi later conceived him was a central ingredient in the inspiration for Boccanegra II. An abundance of documentation exists regarding the revision process of the opera, but we have little information about what drew the composer to this source in the first place. One factor, it seems fair to assume, might simply have been the desire to try his hand again with a playwright whose work had already given him box office gold when adapted for the opera stage. Many commentators also point to aspects of Verdi’s life with obvious relevance to the story, which likely impinged on the choice. The emotional intensity of the relationship between father and daughter that is pivotal to Simon Boccanegra is, indeed, a recurrent pattern in Verdi’s operatic psyche. Its obsessive quality may well stem from the devastating loss of his entire family to disease within the space of two years (baby daughter and son, and then his first wife) when the young Verdi was just beginning his career. Moreover, the intersection of personal and political dimensions at the heart of the opera clearly spoke to concerns that were of vital interest to the composer, for it transcends the brand of stock historical pageantry which Verdi had learned firsthand from his experiences with French grand opera. (A few years after Boccanegra I, Verdi even served for a spell in the parliament of the newly unified Italy, although he soon concluded that his contributions as an artist had more to offer.)
There was, in other words, something beyond the opera’s melodramatic conflicts that seems to have tugged at Verdi, inspiring the composer to tap into a vein deep within for its music—even though, when he looked back on what he had created, Verdi deemed the subject to be at times overwhelmingly sad: “It’s sad because it must be, but it is gripping.” An opera about a ruler who discovers ultimate refuge from his inner torment in the faithful love of a long-lost daughter, but who finds it too late: is it perhaps possible to discern here a sort of sublimation of some of the themes Verdi intended to address in a version of King Lear, which was one of his unfulfilled parallel projects from the 1850s? In any case, Simon Boccanegra already possessed a Shakespearean tinge from its inception. This was true well before Verdi returned to the score with the aid of the librettist of his final years, Arrigo Boito, for the substantial revisions of Boccanegra II, which is sometimes viewed as a test-drive for their first full collaboration in Otello.
Verdi’s intrepid publisher finally succeeded in convincing him to prepare a revised version of Simon Boccanegra in 1880 so as to revive it for the stage that season. At the time the composer had just embarked on the preliminary stages of a project he was keeping secret from the public, which would eventually become Otello. It would mark his return to opera after “retiring” in 1871 with Aida. Boccanegra II thus afforded his first opportunity to see how well he and Boito could work together in the most practical sense. Verdi completed his revisions—the most far-reaching overhaul of his career, even more extensive than those he made to Don Carlos—in less than two months. When the opera was premiered this time—in March 1881, at La Scala, fittingly enough—the composer was vindicated by an unequivocal success. (In fact, Verdi was so pleased with the work of baritone Victor Maurel in the title role and Francesco Tamagno as the tenor Gabriele that he tailored the roles of Iago and Otello, respectively, for them.)
The revisions Boito contributed to Boccanegra II range from full-scale scenes to minor tweakings of dialogue. His acknowledged triumph was to introduce a powerful new finale to the first act (the so-called Council Chamber scene, which had originated in a suggestion from the composer). The result greatly enhanced the dimensions of the title character and made for a spectacular addition of scope to the opera. Similarly, Boito intensified the role of the Doge’s betrayer Paolo from a stock villain into a paragon of resentment who does indeed anticipate the “motiveless malignity” of Iago in the then-incubating Otello. While Fiesco is often considered the counterweight to Boccanegra, in the revision Paolo is thrust forward as a formidable force of his own—and the only one who remains unreconciled in the end.
Boito tends to get wholesale credit for improving the unwieldiness of Piave’s libretto, however the situation is not quite so simple. As Budden convincingly argues, Boito failed to solve several of the opera’s knotty dramaturgical problems and in fact introduced new sources of confusion—all of which continue to challenge any director seriously grappling with staging the opera. Audiences are still left wondering why Amelia insists on keeping her relationship with her real father secret until the end, thus stoking Gabriele’s jealousy. Why, for that matter, does Boccanegra tolerate Paolo even after he knows he is the culprit who ordered Amelia’s abduction? (The historical Boccanegra, it turns out, soon installed a large retinue of bodyguards following the first of many conspiracies he encountered.)
Verdi’s musical revisions also ranged from the composition of entirely new material and refinement of connections between larger structures—above all in the first act—to specific nuances in the vocal lines and the orchestral scoring (such as replacing the clarinet with an oboe solo in the accompaniment to Amelia’s narration of her orphanhood to the Doge). Some of his changes involved cutting out parts as well—more vocally exhibitionistic concluding sections of numbers, for example, as well as the original overture that paraded several principal themes one after the other. The result is a fascinating work juxtaposing traits of Verdi’s middle style in its more innovatory guise together with his late style. This overlay of styles affects every aspect of the score, from its structural cohesion to orchestral coloring. Even where few changes were made (the case with much of Gabriele’s music), we are reminded of an earlier phase of the composer’s musical thought. At times, in Budden’s memorable phrase, it seems Verdi’s revisions were “like turning a stage-coach into a steam train.” The meeting of old and new adds yet another element of tension to the existing framework of the opera.
