Viva Verdi?

The trombone players vaulted out of the orchestra pit, swinging their horns like battle-axes. Then the woodwinds, a double-bass player and even the first violins joined in, tearing furiously into the astonished audience in pursuit of hecklers' blood. When the police arrived, chairs were flying through the air across the courtyard of Venice's Palazzo Ducale. It took a frantic half hour to drag all the punch-drunk musicologists out into St. Mark's Square for a cooling breath of air.

Even for Italy, it was an extraordinary display of artistic temperament. The occasion had started as a concert performance of Verdi's // Corsaro in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth, and the cognoscenti were all there. The opera had not been performed in 109 years and for excellent reason: troubled by rheumatism and an attack of Weltschmerz brought on by a worrisome winter in Paris, Verdi dashed // Corsaro off in less than two months and immediately pronounced it beyond salvation.

The audience greeted Soprano Maria Battinelli's quavering first-act cadenzas with unrestrained boos and whistles that served to unnerve both singers and musicians. The singers soon lost their pitch, and the boys in the orchestra joined them in helpless cacophony as the audience went wild in fury. Only the night sticks of the carabinieri induced peace after the melee, and everyone went home agreeing that it was a lousy evening--but viva Verdi, anyway.

Repeat performances scheduled for last week were canceled in the shambles of the opening night. But there remained a good question as to why Il Corsaro was chosen in the first place. Except for his disastrously bad Alzira, it represents Verdi's single lapse from musicianship and inspiration, and the preposterous libretto, inspired by Byron's The Corsair--the story of an Aegean pirate whose ill-starred romance leads to murder and suicide--scarcely helps matters. The one pleasing aria and the single engaging duet could hardly be expected to mollify a fastidious audience. Even the most pious Verdi worshipers could not help applying to their hero the only couplet in Byron's windy poem that is worth remembering:

He left a Corsair's name to other times,

Link'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.