Introduction
Giuseppe
Verdi, (October 9, 1813 – January 27, 1901) is undoubtedly one of
the most important classical music composers in history. However, besides his
crucial contribution to the world of arts, Verdi is also known and appreciated
for his political role and for his contribution to Italy's reunification.
When the musician was born, in 1813, “Italy” as we
know it today, did not even exist. It was merely a cluster of small kingdoms
and principalities, with little more to unite them than a common language (BBC, October 2, 2013).
When he died, in 1901, Italy was a unified country,
comprising most of the territories it has today. Historians say that Verdi and
his music played a crucial role in this unification, as his operas provided the
patriotic soundtrack needed for mobilizing and inspiring the masses to make the
dream of a big, united country come true.
The reunification process, known in history as “Risorgimento”
(the Resurgence), started
in 1815, with the end of the Napoleonic Rule and the Vienna Congress, it had
its peak in 1848, with the famous wave of European Revolutions, and it ended in
1861, when the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, occupied the throne of the
unified Italy. It was the first time after approximately 12 centuries that
Italy was, legally and officially, a unitary country.
On the same year (1861) the prime minister of the
newly unified state, Camillo Cavour, invited Verdi to join the Parliament. The
musician accepted the invitation and served in the Legislative Body for four
years, advocating the consolidation of the country and the protection of what
the Risorgimento had achieved.
However, his support for reunification had started
long before 1861. In 1848, when the wave of European Revolutions caught Milan,
Verdi wrote from Paris to his librettist, to congratulate and praise the
revolutionaries for their actions: “Honor to these heroes! Honor to all Italy,
which in this moment is truly great! The hour of her liberation has
sounded.” (cited in BBC, October 2,
2013). He immediately rushed back home to support the movement and threw his
entire weight and his music behind the dream of reunification.
Besides, his work influenced the operas of other
contemporary artists, thus making music a very efficient tool for national
identity construction. That is why, Verdi is considered today one of the
parents of modern Italian Nationalism.
Fertile Ground for Nationalism
Two main things contributed
to Italians' need for nationalistic ideals: the glorious history of their
country and the deplorable situation in which the nation was in the 19th
century. The opposition is best reflected by the depictions of Italy in popular traditions over the years.
It went from a "nation in arms", illustrated
during the Roman Empire as a woman sitting on a pile of shields, with an arrow
in her hand, with Victory behind her to a woman in chains that needed to be
rescued (Binachini & Coskun 2009).
Throughout this troubled period, classic music was the
most spread form of entertainment, and Verdi was the most played composer.
Thus, when Verdi and his contemporaries started promoting nationalism through
their musical operas, the public was longing for a source of patriotic
inspiration, so it gladly embraced classic music as one.
Besides the enthusiasm of the masses, an organizing
force was also needed, to channel the power of the public towards the desired
end: the Italian Unification - the activists of the Resorgimento, the ones who
decided to use Verdi’s music, as a means of transmitting nationalistic messages
to the audiences.
The artist's works thus became an important
communication line between the revolutionaries and the population. As the
former politician and activist for reunification, Giuseppe Mazzini, wrote in
his 1863 “Philosophy of Music – Envisioning a Social Opera”, classical music
had the function of inspiring young generations of patriots. It was perceived
as being “loaded with ideological intentions” and used for propaganda,
especially Verdi's music, accessible to a large number of people and easily
understood by anyone (Binachini & Coskun, 2009).
The operatic stage of the 19th century
Italy was full of composers calling patriots to fight for national state
construction. Their works were built around male heroes who sacrificed
themselves for their ideals and virgins whose virtues were either saved by the
male heroes or stolen by foreigners. The message was clear: women reproduced
the nation, men had to protect it, and fighting for one's country meant
fighting for one's very descendants (Binachini & Coskun, 2009).
The European context of the
19th century was also favorable for National Identity construction, for
the formation and consolidation of nation-states. This process was facilitated
by the modernization of society: the move from feudalism to citizenship and
social mobility, the spread of industrialization and capitalism, the creation
of national educational systems (White & Murphy, 2001).
