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From Byron's The Corsair to Verdi's Il corsaro: Poetry Made Music1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2011

Susan Rutherford
Susan Rutherford
Affiliation:
University of Manchester
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At the crux of Byron's epic poem The Corsair lies a moral dilemma for its imprisoned hero, Conrad. Should he kill his sleeping enemy, Seyd, and thus evade impending torture and execution the next morning? Or should he accept death as the just recompense for his crimes? His decision is swift. He resolutely refuses the path of the ‘secret knife’; in contrast, Seyd's favorite slave and concubine, Gulnare, declares her readiness to do the deed instead. When Conrad, pursuing her through the winding passages of the high tower, sees her again, he at first thinks that her ‘softening heart’ had spared Seyd's life.

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Nineteenth-Century Music Review , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , November 2010 , pp. 35 - 61
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

2 Gordon, George, Byron, Lord, The Corsair, in The Works of the Right Hon. Lord Byron, 2 vols, vol. I (London: John Murray, 1815): 1–95.Google Scholar

3 Langer, Susanne K., Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite and Art(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942): 244–5.Google Scholar

4 Pavis, Patrice, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture, trans. Loren Kruger (London and New York: Routledge, 1992): 31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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6 Wolf, Werner, ‘Toward a Functional Analysis of Intermediality: The Case of Twentieth-Century Musicalized Fiction’, in Cultural Functions of Intermedial Exploration, ed. Hedling, Erik and Lagerroth, Ulla-Britta (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002): 15–34, 17.Google Scholar

7 Arteaga, for example, discusses how the ‘poet's aim is to move, depict and educate’; while music shares the first two functions, it does not have the ‘means to convey abstract reason. Sounds are none other than sounds: they render sensations and feelings but in no way ideas’. Arteaga, Esteban de, Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano dalla sua origine fino al presente (Venice: Carlo Palese, 1785): 4–11.Google Scholar Translations are the author's unless otherwise credited.

8 Cited in Katz, Ruth and Dahlhaus, Carl, eds, Contemplating Music: Source Readings in the Aesthetics of Music, 4 vols, vol. I (New York: Pendragon Press, 1987): 148.Google Scholar

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10 Van, Gilles de, Verdi's Theater: Creating Drama through Music, trans. Gilda Roberts (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998): 374.Google Scholar

11 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, Lectures On Dramatic Art And Literature, trans. John Black (repr. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing, 2004): 56.Google Scholar

12 De Van, Verdi's Theater, 37. On the development of Italian opera in this context, see Tomlinson, Gary, ‘Italian Romanticism and Italian Opera: An Essay in Their Affinities’, 19th-Century Music 10/1 (1986): 43–60; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarBernardoni, Virgilio, ‘La teoria della melodia vocale nella trattistica italiana (1790–1860)’, Acta musicologica 62/1 (1990): 29–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Verdi described this specific use of language as ‘parola scenica’. On this much-disputed term’, see Seta, Fabrizio Della, ‘Parola scenica in Verdi e nella critica verdiana’, in Nicolodi, Fiamma and Trovato, Paola, eds, Le parole della musica, I: Studi sulla lingua della letteratura musicale in onore di Gianfranco Folena (Florence: Olschki, 1994): 259–86;Google Scholar and Folena, Daniela Goldin, ‘Lessico melodrammatico verdiano’, in Le parole della musica, II: Studi sul lessico della letteratura critica del teatro musicale in onore di Gianfranco Folena, ed. Muraro, Maria Teresa(Florence: Olschki, 1995): 227–53Google Scholar.

14 See, for example, Verdi's admiration of Shakespeare in a letter to Clara Maffei in 1876: ‘To copy truth may be a good thing, but to invent truth is better, much better. There may be a contradiction in these three words, “to invent truth”, but you ask Papa [Shakespeare]. It may be that Papa found Falstaff just as he was, but it would have been difficult for him to find a villain as villainous as Iago, and never, never such angels as Cordelia, Imogene, Desdemona, etc. etc. and yet they are so true! To copy truth is a fine thing, but it is photography, not painting’. Cited in Osborne, Charles, Letters of Giuseppe Verdi (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1971): 201Google Scholar.

