Giuseppe VERDI and Cesare VIGNA The story of a great friendship
My roots and my best memories are in the native land of Giuseppe Verdi.
The most famous pieces of his operas were sung also in the near country where I was born and connected with my childhood.
When I was a teenager, I met in the library that Verdi frequented in Busseto, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, one of the most important Verdi scholars in the world. She lived there for the research. She was one of the founders of the “American Institute for Verdi Studies” in New York and published the monumental” Verdi. A biography”. A great example for me.
Then ,after many researches with my best friend Anna we found that she’s the owner of the house where Verdi lived in Busseto from 10 to 18 studying in the Gymnasium.
We built a Museum…also about Verdi the farmer….and a library dedicated to him.
We published three books…and we did lectures…when was possible.
Anna is a lawyer and accountant too busy…she delegated me the writings.
It’s a great satisfaction to share with you this little piece about an opera that has always been among my favourites.
Enjoy your reading!
In Piazza San Marco in Venice there was a music shop that became a meeting place for four great friends: Giuseppe Verdi, the lawyer Antonio Somma, author of the libretto for the opera ‘Un ballo in maschera’, Antonio Gallo, violinist, bookseller and theather impresario, and Cesare Vigna, a distinguished psychiatrist and musicologist. Cesare Vigna was born in Viadana (Mantova) in 1819, graduated in Medicine at the University of Padua and thenmoved to Venice, where he took part in the uprisings of 1848 as a medical officer. After the reconquest of the city by the Habsburg troops, he returned to clinical work, dealing mainly with nervous and mental illnesses. He worked in Venice at the Psychiatric Hospital on the island of San Servolo then became Director of the new San Clemente Women’s Asylum until almost the end of his life. In the quietness of the island he made numerous contributions to psychiatry, became a member of the ‘Italian Freniatric Society’, formed in 1873 and worked on the influence of music in the treatment of mental illness.
Cesare Vigna was also a music critic, correspondent of the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano published by Ricordi, whoadvised the Maestro to dedicate ‘La Traviata’ to his great and faithful lifelong friend.
“Although I am not a physiologist”, wrote Giuseppe Verdi to his friend, “I nevertheless see the utmost importance of your studies and the interest they can bring to our art, not only as regards medicine, but also as regards aesthetics and criticism, which certainly need a better and more rational direction.” In one of the letters written by Verdi to Vigna while he was at the thermal baths of Tabiano (Parma) and relating to the publication “Sul magistero fisiopatologico dell’armonia” one reads:“Dear Vigna, As I told you about a month ago, your book arrived in Sant’ Agata when I left for Montecatini. Now I’ve come back, but my wife is staying here in Tabiano and in the trips I make from time to time to Sant’Agata, I haven’t been able to find any time to admire your work. In eight or ten days’ time we will be back in the country.” On his death in 1892, Verdi said ” ….his erudition was vast, as was his mind: a sharp and profound reasoner and above all convincing, a heart of gold, an angel of goodness and my friend for more than thirty years, sincere, constant, loyal, whose loss I bitterly regret”.
The Friendship
In Piazza San Marco in Venice there was a music shop that became a meeting place for four great friends: Giuseppe Verdi, the lawyer Antonio Somma, author of the libretto for the opera ‘Un ballo in maschera’, Antonio Gallo, violinist, bookseller and theather impresario, and Cesare Vigna, a distinguished psychiatrist and musicologist. Cesare Vigna was born in Viadana (Mantova) in 1819, graduated in Medicine at the University of Padua andthen moved to Venice, where he took part in the uprisings of 1848 as a medical officer. After the reconquest of the city by the Habsburg troops, he returned to clinical work, dealing mainly with nervous and mental illnesses. He worked in Venice at the Psychiatric Hospital on the island of San Servolo then became Director of the new San Clemente Women’s Asylum until almost the end of his life. In the quietness of the island he made numerous contributions to psychiatry, became a member of the ‘Italian Freniatric Society’, formed in 1873 and worked on the influence of music inthe treatment of mental illness. Cesare Vigna was also a music critic, correspondent of the Gazzetta Musicale di Milano published by Ricordi,who advised the Maestro to dedicate ‘La Traviata’ to his great and faithful lifelong friend. “Although I am not a physiologist”, wrote Giuseppe Verdi to his friend, “I nevertheless see the utmostimportance of your studies and the interest they can bring to our art, not only as regards medicine, but also asregards aesthetics and criticism, which certainly need a better and more rational direction.”
In one of the letters written by Verdi to Vigna while he was at the thermal baths of Tabiano (Parma) andrelating to the publication “Sul magistero fisiopatologico dell’armonia” one reads:
“Dear Vigna,
As I told you about a month ago, your book arrived in Sant’ Agata when I left for Montecatini. Now I’ve come back, but my wife is staying here in Tabiano and in the trips I make from timeto time to Sant’Agata, I haven’t been able to find any time to admire your work. In eight or ten days’ time we will be back in the country.”
