He'd been approached by a librettist, Solera, with a 'book', as they say in opera circles, for an opera of the story of Nebuchadnezzar, set in the Jerusalem and Babylon of 568??. Ignoring Verdi's protestations, he forced the manuscript into his hands, ushered him out, and locked his door. Verdi spent a few minutes pleading with his colleague from outside, but to no avail. Exasperated, he retired to the nearest coffee house for an espresso.
Over coffee, the libretto fell open. It was at the page where Verdi could read the words 'Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate' - 'Fly, thought, on wings of gold.' His mind immediately began to wander over the musical possibilities of the words, and he started to think. After a few minutes he put on his coat, flung some coins on the table and rushed home. By the time he got there, virtually the whole of one chorus was written in his head. All he had to do was 'copy it out' of his brain, so to speak. The chorus was 'The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves': the opera was Nabucco. It was to turn Verdi's career, and the path of Italian opera, completely around. Within the year, Italian opera was, once again, King, and Giuseppe Verdi was its most famous composer.
Officially, it's called Nabucodonosor. Thank goodness he shortened it to Nabucco. But then operas are like that. They're a bit like show dogs - they have a normal name and a ridiculous kennel name. Many operas of which we think we know the tide are, in fact, officially called something else. Cost fern Tutte, for example, when displayed in show, goes by the name of Cost fan Tutte ossia La Scuola degli Amanti, Catchy, huh? Beethoven's Fidelio won best in breed as Fidelio, oder eheliche Liebe. Obviously! Fairly rolls off the average Italian tongue, as rumours used to go about Vivaldi.
Another reason for the success of Nabucco might also have been the state of Italy at the time. The Italian nationalists were less tlian twenty years away from a unified Italy, and the symbolism of Nabucco, with its enslaved heroes, was not lost on Verdi's countrymen. 'Va, pensiero' was taken up as a national signature tune in the fight against the Austrian oppressors.
NATION SHALL SING A PIECE UNTO NATION
A longside Verdi and Nabucco in Italy was Glinka and Russian and ±\Ludmilla in Russia. Both of them jam-packed full of great pieces to sing, both of them from 1842, and both of them the early expressions of the seeds of nationalism in their own countries.
Glinka was, as we all are no doubt, an amazing blend of different influences, chance acquaintances and minor quirks of history. Born in Smolensk in 1804, he'd been brought up largely on one of those stunning Russian country estates that you can now only dream of - his uncle even had his own house orchestra. After some lessons in St Petersburg with John Field - yes, John Field the composer: Field had gone there on tour with his then boss, the pianist-composer Clementi, and when Clementi left, Field stayed on. Bit complicated but stay with me - Glinka then, quite consciously, decided that he needed to be able to write 'a great Russian opera'. But before he could do that, he quite simply need to be able to write 'a great opera'. Seems fair. So what did he do? He quite simply took himself off to the home of opera - Italy - and decided to learn from the masters. He got to know Bellini and Donizetti but, more importandy, got to hear operas. Many, many operas. This done, he went to study with a Great Dane. Sorry, my mistake. That should read with the great Dehn: Siegfried Wilhelm Dehn, a very much respected musicologist and theorist. When Dehn thought he was ready, he sent him off with the line 'Go home, and write Russian music', and Glinka duly obliged.
For his first opera, he picked for his subject the invasion of Russia by the Poles in 1613. So a nice light opera, then. This is still very 'Italian' in style, it has to be said, and yet demonstrates lots of the new, up and coming 'nationalism'. For his second opera, though, he adapted a poem by Pushkin, Russian and Ludmilla, and it was this opera that was to be the turning point. It's now looked upon as setting the standard for the new, truly Russian opera style. It also, ironically, was the start of a mini-craze for 'orientalism', incorporating, as it does, authentic oriental themes, and what's known as 'whole tone scales': this is simply a technical, muso way of saying 'sounds a little eerie, with a bit of suspense, and more than a hint of sinister'. (Hope that helps.) Sadly, these days, the showstopping overture to Russian and Ludmilla tends to do precisely that - stop the show. At least, many more people now only ever hear the overture and nothing of the opera. Ah well. As they say in Germany, 'Sze sind zwei menschen, die anlich aussehen, und amgleichen taggeboren sind? How true, how true.
All in all, what with Glinka and his first Russian opera, Verdi with his resistance-friendly tunes and even Chopin with his Polish stuff, it's fair to say that the first seeds of musical nationalism have been sown. Now talking of Germany, lock up your daughters, hang on to your hats and do whatever else it is that you do in cliches before something cataclysmic happens. Whatever you do, do it. Because…
…Wagner has arrived.
THE WHOLE WAGNER
Q
uite. Quite. I agree. What a fantastic subject - the whole Wagner thing, phenomenon, bit. Or whatever. Absolutely. Couldn't have put it better myself. Nail-on-head-hitting mission accomplished, I think. Because to call Wagner a romantic is not really accurate. You can't just say Wagner was a romantic - I mean, he was. But he was much more than that - he was… well, he was just… Wagner. A one-off. There had been nothing like him before, and there would never be anything like him again. Thank goodness, some might say. But not I. Oh no. I will come right out of the Bayreuth closet and gladly shout, Peter Finch-like, from the windows, 'I'm a Wagnerian, and, as a result, I'm clearly as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!' Well, something like that, anyway. What I mean, really, is that I think we need to look into this whole Wagner thing a little bit deeper. So put your horned helmet on - we're going in.
THIS WHOLE WAGNER THING, ONLY A LITTLE BIT DEEPER
W
ilhelm Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig in 1813, the product of an affair his mother had with an actor called Ludwig -how ridiculously apt - whom she later married. He had two sisters who were both singers, and was often to be found bunking off his piano practice in favour of trying to sight-read opera scores. If you add in a talent for poetry and a predilection for Beethoven, it's not hard to see how the whole Wagner world took hold.
After an early flop with an orchestral overture, he turned to opera, writing his own words from the start. He became a chorus master when he was twenty, which meant he summered in Lauchstadt, near Leipzig, and wintered in Magdeburg, some 250 kilometres west of Berlin. It was here that he met his wife, Minna, an actress, and they were married in 1836. Wagner's third opera, Das Liebesverbot - The Love Ban - was written for his Magdeburg company, but it ended up more or less bankrupting it. Just two years later, the couple sailed to Paris. Yes, I did say sailed to Paris. Don't ask me why, but they did and it was to prove a memorable journey in more ways than one. The boat took a full eight months to get to Paris - I'm still not quite sure how you sail to Paris - and the stormy voyage would provide Wagner with not only a deeper knowledge of his insides but also inspiration for his future opera, The Flying Dutchman - based on an old sailors' legend. More of that in a moment. Wagner was one of those people who thought the world owed him a living. And that's not just me being glib and reactionary, he honesdy did. Listen: T am not like other people… The world owes me what I need. I can't live on a miserable organist's pittance like your master, Bach!' See? I imagine it was little moments like that that did a lot to endear him to the people of Dresden.