15 Letter from Boito to Verdi, 18 October 1880, The Verdi–Boito Correspondence, ed. Conati, Marcello and Medici, Mario, trans. William Weaver (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994): 7.Google Scholar

16 Kimbell, David, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985): 485. xzGoogle Scholar

17 On reception of Byron's works in Italy, see Zuccato, Edoardo, ‘The Fortunes of Byron in Italy (1810–70)’, in The Reception of Byron in Europe, 2 vols, ed. Cardwell, Richard Andrew, vol. 1 (London and New York: Continuum, 2004): 80–99, 83.Google Scholar Also on this topic, and more specifically on Verdi's own relationship with ‘Byronismo’, see Kimbell, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism, 485–515. For an examination of the poem within its social, cultural, and political context, see Leask, Nigel, ‘Byron and the Eastern Mediterranean: Childe Harold II and the “polemic of Ottoman Greece”’, Cambridge Companion to Byron, ed. Bone, Drummond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004): 99–150CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 According to Elizabeth Hudson, Verdi had considered setting The Corsair as early as 1843, then decided definitely in the early winter of 1845–46. Verdi, Giuseppe, Il corsaro: melodramma tragico in tre atti, ed. Hudson, Elizabeth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999): xiiGoogle Scholar.

19 Letter to Giovannina Lucca, 24 January 1846, cited in Budden, Julian, The Operas of Verdi, 3 vols, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992): 363Google Scholar.

20 Letter to Benjamin Lumley, 4 December 1846, Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xiv, xvi. Verdi had finished the opera by 12 February 1848.

21 Letter to Francesco Maria Piave, 27 August 1846, Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn., xiii.

22 For a discussion of the gender aspects of the different versions by Pacini and Verdi, see Hadlock, Heather, ‘“The Firmness of a Female Hand” in The Corsair and Il corsaro’, Cambridge Opera Journal 14/1–2 (March 2002): 47–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Dahlhaus, Carl, Drammaturgia dell’opera italiana, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo (Turin: EDT, 2005): 97.Google Scholar

24 There were, of course, other onstage male deaths: we need think only of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia, where the heroine poisons her son (by accident) and all his friends (on purpose).

25 On Barbieri-Nini's performance as Lady Macbeth, see Bernstein, Jane A., ‘“Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered”: Lady Macbeth, Sleepwalking and the Demonic in Verdi's Scottish Opera’, Cambridge Opera Journal 14/1–2 (2002): 31–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xx.

27 ‘Nel duetto col basso prendete il primo tempo sostenuto, declamato; non date importanza alle note ma alle parole: la cabaletta in tempo tagliato ma non troppo presto. Il basso ha la prima frase, che la dirà a piena voce: voi canterete in tutto questo tempo a mezza voce (ricordatevi delle mezzevoci che fate nel Macbeth). Voi sapete meglio di me che l’ira non si esprima sempre gridando, ma qualche volta con voce soffocata, e questo è il caso. Cantate dunque tutto quest’ultimo tempo sotto voce, ad eccezione dell’ultime quattro note: aspettate che il basso sia quasi fuori della scena per prorompere in un grido accompagnato da un gesto terribile, quasi a far prevedere il delitto, che siete per commettere’. English translation from Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xx.

28 On some considerations of gesture and mise-en-scène in nineteenth-century opera, see Roccatagliati, Alessandro, Felice Romani librettista (Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana: 1996): 265–85;Google ScholarMoindrot, Isabelle, ‘Le geste et l’idéologie dans le “grand opéra”: La Juive de Fromental Halévy’, Romantisme 28/102 (1998): 63–79;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSmart, Mary Ann, Mimomania: Music and Gesture in Nineteenth-Century Opera (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rutherford, Susan, ‘“Unnatural gesticulation” or “un geste sublime”: Dramatic Performance in Opera’, Arcadia 36/2 (2001): 236–55;Google ScholarRutherford, , ‘The Singing Actress’, in The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815–1930 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); andGoogle ScholarRutherford, , ‘“La cantante delle passioni”: Giuditta Pasta and the Idea of Operatic Performance’, Cambridge Opera Journal 19/2 (2007): 107–38Google Scholar.

