Opera: Arias to Fight By

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"There is, and should be," trumpeted Giuseppe Verdi, "only one kind of music pleasing to Italian ears—the music of guns! I would not write a note for all the gold in the world: I should feel immense remorse for using up music paper, which is so good for making cartridges." The declaration, prompted by the news of the 1848 rebellion against the Austrians, who were then ruling most of Italy, is indicative of the flaming patriotism that consumed the composer's early life and work. He was then 35 and had already written twelve operas, most of them bristling with propaganda. In Nabucco, for example, the "Va, pensiero" chorus was a call to arms that was later sung by Garibaldi's army. Italian opera audiences, quick to recognize the freedom slogans Verdi managed to slip past the Austrian censors, often erupted into flag-waving demonstrations. "Viva Verdi," scrawled on walls up and down the peninsula, became the rallying cry for revolt.

Trouble was, Verdi too often neglected the cause of integrating music and drama. Of his first 14 operas, only Nabucco and Macbeth displayed any real staying power; the rest moldered in obscurity. Now, in opera's relentless campaign to resurrect the least-known works of the best-known composers, some of Verdi's early operas are being given a fresh hearing—with unpredictable results. Gianna d'Arco (1845), performed this month by Manhattan's American Opera Society, was a thundering flop. But Attila (1846), as staged last week by the enterprising opera company of Graz, Austria, proved to be a rough diamond.

The excellent production was something of a United Nations effort, what with an Italian conductor (Bruno Amaducci), an Estonian director (Ulf Thomson), a Greek baritone (Rudolf Constatin), an Australian soprano (Althea Bridges), a Japanese basso (Kunikazu Ohashi) and a Spanish tenor (José Maria Perez). The libretto deals with Attila's siege of Italy in the 5th century and is embellished with the usual subplots of revenge, lust and political hanky-panky. What makes the opera worth the salvaging is the vigor and sheer melodic beauty of the score. Though Verdi the patriot worked at odds with Verdi the composer, the fervor of his convictions could occasionally inspire him as well. The opening aria "Let us be free," for example, is charged with the kind of youthful brio that was to come to full flower in Rigoletto, written five years later. Fresh, forcefully direct, the Attila score was polished for six months by Conductor Amaducci, until each facet sparkled. The result was worthy of a setting in any opera house.