State apparatuses all over Europe used education,
media and cultural elements (including music) to create a sense of solidarity
and belonging among the population. National identities were seen as a fluid
and changeable set of learned values and ideologies that can be influenced by
different factors, understood from a constructivist point of view.
Lillian Farrel (2010, p.108) explains this constructivist
approach using Pierre Bordieu's theories of habitus: people's attachment to
nations is not naturally inherited but learned and habituated, “progressively
inscribed in people’s minds” through “cultural products” such as education,
language, judgments, values, music, etc.
In 19th century Italy,
however, the role of the state apparatus and of the national education system
was played by activists and revolutionaries, who used arts and culture,
especially Verdi's music, as main tools for promoting nationalistic feelings. In
order to better understand the country's evolution in that period of time and
Verdi's role in that evolution, we have to define Italy from a nationhood
versus stateness point of view.
According to Taras Kuzio (2001), the concepts of stateness
and nationhood should be analyzed separately because, even though overlapping,
they are, in essence, two different historical processes.
State creation is considered as a mainly artificial
process, a man-made creation, and precedes the idea of nation or nationhood,
being based not on national consciousness, feelings or ideas, but on transferrable
loyalty towards the state (Lintz & Stepan, 1996).
Nation building, on the other hand, is seen as a
natural process, associated with the concept of birth, the result of people's
strong feelings of solidarity, sense of belonging and identification with the
group.
Other academicians made this
distinction differently. They say that there are two main types of nations: cultural and political. The cultural nations are those
mainly based on common cultural heritage (literature, language, religion, etc.)
The political nations are those based on the unifying force of a common
political power and constitution (White &Murphy, 2001).
From this perspective, 19th century Italy
was a cultural nation and a nation rather than a state, desperately needing the
political driving force to become a unitary state that Giuseppe Verdi and his
music helped create.
The Verdi Effect
The artist was at the peak of his life and career in
the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s, during the Risorgimento, his music sending patriotic
messages and mobilizing the public behind the unification.
In order to better understand the role of Verdi's work
in this process, three questions have to be answered:
- Were there patriotic themes and values underlined in the musical performances that could have lead people to rebel?
- Which metaphors may have had the greatest impact on the construction of the National Identity?
- Are there evidences that this construction has been influential? (Binachini & Coskun, 2009, p.60)
Verdi's operas were indeed full of patriotic elements
that inspired nationalistic feelings in people. The “Homeland” was the dominant
theme, the one with the greatest impact, evidence of this influential construction
being found in Verdi's biography – the events in his life made him aware of the
way his country's territory was split among foreign empires.
The musician was born in the village of Le Roncole (part
of the French Empire) and, at the age of 20, he moved to Milan (part of the
Austro-Hungarian Empire), to study. He wrote all but seven of his operas during
the Austro-Hungarian rule over the city. This could have influenced him to
write about the country and the Homeland, although, in the beginning, his work
was not intended for patriotic propaganda.
The most famous musical fragment that inspired
nationalistic feelings was the "Va pensiero” chorus, from Nabucco, also
known as the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”, describing the anguish of the
exiled Jewish people who had lost their Homeland. One of the most famous lyrics
was: “Oh mia Patria, sìbella e perduta” (Oh my homeland, so beautiful and
lost).
The opera was first played in Milan in 1842 (when the
city was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), and the patriotic message of the
lyrics was so well received that the public asked for an encore. Forbidden by
the Government at that time, such a reaction was considered crucial for the
subsequent evolution of Italian Nationalism.
There are also tales according to which, during
rehearsals, the workers in theaters throughout Italy used to interrupt their
activities when Va Pinsero was sung and applaud at the end of the fragment. When
Verdi died, in 1901, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves was sung at his funeral, a
quarter of a million citizens marching along the streets singing in his memory.