29 Cattaneo was a music journalist who published a number of books on music (issued by Ricordi), including translations of performance manuals by Cramer and others. He died in 1856. See his obituary in the Gazzetta musicale di Milano (13 Apr. 1856).

30 ‘[E] per verità bisognerebbe non aver buon senso per non ridere del telegrafico loro gesticolare, di quel loro moversi ed atteggiarsi sulla scena’. Gazzetta musicale di Milano I/18 (1 May 1842): 79–80.Google Scholar

31 These included singers’ ignorance of dramatic art, an undeveloped concept of the singer as dramatic artist and too great an emphasis on singing, the difficulty of acting on the operatic stage, and the lack of informed spectators to encourage a different reception of operatic performance.

32 ‘[L]a poesia che deve infiorare, rinforzare, immedesimare colla musica’. Gazzetta musicale di Milano I/18 (1 May 1842): 79–80.Google Scholar

33 ‘[E] ripeto essere necessario che il maestro sia attore, od abbia almeno la forza di fantasia necessaria per sapersi trasportare ne’ panni di coloro che devono cantare i melodrammi da lui musicati; ed immaginarsi gli atteggiamenti, i moti, i gesti, la mimica insomma colla quale gli attori cantanti dovrebbero eseguire l’Opera, onde il complesso dell’ azione non venga defraudato del possibile effetto scenico, della sua forza nell’ illudere, nel commovere, e l’Opera in musica non si converta in un concerto vocale ed istromentale’. Ibid.

34 Giulio Ricordi, ‘Come scrive e come prova Giuseppe Verdi’, Verdi e il Falstaff (Numero speciale della Illustrazione italiana, 1–5 Feb., 1893). English translation from Hepokoski, James, ‘Under the Eye of the Verdian Bear: Notes on the Rehearsals and Premiere of Falstaff’, The Musical Quarterly 71/2 (1985): 135–56,CrossRefGoogle Scholar Appendix I, 150–54.

35 Hepokoski, ‘Under the Eye’, 141.

36 Two sources are usually given for the initial publication of the letter: a pamphlet entitled Sull’estetica di Vincenzo Bellini – Notizie communicate da lui stesso al Gallo, published in Florence in 1843 and apparently reprinted by L’Occhio that year; and also another pamphlet, ‘L’Olivuzza’, Ricordi del soggiorno della corte imperiale russa in Palermo nell’inverno del 1845–46, which was issued in Palermo in 1846.

37 ‘Studio attentamente il carattere dei personaggi, le passioni che vi predominano e i sentimenti che esprimono. Invaso dai sentimenti di ciascuno di loro, imagino esser quel desso che parla, e mi sforzo di sentire e di esprimere efficacemente alla stessa guisa.

Conoscendo che la musica risulta da varietà di suoni, e che le passioni degli uomini si appalesano parlando con toni diversamente modificati, dall’incessante osservazione di essi ho ricavato del sentimento per l’arte mia. Chiuso quindi nella mia stanza, comincio a declamare la parte del personaggio del dramma con tutto il calore della passione e osservo intanto le inflessioni della mia voce, l’affrettamento e il languore della pronunzia in questa circostanza, l’accento insomma e il tono dell’espressione che dà la natura all’uomo in balìa delle passioni, e vi trovo i motivi ed i tempi musicali adatti a dimostrarle e a trasfonderle in altrui per mezzo dell’ armonia. Li getto tosto sulla carta, li provo sul clavicembalo, e quando ne sento io stesso la corrispondente emozione, giudico di essere riuscito’. Filippo Cicconetti, Vita di Vincenzo Bellini (Prato: F. Alberghetti, 1859): 38. English translation taken from Herbert Weinstock, Vincenzo Bellini: His Life and His Operas (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1971): 57.