On his death in 1892, Verdi said ” ….his erudition was vast, as was his mind: a sharp and profound reasoner and above all convincing, a heart of gold, an angel of goodness and my friend for more than thirty years, sincere, constant, loyal, whose loss I bitterly regret”.
Visit to Paris
On 1 June 1847 Verdi arrived in Paris to write ‘Jerusalem’, his first composition for the Theatre of ‘Opéra’ and a revised version of ‘I Lombardi alla prima Crociata’. ‘Jerusalem’ was staged in November 1847 and Verdi stayed in Paris during the long weeks of preparation and for many months after the first performance, partly because he had started living with Giuseppina Strepponi and had moved to the suburb of Passy. After the death of two little children and of his wife Margherita Barezzi, 26 years old, in 1840 Verdi was a widower and alone. Giuseppina had studied singing and piano at the Milan Conservatory and had immediately embarked on a brilliant career as an opera singer, working tirelessly to meet the family’s financial needs as her father, organist at Monza Cathedral, died prematurely. She had relationships with some theatrical impresarios and a tenor, but they were married and in few years three illegitimate children were born to her, entrusted, as was the custom at the time, to boarding schools or adoptive families. These were problems and pains that she always had to manage on her own.
Giuseppina Strepponi met Verdi for the first time in 1842, when she played Abigaille at the first performance of ‘Nabucco’ at La Scala in Milan, but vocal problems due to overwork forced her to give up singing and in 1846 she moved to Paris as a singing teacher. And here Verdi found her again. A testimony by Verdi’s French publisher, Léon Escudier, confirms that in 1852 he attended with Strepponi at the Théatre du Vaudeville “La Dame aux Camélias”, based on the novel by Alexandre Dumas’ son, in the form of ”comédie melée d’ariettes”. The novel was published in 1848, a year after the premature death of Marie Duplessis, a luxury courtesan, a great passion of Dumas himself and also of Franz Liszt, who was bewitched by the young woman and remained sentimentally attached to her memory for the rest of his life.
In May 1852 Verdi signed a contract for a new opera to be performed at Teatro ‘La Fenice’ in Venice and the choice fell on Dumas’ novel, transformed into an opera libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. Did what happened with Giuseppina influence this choice? Can an artistic creation be completely independent of the author’s experience? When she moved to Busseto for a short time with Verdi, she was the object of the worst gossip and insults, to the point that Verdi wrote to his former father-in-law Antonio Barezzi: “In my house lives a free, independent lady, who, like me, loves the solitary life and has a fortune that covers her every need. Neither she nor I owe anyone an account of our actions”(…)
The work was completed in a few months and at the beginning of January 1853 Verdi was able to write to his friend Cesarino De Sanctis in Naples: “In Venice I am doing ‘La Dame aux Camélias’, which will have as title, perhaps, Traviata. A subject of the time. Someone else might not have done it because of the costumes, the timing and a thousand other awkward scruples…. everyone shouted when I proposed a hunchback to stage. Well, I was happy to write Rigoletto”.
The work, due to considerable problems with censorship, was set ‘around 700’ and,after the lack of success of the first performance on 6 March 1853, ‘La Traviata’ performed for the second time on 6 May 1854 again in Venice at the Teatro ‘San Benedetto’ was a huge success. A timeless success that continues to this day to cross the centuries.
Verdi wrote in another letter to De Sanctis, following the opera’s failure in Naples: “Why can’t your Teatro San Carlo stage a queen or a peasant girl, a virtuous woman or a whore? (…) If you can die of poison or of the sword, why can’t you die of consumption or of the plague? Doesn’t all this happen in ordinary life?”.
When Proust first saw the opera, he commented: ‘It is a work that goes straight to my heart.
Verdi gave the Lady of the Camellias the style it lacked. I don’t say this because Alexandre Dumas’s son’s drama is without merit, but because if a dramatic work wants to touch popular feeling, the addition of music is essential”.
THE PLOT.
Act one.
The opera begins with a touching prelude, almost presaging an impending tragedy.
The scene opens in the Parisian home of Violetta Valery, a woman of the world who at that time has Baron Douphol as her ‘protector’, during a reception at which the famous toast is sung (Libiamo né lieti calici’…) and at which she is introduced to the young Alfredo Germont, her great admirer.
He warns her that her lifestyle will eventually kill her (she is already ill with tuberculosis) and declares his love for her (Croce e delizia …).
Violetta replies that she is incapable of loving and can only offer him friendship but, left alone, she feels strangely moved (E’ strano! E’ strano!…) and reveals her yearning desire to love and be loved.
She immediately tries to banish such thoughts (Follie! Follie! Sempre libera degg’ io…) in order to continue the life she has always led.
Act Two.
Scene I
We are in the country house where Alfredo and Violetta have been living happily for three months.
Annina, Violetta’s maid, explains to Alfredo that she has gone to sell all her mistress’s possessions to pay for the expenses of the house and he promises to go to Paris at once to settle the situation.
