17 - 23 May 2001
Issue No.534
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Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 17 - 23 May 2001 Issue No.534 |
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Mr Cornucopia
VERDI, a star swimmer in the fountain of youth, continued swimming. Quite how, at the age of 75, he could produce Falstaff, a highly organised Bachian personal history of an electric storm, and his last, astounding opera, is a mystery, writes David Blake on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the composer's death.
Young, poor, but with a few close friends, Verdi managed to educate himself musically. At an early age he knew Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Rossini, and had a gift for melody equal to that of the great pantheon of figures he put before himself. He had a fine, strong ear for the word. Writing was as important as music to him. A good libretto was the great need of his life.
He could be merciless in criticism though under fire he retreated to the lofty position of never complaining about anything his worst enemies said. He had, in youth, learned that time would sort us all out. And Time has.
In his early days he wrote operas that became hits as no operas had before. The older connoisseurs, preferring the more rarefied world of Mozart fashionable in the 19th century, said that his tunes were vulgar -- mere rum-ti-tum. And so the name Verdi became a rallying point for the young, for democratic rule in countries that had cemented into hard lumps of prejudice. Soon young sopranos and their musical contemporaries rushed along to the tune of Verdi's battle rhythms: Violetta and the two Leonoras, he even lightened up the view of Shakespeare's Desdemona in his Otello.
Yet if Verdi's views on race, sexuality and politics appealed to the future, he knew the world for what it was. No use complaining if you want money as he wanted -- though, apart from opulent Villa Saint Ajathe outside Milan, he led a life of extreme austerity.
Original design for the first production of Aida, staged at the Khedival Opera House in Ezbekiya
Though his views of the human race, politically speaking, were what one today would call "progressive," he was a pessimist at heart. Don Carlos, La Forza del Destino, Otello, even La Traviata were haunted by the sharp lash of Leopardi, Latin writing and Dante.
Aida -- as if one could ever by-pass that one -- was a dramatic point. Few looked beyond her enormous public success to notice that she alone of the thrusting, active principles, had a practical idea of escape to an idealistic reality.
Verdi wrote Aida as a tight-knit drama of family matters. All the camels and mountains of corpses are extraneous. Yet this, more than any opera, keeps the pennies rolling.
Verdi's operas require the four best singers in the world. He always demanded that much. The world of Aida's premiere in Cairo was not far removed from the rowdy, blood-thirsty days of the Mamlukes. Verdi and Teresa Stolz, an adventurer who glued herself like a leech on to the successful marriage of Verdi to another woman, demanded millions to open the opera at Ezbekiya. Ismail refused, and though the first Aida eventually bloomed the stellar blaze was kept for La Scala, Milan. It was there that the Verdian gold-mine, with Aida sung by Stolz, really took off.
From South to North Pole it still goes on. There is not much thunder in Aida, just tunes, and you would be wrong to think that their time is over. The whole sequined edifice sails on through war and desert famine. An Aida night is probably the best kind of night for tossing oblations into the air.
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