38 Branca, Emilia, Felice Romani ed i più riputati maestri di musica del suo tempo (Turin: E. Loescher, 1882): 143–4.Google Scholar

39 It was queried by Luisa Cambi in her Epistolario, then qualified by Francesco Pastura and Maria Rosario Adamo (both of whom regarded the letter to be a reported conversation) and effectively debunked by Friedrich Lippmann and, more recently, John Rosselli. See Cambi, Luisa, Vincenzo Bellini: Epistolario (Verona: Mondadori, 1943): 181–2;Google ScholarPastura, Francesco, Bellini secondo la storia (Parma: Guanda, 1959): 543–4;Google ScholarAdamo, Maria Rosario and Lippmann, Friedrich, Vincenzo Bellini (Turin: RAI, 1981): 133–4;Google ScholarRosselli, John, Bellini (Milan: Ricordi, 1995): 65Google Scholar.

40 ‘Giuseppe Verdi, pochi lo sanno, è uno stupendo declamatore di versi: e qualche suo intimo mi assicura che nulla può immaginarsi di più bello e di più interessante che l’udire i tragici versi del Boito declamati dal Verdi, con una intonazione a grado a grado crescente, finché quasi non raggiunga una specie di ritmo musicale’. Checchi, Eugenio, Giuseppe Verdi, il genio e le opere (Florence: G. Barbèra, 1887): 104Google Scholar.

41 See Verdi's interview with the Viennese Neue freie Presse in 1875. Cited in Rosen, David and Porter, Andrew, eds, Verdi's ‘Macbeth’: A Sourcebook (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984): 125Google Scholar.

42 Hepokoski, ‘Under the Eye’, 50–51.

43 L’Italia musicale VII/28 (7 Apr. 1855): 109–10: ‘Se meglio si fosse occupato dell’ arte sua, avrebbe imparato che Zingarelli, maestro di Bellini e di Mercadante, prima di mettersi a comporre chiudevasi nella sua camera, e ritto in piedi davanti ad uno specchio, cominciava a preludiare, ad animarsi, a viva voce declamando i versi da cantare; ne rilevava tutti gli accenti; ne riteneva le migliori espressive inflessioni; ne eleggeva il tempo, il movimento, il periodo melodico; e la musica riesciva tale che i cantanti potevano farsi comprendere fin nei vestiboli dei teatri. Crede egli che, così operando, avrebbe trovato nell’animo suo la famosa cabaletta del Trovatore: Di quella pira l’orrendo foco: che tanto è in opposizione cogli agitati sentimenti del personaggio; e che avrebbe scritto, come scrisse nel Rigoletto, il cantabile del tenore, che è pure un grazioso motivo: È il sol dell’ anima, la vita è amore:?’ (‘If he had been better educated in his art, he would have learned that Zingarelli, teacher of Bellini and Mercadante, before setting himself to compose would shut himself in his room, and standing before a mirror would begin by animatedly declaiming out loud the lines to be sung; he noted all the accents; he remembered the best expressive inflections; he chose the tempo, the movement, the melodic architecture; and the music succeeded so well that the singers could make themselves understood even in the vestibules of the theatres. Do you think that Verdi, by working in this fashion, would have found in his soul the famous cabaletta in Il trovatore: “Di quella pira l’orrendo foco”, which is so much in opposition with the agitated feelings of the character; or that he would have written, as he wrote in Rigoletto, the tenor's cantabile that also has a charming tune: “È il sol dell’ anima, la vita è amore:?”’)

44 L’Italia musicale VII/51 (27 Jun. 1855): 201–2.Google Scholar

45 Verdi presumably did not share Vitali's concern. Although in the revised 1865 version he altered Macbeth's subsequent lines (‘Oh potessi il mio delitto’), he left Lady Macbeth's opening stanza unchanged.

