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Paternal Justice in Giuseppe Verdi’s Operas

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the ‘regulatory intervention’ of Verdi’s fathers using several examples: Oberto Conte di San Bonifacio, protagonist of the composer’s first opera; the Doge Francesco Foscari of I due foscari (1844); Giorgio Germont, representative par excellence of the onstage exercise of autorité paternelle in La Traviata (1853); Amonasro, the king of Ethiopia from Aida (1871); and, last but not least, the troubled political leader Simon Boccanegra in the remake of the opera dated 1881.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Letter of 11 April 1871 to Giulio Ricordi, in Porzio (2000), pp. 416–417.

  2. 2.

    In Fenet, I (1827), pp. 331–332.

  3. 3.

    In Fenet I (1827), pp. 464–465.

  4. 4.

    In Fenet I (1827), p. 486.

  5. 5.

    ‘The civil laws regarding family organisation are the foundation of morality. Criminal laws, in repressing crimes, are their irrefutable guardians … Criminal legislation had to be reformed on the bases of our civil and political codes …’. Roederer (1854), p. 392.

  6. 6.

    Jacques de Maleville stressed how important it was ‘to give great strength to paternal authority because it is on this that the preservation of custom and the maintenance of public calm chiefly depends’ in Fenet (1827), X, p. 486.

  7. 7.

    See Cavanna (1994), p. 71.

  8. 8.

    ‘Le droit de disposer est, dans les mains du père, non un moyen entièrement pénal, mais aussi un moyen de récompense. Il place les enfants entre l’espérance et la crainte’. In Fenet (1827), XII, p. 259.

  9. 9.

    ‘Most of the men of the law that Napoleon had “seduced” presented the same “chromosomic makeup”: they were all legal professionals during the Ancien Régime; they seemed to follow the principles and legends of ’89, being moderates who had looked to the constitutional monarchy as an optimal political model; during the Reign of Terror, they had gone from being persecuted to being just one step away from the chopping block.’ Solimano (2001), p. LXXXII.

  10. 10.

    See Martin (1994), p. 111.

  11. 11.

    See Halpérin (2003), p. 105; Riberi (2016), p. 150.

  12. 12.

    In Locré (1836), p. 315.

  13. 13.

    Until it was rearranged in the Parliamentary Commissions of the First Republic.

  14. 14.

    Art. 315 was then reformulated with law no. 151 dated 19 March 1975, in which the lawmaker, expecting children ‘always to respect their parents’, eliminated the word ‘honour’, which reflected a substantial subordination of the son to the father. The law of 10 December 2012, n. 219 then completely changed the regulatory dictate of this article, stating: ‘All children have the same juridical entitlement.’

  15. 15.

    Ungari (1974), p. 121.

  16. 16.

    The main character of Verdi’s first opera has a certain historical bent: the San Bonifacio family, Lords of Verona, were deposed in 1225 by Ezzelino III da Romano, an ally of the Salinguerra family from Ferrara, despite being related to him on two sides.

  17. 17.

    Baldacci (1974), p. 177. On Verdi's operas and on his operatic 'father figures' see Arblaster (1992), pp. 91-147; Bokina (1997), pp. 128-166; Conrad (1977), pp. 9-43; Gallarati, 2016; Mila (2005), pp. 269- 278; Mioli (2017), pp. 311-347; Napolitano (2013); Robinson (1985), pp. 155-210.

  18. 18.

    For the history of the duel, see Cavina (2005).

  19. 19.

    The institution of the duel appears in almost a dozen works by Verdi, out of the thirty-three titles catalogued (a number which comprises also the second versions of his works). This is a presence manifested in roughly a third of Verdi’s operas: from Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio (1839) to Ernani (1844) by Francesco Maria Piave, from Macbeth (1847) by Piave, much of which revisited or rewritten by Andrea Maffei, to Luisa Miller (1849) by Salvatore Cammarano, Stiffelio (1850) by Piave, Il Trovatore (1853) by Cammarano, La traviata (1853) by Piave, Un ballo in maschera (1859) by Antonio Somma, La forza del destino (1862) by Piave, though to Othello (1887) by Arrigo Boito, including the unfinished King Lear (1850), with libretto by Somma, begun by Cammarano, and the second version of Stiffelio, with the title of Aroldo (1857), also by Piave.

  20. 20.

    See Fava (2016), pp. 45–61.

  21. 21.

    Dumas (1999), p. 231. See also Annunziata (2016), pp. 162-163; Sala (2013), pp. 6-15.

  22. 22.

    Letter of 21 January 1852 to Antonio Barezzi, in Porzio (2000), pp. 40, 41.

  23. 23.

    ‘It is a well-known fact that the first person to take the role of Giorgio Germont, Franco Varesi, complained that all disposal, to show his ability, was ‘only the aria’ ‘Di Provenza il mar, il suol’ (II, 8). He measured the importance of a role on the number of solos, and failed to realise that, in that opera, which he had sung for the first time, he had a grand duet, that with the soprano, the real focal point of the whole drama. The central nucleus of the opera, its beating heat, was the second act, and in the second act there is a scene which stands out as the absolute highlight: the duet between the woman and the man who tries to destroy her passion. ‘Madamigella Valery’, he says, and at her first answer, ‘Son io’, we realise that a transformation has taken place: the soprano that we have seen on stage so far is no longer the same, and we find ourselves before a woman, a woman tackling someone on the same level. If this is not love, then it is something very similar: passion, pain, desire to seduce, to be like, to bend, to annihilate. And all of this revolves around her, the protagonist. Yes, at the end of the day, Varesi was right: everything is at her service. But Violetta was made so great by him, the baritone of La Traviata’. Rescigno (2012), p. 311. See also Gallarati (2016), pp. 463-468.

  24. 24.

    See Rostagno (2015), p. 15.

  25. 25.

    See Rostagno (2015), p. 24.

  26. 26.

    See Marica (2013), p. 32.

  27. 27.

    Letter of 20 November 1880 to Giulio Ricordi in Porzio (2000), p. 256.

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  1. University of Nice Sophia Antipolis, Nice, France

    Mario Riberi

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  1. Angelo Sraffa Department of Legal Studies, Bocconi Universtiy, Milan, Italy

    Filippo Annunziata

  2. Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan

    Giorgio Fabio Colombo

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Riberi, M. (2018). Paternal Justice in Giuseppe Verdi’s Operas. In: Annunziata, F., Colombo, G. (eds) Law and Opera. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68649-3_15

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