‘In Italy we don’t have the means for illusion’: Grand opéra in nineteenth-century Bologna

Abstract

Contemporary press reports of two important stagings of grand opéra in Bologna – Rossini’s Guillaume Tell (as Rodolfo di Sterlinga) in 1840 and the Italian première of Verdi’s Don Carlos in 1867 – shed light on some intriguing details of the beginning and culmination of the genre’s reception in Italy. Through the prism of local civic pride, they illuminate not only the national standing of the composers in question and the state of regional operatic production, but also the political issues of the day as they impinged – frequently in unexpected ways – on then-current debates about musical style and genre. In particular, when read alongside the pronouncements of Angelo Mariani (conductor in Bologna from 1860) and, above all, Verdi, they reveal that the role, provenance and relative status of the works’ visual aspect (apparently so integral to the development of grand opéra) figured surprisingly importantly in the complicated and often contradictory discourse on unity in the nation at large.