46 See Surian, Elvidio, ‘The Opera Composer’, in Opera Production and its Resources, ed. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Pestelli, Giorgio, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998): 334–6.Google Scholar

47 Hepokoski, ‘Under the Eye’, 50–51.

48 Budden, , The Operas of Verdi, vol. I, 273.Google Scholar

49 Cited in Conati, Marcello, Interviews and Encounters with Verdi, trans. Richard Stokes (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1984): 26.Google Scholar Barbieri's account, recalled 40 years after the event, should, of course, be treated with some circumspection. However, Verdi's instructions to Escudier prior to the Parisian staging of the revised version of Macbeth in 1865 included similar details about the scene (cited in ibid., 28): ‘And now for the sleepwalking scene – the most important scene of the opera. Anyone who has seen Ristori knows that it must be performed with a minimum of gesture, or rather with one single gesture: that of erasing a bloodstain she imagines to be on her hand. Each movement must be slow, and each step should be invisible: her feet must steal over the ground, as if she were a statue or a ghost. Her eyes should be glazed, her appearance corpse-like; she is on the point of death and will die immediately after’. Ristori had not performed this role before 1857; and so if Barbieri-Nini's account is accurate, presumably Verdi's staging directions were drawn either from his own imagination or, possibly, from information he might have acquired about Sarah Siddons's defining interpretation from 1778 to 1817. She left her own account of the role, published in 1834. The handwashing gesture was apparently Siddons's innovation (unlike her predecessor, Susanna Pritchard, who retained hold of the lighted taper throughout the scene). Siddons later said that the character should be played ‘with a wan and haggard countenance, her starry eyes glazed’. See Engels, Laura, ‘Personating Queens: Lady Macbeth, Sarah Siddons and the Creation of Female Celebrity in the Late Eighteenth Century’, in Macbeth: New Critical Essays, ed. Moschovakis, Nicholas (New York and Abingdon, Oxon.: Routledge, 2008): 240–57.Google Scholar Hazlitt, who watched Siddons's performances in the role over a 20-year period, described her in 1816: ‘her eyes were open, but the sense was shut. She was like a person bewildered, and unconscious of what she did. She moved her lips involuntarily: all her movements were involuntary and mechanical.’ See Hazlitt, William, Criticisms and Dramatic Essays of the English Stage (London: G. Routledge & Co., 1851): 274.Google Scholar Ristori modelled her own approach on that of Siddons, although the ‘glazed’ expression created some problems: ‘So thoroughly had I entered into the nature of Lady Macbeth, that during the entire scene my pupils were motionless in their orbit, causing me to shed tears’. But if this fixity of expression is testing for an actor, it is extraordinarily difficult for a singer, whose vocal colour and flexibility often depend on a mobility of facial features. It is perhaps not surprising that it took Barbieri-Nini three months to master this trick.

50 Hepokoski, ‘Under the Eye’, 153.

51 According to Ricordi, the creators of Fenton and Nannetta – Edoardo Garbin and Adelina Stehle, who later married – were initially reticent when rehearsing their stage kisses. ‘Verdi rose impatiently: “Why are we daydreaming here? Make those two kisses real, and there will be the naturalness that you are seeking. Here, Nannetta, I’ll be Fenton for a moment: you do it like this – and like this”.’ Hepokoski, ‘Under the Eye’, 143.

52 Letter to Ricordi, 18 Sep 1892, cited in Hepokoski, James, Giuseppe Verdi: Falstaff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983): 112.Google Scholar

53 Conversation reported by Giuseppe Giacosa, cited in Conati, Interviews,161.

54 That evidence includes not only those cited above, but also a vast array of other references in Verdi's correspondence as well as accounts of rehearsal practice such as Ugo Pesci's description of the rehearsals for Otello in 1887, reprinted in Conati, Interviews, 184–7.

55 ‘A “point” was a particularly theatrical moment when the actor, by making a gesture, striking an attitude, or changing the tone of his voice, created the impression of a new passion, whether it was a moment of sudden recognition – a start – or a gradual change of emotion – a transition’. Taylor, George, Players and Performances in the Victorian Theatre (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993): 34Google Scholar.