One obstacle that Simon Boccanegra can pose for audiences today is the simple fact that so much context is implied behind the scenes rather than specifically spelled out. Indeed, the political background can actually be more confusing than the personal relationships, though both are crucial to the opera’s concerns. Genoa was a significant commercial center before it began to decline later in the fourteenth century. The climate of trade and seafaring helped lay the groundwork for a new cultural perspective that would emerge when the Renaissance began to replace medieval habits of thought. The “fratricidal” conflicts that Boccanegra rails against in the Council Chamber scene involve two levels: the local standoff between the newly ascendant commoners and the old patrician families as well as ongoing rivalry between two of Italy’s great coastal city-states, Venice and Genoa. Verdi hit on the brainstorm that led to Boito’s new finale to Act One when he recalled that the great humanist and poet Petrarch had dispatched letters to the historical Boccanegra. In these, he pleaded for an end to internecine strife among the Italians, who were forging peaceful alliances with foreign cultures while attacking one another.
Implied context is also contained in the time lapse of a quarter-century that separates the Prologue from the rest of the opera (which, as has been often noted, is approximately the same period dividing Boccanegra I and II). Not only does Boccanegra emerge in the interim as a powerful leader, but the dramatic gap gives a clue to the critical role time and enduring memory plays in the opera. It tells us that things cannot be forgotten or forgiven in this world; whatever has been repressed is forced to float back up to the surface as the opera proceeds.
And most importantly, the time gap allows Verdi to play up varying facets of the doge’s character. Indeed, part of what makes Boccanegra so intriguing is his capacity for change. He began as a corsair, an adventurous pirate on the seas (and looks back on those days fondly at the end); likely he had lovers spread across several ports but eventually fell whole-heartedly in love with a woman who was beyond his station. Indeed, he is convinced by Paolo to stand in the election only when he realizes one of the perks of the office is that it would give him the status he needs to win Maria’s hand from Fiesco—before he learns his beloved has died.
In the intervening years, Boccanegra has obviously decided to make the most of his role as doge. It has humanized him, and Boccanegra determines to use his power to promote reconciliation in a rapidly changing world. Yet the doge remains a canny, calculating leader as well. Despite his enlightenment, he is willing to torture Gabriele if necessary and worries about his image. This double nature finds graphic expression in the Council Chamber scene. After his stirring call for peace, Boccanegra resorts to the old order of superstition and fear in the scene’s thrilling coda. He forces Paolo to curse Amelia’s abductor before everyone (which becomes a curse against himself, as the villain well knows). For all his visionary qualities, nothing seems to quell Boccanegra’s sense of guilt over what has occurred in his past—above all the death of Maria. The shocking juxtaposition of “a tomb/a throne” at the end of the Prologue is Verdi’s magnificently effective shorthand for the two realities that will dominate the doge’s future. “It is a part as tiring as Rigoletto,” Verdi observed, “but a thousand times more difficult.” No wonder Simon Boccanegra is a role coveted by baritones at the peak of their art. It has been assayed by the likes of Tito Gobbi, Lawrence Tibbett, Piero Cappuccilli, Sherrill Milnes, and Thomas Hampson.
The inflexible Fiesco, on the other hand, stands for the old order. His “voice of steel” (as Verdi termed it, making him reach down to a booming low F) resists Boccanegra—and the winds of change sweeping in with him—with all its furious implacability. Verdi expertly sets the two points of view side by side in the Prologue, so that we actually experience Maria’s death twice, each time from their separate perspectives. We find a similar ploy when Verdi presents Amelia’s point of view, albeit in the brighter colors that have such a striking effect in contrast to the rest of the score. Amelia is also haunted by memories of a tragic past and recalls her version of the traumatic memories that grip father and daughter alike. The opera’s first great act of transformation occurs when Verdi builds incrementally from her melancholy narrative to the glorious music of the recognition scene. One reason the score operates so powerfully here is that despite the clichés of matching lockets and rediscovered identity, Verdi writes music that brims with a sense of the present moment—all the more powerful after he has taken care to show us how oppressed these characters are by their past.
Boccanegra’s need to atone for the past comes full circle in the final scene, which completes the round of recognitions and is a counterpart to the father-daughter duet in Act One. At last Fiesco proves capable of reconciliation. Earlier, Verdi had offered a hint of this in Fiesco’s warm, fatherly reaction to Gabriele’s suit of Amelia (fittingly reverting to a touching but archaic musical code for his benediction of the union—“pious echo of ancient times”). Fiesco, it turns out, will be the agent of peace rather than vengeance. His weeping at the moment of truth in his final dialogue with his old enemy movingly signals his readiness to accept what has happened. At the same time, the last thing Verdi intends to give us is a saccharine reconciliation elegy. Part of Fiesco’s inflexibility remains as he mouths the most profoundly pessimistic lines of the opera in the final number (“Every earthly happiness is a deceptive spell”); his harsh outlook remains unabated. And a music of sepulchral gloom seems to bring us back to the world of the Prologue as bells toll against hollow chords—a subdued ending that fades into frightening silence.
- Approximate running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes including one intermission
- Sung in Italian with English supertitles
- Simon Boccanegra is produced in association with the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London
- This production is made possible, in part, by The Thomas Tilton Production Fund and Opening Weekend Grand Sponsor Diane B. Wilsey.
- Photo: Brett Coomer, courtesy of Houston Grand Opera.
- Cast, program and schedule are subject to change
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*San Francisco Opera debut
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