Violetta enters and Giuseppe, a servant, announces the arrival of a gentleman whom Violetta imagines to be a lawyer. He is instead Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s father, who immediately accuses her of leading his son into ruin and only when he sees the documents does he realise that it is Violetta’s money that is being used.
However, he asks her to make the sacrifice of renouncing Alfredo forever because he has a sister whose impending marriage would be in danger if Alfredo refused to return home.
Violetta is unable to resist the pleas and agrees to do the required sacrifice ( Ah dite alla giovane sì bella e pura…).
Left alone, she writes a note to Baron Douphol and then begins a letter to Alfredo. He returns and Violetta, overcome with emotion, throws herself into his arms and begs him to tell her that he loves her before leaving in the carriage ( Amami Alfredo…).
Shortly afterwards a messenger arrives with a note from Violetta telling Alfredo that she has left him to return to her old life.
While he is distraught with grief, his father enters and tries in vain to console him by telling him about his father’s house ( Di Provenza il mar e il suol… ) but he flees swearing revenge.
Scene II
We are back in Paris, at a reception in the sumptuous home of the courtesan Flora, Violetta’s friend.
Alfredo also arrives and joins the card players and wins several games, ironically stating that luck at cards is the reward for bad luck in love.
Shortly afterwards Violetta arrives and waits for Alfredo to whom she has sent a note, certain that he will come, driven by hatred.
As soon as he appears she begs him to leave the party immediately as she fears a quarrel with the baron to whom she has returned.
Alfredo asks her in a scornful tone if she fears losing both her lover and her protector if he kills the Baron in a duel. Blinded by anger, he calls together all the guests and reveals how Violetta has wasted all her possessions on him who can now repay her.
The father enters and addresses the young man with harsh words of reproach.
( Di sprezzo degno se stesso rende …..) Alfredo, his anger extinguished, is overwhelmed by remorse.
Act III
A prelude precedes the last act, which takes place in the bedroom where Violetta lies dying, cared by the faithful Annina.
Dr Grenvil enters and tries to console her telling about the forthcoming convalescence, but confesses to Annina that the sick woman has only a few hours to live.
Violetta, hearing that it is Carnival, sends money to distribute to the poor and when she is alone she reads aloud a letter from Giorgio Germont.
He writes that Alfredo and the baron have fought a duel, the baron has been wounded and Alfredo now knows of his sacrifice and they both wish to ask his forgiveness.
Commenting sadly that it is now too late Violetta says goodbye to the happy dreams of the past (Addio del passato…).
Shortly afterwards Alfredo comes into the room and, tenderly embracing Violetta, begs her forgiveness so they could start a new life together (Parigi, o cara…).
Violetta suddenly claims that all pain has ceased and that she is regaining her strength but, in this state of lightning-fast well-being, she falls lifelessly onto the pillows of the bed.
REFLECTIONS
The ‘law of the father’
Even if there has been a matriarchal era, all social organisation has always been governed by the “law of the father” as Zeus the father of the gods, God the father of monotheistic religions etc.. Alfredo’s father, Giorgio Germont, is certainly a spokesman for this law.
His values are so shared in that society that even Violetta accepts them and masochistically enacts guilt and punishment, dying as the ultimate sacrifice.
Only at the end does Germont’s father break out of the conventional attitude, but it is too late and he can afford to do so because he has achieved what he wanted, the good marriage of his daughter.[?]
It is the great humanity and nobility of Verdi’s music that manages to envelop these characters with such nuance and depth that they touch us deeply, beyond all morality.
A free, independent genious.
‘Love Sickness’.
The unconscious search for suffering can become the repetition of traumatic childhood events of emotional deprivation, violence, abuse, as if one were destined to repeat a painful experience as the only known and possible form of relationship. Alphonsine Plessis was born in a village in Normandy, and just at the age of twelve her father introduced her to prostitution and ‘sold’ her to an old man, from whom she fled to Paris where she worked on the pavements around the church of Notre-Dame-de-Lorette.
She soon became a beautiful young woman and changed her name to Marie Duplessis, becoming a much sought-after courtesan.
Her death was such an event for Paris that in 1847 Charles Dickens wrote: “For several days now the newspapers have been neglecting political, artistic and economic matters, and every subject pales in comparison with a much more important incident: the romantic death of a glory of the demie-monde, the beautiful and famous Marie Duplessis”. Her tomb, a place of pilgrimage, is in the Montmartre’ cemetery, where Alexandre Dumas is also buried.
And Violetta, the Traviata? With Verdi’s music still reigns as one of the greatest romantic Muses!
I’m an MD, Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist, Full Member of GASi, Fellow of the American Ass. Music and Imagery and the European Ass. Music and Imagery.
I worked in the Public Mental Health Service for more than thirty years.
Now I’m retired and dedicated to study and research, particularly about Giuseppe Verdi and the Receptive Music Therapy.