56 Siddons's translation from the German text, in Engel, Johann Jacob and Siddons, Henry, Practical Illustrations of Rhetorical Gesture and Action (London: Sherwood, Neely and Jones, 1822): 118–19.Google Scholar Rasori's Italian translation: ‘La collera arma, com’ ho detto, tutte le esterne membra e loro accresce forza; specialmente poi arma le più idonee ad assaltare, afferrare, distruggere. Mentre in generale le esterne parti ripiene di sangue e d’umori inturgidiscono e tremano, ed i sanguigni occhi rotanti schizzano vampe di foco, le mani e i denti sono presi da una sorta d’impeto, d’inquietudine; quelle si stringono convulsivamente, questi ringhiano e scrosciano. … Gonfiansi inoltre le vene del collo, delle tempia, della fronte; il viso tutto per che avvampi e spasimi; ed il colorito, da sopraccarico del sangue …; tutti movimenti sono forti pronunziati ed al sommo violenti; il passo è pesante, sospino, sì che ne crollano gli oggetti dintorno. … si potrà dire “che questa collera è costituita dal dispiacere d’ un’ offesa ricevuta e dal desio di pigliarne vendetta”. … ‘Engel, Johann Jacob, Lettere intorno alla mimica, versione [di Ideen zu einer Mimik] dal tedesco di Giovanni Rasori, vol. I (Milan: Batelli e Fanfani, 1820): 141–3Google Scholar.

57 For Andrea de Jorio, writing La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano in 1832, the expression of the eyes referred to by Engel was the most crucial part of a menacing gesture – indeed, it was what endowed any movement of arms or body with its true meaning. Among the various attitudes he advises is repeated twisting of hands: ‘Hands closed one within the other, forcefully rubbing each other until the knuckles crack: all accompanied by an angry and threatening look’. (‘Mani chiuse l’una dentro dell’altra, che con forza scambievolmente si stropicciano, fino a farne scrocchiar le giunture: il tutto accompagnato dalla ciera sdegnata e minacciante’.) It was the ‘fierce stare’ that distinguished the gesture from more mundane activities such as warming the hands, De Jorio wrote; the ‘torturing of the fingers’ was meant to suggest what might happen to the target of such hostility were he to fall into the character's hands. Jorio, Andrea de, La mimica degli antichi investigata nel gestire napoletano (Naples: Fibreno, 1832): 311Google Scholar.

58 Ristori, Adelaide, Memoirs and Artistic Studies of Adelaide Ristori, trans. Gaetano Mantellini (1907: repr. New York: Blom, 1969): 182.Google Scholar

59 Ibid., 80.

60 ‘[S]offro soltanto a rammentare gli atletici movimenti con cui essa incompostamente sbraccia per esprimere lo squartare a brano a brano che il leopardo fa della preda’. Marselli argued that Ristori's gestural articulation of the text reduced her from an actress to a ‘mime artist’. Marselli, Niccolo, La ragione della musica moderna (Naples: Alberto Detken, 1859): 230.Google Scholar Marselli does not say where he saw Ristori's rendition of Medea, but she performed it on tour at the Teatro del Fondo in Naples in 1857.

61 Which word was of course an important question. Alamanno Morelli, another celebrated actor of the period and colleague of Ristori, counselled performers to avoid finding gestures for nouns, but rather limit them to verbs. In this, he anticipated Stanislavski's later emphasis on the need for actors to find the ‘action’ within the text. Morelli, Alamanno, Note sull’arte drammatica rappresentativa (Milan: Giacomo Gnocchi, 1862): 74Google Scholar.

62 Budden, , The Operas of Verdi, vol. I, 384.Google Scholar

63 ‘[E]sprimere la parola con tutta la potenza dell’anima vostra’, English translation from Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xx.