Another important moment in the evolution of the
symbiotic relationship between Verdi's work and political nationalism was a
performance of "Ernani", in the summer of 1846. Local journals wrote that the audiences sang
along with the artists during a chorus, changing the name of the character
Carlo, with Pio – reference to Pope Pius IX, who granted amnesty to nearly 1000
former revolutionaries and unification activists.
Other operas signed by Verdi that served as patriotic
soundtrack during the Resorgimento was “Macbeth”, with its famous cry of the
Scottish exiled, and “Attila”, with its emotional lyric: Avrai tu l’universo,/
Resti l’Italia a me” (Take the universe, but leave Italy to me) (Binachini
& Coskun, 2009).
Theaters, the Twitter of the 19th Century
Another reason why Verdi's operas were so efficient in
the Resorgimento propaganda was the context in which they came to fame. In the
1840s, Giuseppe Verdi was the most played musician in Italy. Margaret Fuller,
the correspondent of New York Tribune wrote in 1847: “There is little hope of
hearing in Italy other music than Verdi's” (cited in Stamatov, 2002, p.348).
The population and the leaders of the Resorgimento
found in Verdi's operas an easy way of expressing their political statements.
The musical works were already filled with nationalist and revolutionary
symbols that were easily recognized and understood by the public. All the
audiences had to do in order to express political solidarity with these
concepts was to associate themselves with Verdi's operas through ovations and
applause, and they did, all throughout the 1848 revolutions (Stamatov, 2002).
This led to a very effective use of what Peter
Stamatov (2002) called “interpretive activism”.
The concept sees audiences not as a uniform mass, where the artistic
message has the same impact, but as a network of members that interact with
each other and influence one another. The message is therefore disseminated from
person to person.
Today, it would be done through Twitter and Facebook,
like we've seen during the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement or the
anti-Government protests in Turkey, in 2013.
In 19th century Italy, all they had was theater and classic
operas.
Opera with a Purpose
Although Verdi's operas were intensively used for
political purposes in 19th century, not all of them were intentionally
created as political pieces. This began only in 1848, with the start of the
Milan Revolution, when Verdi was in Paris, but rushed back to Italy to support
the movement and wrote his “first opera with a purpose”: “La Battaglia di
Legano”.
The scenario evoked a war started by the Italian
troops against the Germans, trying to chase them out of their land. The opera
had its premiere in Rome, in 1849, but was forbidden in Milan by the Austrian
censors. It was renamed “The siege of Haarlem” and adapted in order to be
revived. After writing this piece, Verdi became more directly involved in
politics and in the Resorgimento.
Contagious Patriotism
Verdi may be the most famous Resorgimento composer
today, but, in the 19th century, many other inflammatory choruses
and hymns written by Rossini, Mercadante and other artists were sung throughout
Italy, to keep the patriotic feelings up.
Towards the end of his life, Vincenzo Bellini also
wrote one of the most politicized pieces of those times: “Norma”, first
performed in 1831 at La Scala. The lead role was played by Giuditta Pasta, a
well known singer of that time, very active in the Resorgimento. She appeared
on the stage wearing a laurel wreath, in an image strikingly similar to the
depiction of Italy on Roman coins (Binachini & Coskun, 2009).
Conclusions
Throughout the 19th century, Italy went
through a crucial process of national identity construction known as the
Resorgimento, which ended with the birth of a unified Italian State comprising
the old territories that, up to that point, had been incorporated in different
foreign empires.
The Italian classic music of that time greatly
contributed to the success of the Resorgimento, offering the perfect way of
transmitting patriotic and nationalistic messages to the masses. The theaters
became the places where the audiences could express their political statements,
by reacting to classic operas.
The works of many great 19th century composers
were used by the Resorgimento activists to promote their cause, but the most
famous and the one with the greatest impact on the revolution was, by far,
Giuseppe Verdi.
For the passion and the comprehensive messages he
included in his opera, for his role as a member of the Parliament and for his
influence on other artists and composers of his time, Giuseppe Verdi is
considered today one of the founders of the Italian Nationalism and a great
contributor to the construction of the Italian National Identity.