64 Rummel, Andrea, ‘Delusive beauty’: Femmes Fatales in English Romanticism (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008): 186–8.Google Scholar Rummel argues that Byron's depiction of Gulnare drew on the political and cultural resonances of Charlotte Corday's murder of Marat; certainly, there is a similarity in the attack on an ostensibly defenceless man. James Soderholm sees other reflections in the figure of Caroline Lamb, who reportedly on one occasion pressed a ‘sharp instrument’ in Byron's palm: Soderholm, James, Fantasy, Forgery and the Byron Legend (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1995): 55.Google Scholar Given Byron's visits to Albania in the early 1800s, however, another possible source for Gulnara was the action of the women of Souli (a community of Albanian ethnicity but in social and religious terms considered allied to Greece) in 1792, who successfully took up arms alongside their menfolk against the attacks of Ali Pasha.

65 Basevi discusses the significance of the terms ‘grandioso’ and ‘slancio’ (with its assorted variations) as indicative of a political inflection in Verdi's music. See Basevi, Abramo, Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (1859; repr. Bologna: Antiquae Musicae Italicae, 1978): 29, 143, 148–9, 155–8Google Scholar.

66 Regarding the Teatro Carcano production, see Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xxii.

67 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, ‘Moore's Life of Lord Byron (June 1831)’, Critical and Historical Essays, Contributed to the Edinburgh Review (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1850): 137–55, 151–2.Google Scholar Modern critics have echoed such thoughts: Budden describes The Corsair as ‘an empty tour de force, with characters of cardboard’, Budden, , The Operas of Verdi, vol. I, 367Google Scholar.

68 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, England and the English (London: Bentley, 1833): 73–4.Google Scholar

69 ‘Dopo, quando abbandonate la scena fatelo precipitosamente, e quando ritornate pallida sconvolta fate ogni passo quasi come lo indica la musica, fino al momento in cui non potete più reggervi in piedi: mi direte per terra le parole seguenti: “già …l’opra è finita, per destarsi egli stava”. Ditele senza andare a tempo, senza badare alle note, ma colla voce soffocata che appena si senta. La cabaletta ditela lenta e cantale con tutta la passione. La posizione drammatica di tutto questo duetto, come vedete, è stupenda’. English translation from Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xx.

70 Noske, Frits, The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart and Verdi (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).Google Scholar

71 Budden, , The Operas of Verdi, vol. I, 385.Google Scholar

72 ‘[I]n quanto al carattere dell’altra donna fu prudenza cangiarlo, e sembra che basterebbe all’uopo una comprimaria, evitando così lo scoglio delle convenienze di due prime donne, tanto più che sarebbe impossibile di rendere la parte della rivale importante (almeno drammaticamente) come quella di Eloisa’. Letter from Cammarano to Verdi, dated 15 May 1849. Mossa, Carlo Matteo, ed., Carteggi Verdi–Cammarano, 1843–1852 (Parma: Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani, 2001): 110Google Scholar.

73 ‘[V]i confesso che avrei amato due prime donne, e mi sarebbe piaciuto in tutta l’estensione del suo carattere la favorita del principe precisamente come l’ha fatta Schiller. Ci sarebbe stato contrasto fra Lei ed Eloisa, e l’amore di Rodolfo per Eloisa sarebbe stato più bello; ma in fine so che non si può fare quello che si vuole.’ (‘I confess I would have loved two prima donnas, and I would have liked the extension of the character of the prince's favourite exactly as Schiller had done it. There would have been contrast between her and Eloisa, and Rodolfo's love for Eloisa would have been more beautiful; but ultimately I know that one cannot do as one wishes’.) Letter from Verdi to Cammarano, 17 May 1849. Ibid., 112. Cammarano's response further explicates the difficulty: ‘Il concepimento drammatico di Schiller nella parte di Milady è sublime: io non ho potuto che debolmente ripararne la soppressione, ma è forza piegare alla inesorabile necessità: d’altronde rimasta pure la favorita, ed aumentato il numero de’ suoi pezzi, non mai un’altra prima donna (di musica) ne avrebbe assunto la parte, poiché nullo sforzo potrebbe contraporre sulla bilancia melodrammatica l’effetto di essa, all’effetto prepotente della parte di Luisa’. (‘Schiller's dramatic conception of the part of Milady is sublime: I have only been able to compensate weakly for its suppression, but one must bend to inexorable necessity. Moreover, even if the favourite remained and the number of her pieces increased, no other prima donna would have assumed the role, since no effort on her part could weigh against the overwhelming effect of Luisa's role in terms of the operatic balance’.) Letter from Cammarano to Verdi, 11 June 1849. Ibid., 129.

741 See Nabucco for Verdi's only other pairing of female love rivals to date.

75 ‘Nel terzetto finale non dimenticate che avete ucciso un uomo ed in tutte le vostre parole, nei conforti stessi che date a Medora, fate travedere sempre il vostro rimorso’. English translation from Hudson, Il corsaro, crit. edn, xx.

76 ‘They were not common links that form’d the chain / That bound to Lara Kaled's heart and brain; / But that wild tale she brook’d not to unfold, / And seal’d is now each lip that could have told’. Byron, , Lara, in The Works of the Right Hon. Lord Byron, vol. II, 66Google Scholar.

77 Robert Charles Dallas claimed to have written to Byron in 1814 before he had completed Lara: ‘Slay him in your proposed battle, and let Calad's lamentation over his body discover in him the Corsair, and in his page the wretched Gulnare’. Dallas, Robert Charles, Recollections of the Life of Lord Byron: From the Year 1808 to the End of 1814 (Philadelphia: A. Small and H.C. Carey & I. Lea, 1825): 185–6.Google Scholar Dallas did not publish his letter until 1825, but similar conclusions are evident in other earlier sources, such as , F.H.B., An Address to the Right Hon. Lord Byron, with an Opinion on Some of his Writings (London: Wetton and Jarvis, 1819): 20.Google Scholar For a modern perspective in matching vein, see Leask, Nigel, British Romantic Writers and the East: Anxieties of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992): 52Google Scholar; and Giuliano, Cheryl Fallon, ‘Gulnare/Kaled's “Untold” Feminization of Byron's Oriental Tales’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 33/4 (1993): 785–807CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 Byron, Lara, 70.

79 For an assessment of Verdi's setting of The Corsair, see Kimbell, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism, 501–15.

80 Budden, , The Operas of Verdi, I, 367–8.Google Scholar

81 Hutcheon, Linda, Theory of Adaptation (New York and London: Routledge, 2006): 115.Google Scholar

82 Pellegrini, Jacopo, ‘Il predatore della musica altrui: Pacini, Il corsaro e gli scherzi del Tempo’, in Il corsaro, Teatro Regio di Parma (2004, programma di sala): 1–18.Google Scholar

83 For a summary of modern criticism of the opera, see Mila, Massimo, Verdi (Milan: Rizzoli, 2000): 418–20Google Scholar.

84 ‘[G]razie alle straordinarie prestazioni del Fraschini e della Barbieri’. Stefani, Giuseppe, Verdi e Trieste (Trieste: Il Comune, 1951): 38–9Google Scholar.

85 These include performances in Turin (Carignano), Naples (San Carlo), Modena, Piacenza, Cagliari, Vercelli, Novara, Venice (La Fenice), Florence (Teatro di Borgognissanti). According to Lucca, Verdi himself deliberately tried to sabotage the production at La Fenice. In fact, the opera had 11 performances at this theatre between 12 February and 8 March 1853. The role of Seid was played by Felice Varesi; Gulnare was sung by Fanny Salvini Donatelli, who curiously also sang on one occasion during the run (3 Mar.) the role of Medora – an odd operatic echo of Macaulay's comment that as characters Medora and Gulnare were interchangeable. Varesi and Salvini Donatelli would sing in the premiere of La traviata at La Fenice only a few days later, but earlier in January the pair had already created another new opera at the same theatre: Bosoni's La prigioniera, again to a libretto by Piave. Its juxtaposition with Il corsaro must have thrown up some interesting comparisons, as this opera offers a scene that is the reverse image of Il corsaro Leonora) is rescued at night by a male slave (Omar); but on this occasion the tyrant (re Pietro) has not been assassinated – he finds them and kills Leonora.

86 On Verdi's difficult relationship with Francesco and Giovannina Lucca, see Hudson, crit. edn, xxi–xxiv.