A Note from James Conlon, Music Director
By James Conlon

Taken together, Verdi's Otello and Falstaff represent a cultural monument, the crowning achievement of Italy's greatest 19th-century genius, the zenith of Italian opera. A hundred and twenty years later, it is clear to all who know the Italian repertory well that it was the logical conclusion of over 50 years of compositional development. Its very perfection created an impasse for the Italian theater similar to the crisis unleashed by Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and underscored by the completion of his Ring and Parsifal. The man who single-handedly took over the traditional bel canto form, with the elegance, beauty and refinement bequeathed by Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, gradually reformed Italian opera, freeing it from the static closed forms of the early 19th century, the predominance (and just as often abuse) of vocalism and the tyranny of the prima donna. His inexhaustible search for dramatic subjects and musical-dramatic values, his liberation of the orchestra from the role of accompaniment, and his vast and impartial humanity culminate together in these two masterworks.

Any knowledgeable connoisseur of Italian music or opera lover will have no trouble in recognizing the overwhelming greatness of these two works. Significantly, many music lovers who do not prefer Italian opera readily accept these works as great. Very often the same persons who disparage Italian opera in general concede that these two are exceptional.

It is precisely to this last argument that I would like to turn my attention. It is my contention that while, like many great works, their impact is immediate and requires no previous experience or contact with the composer, their real significance and genius are later more fully apparent when viewed in context. I recall my own first hearing of the opera at the age of 13, barely understanding a word of Italian or anything about life and yet being literally overwhelmed by the power of the music.

Much is made today (often to a fault) of assessing works' novelty in their historic context as a measure of the intrinsic value of their substance. Paradoxically, Otello and Falstaff - while breaking new ground, provoking and inspiring the next generations to propose a new aesthetic - represent, in my mind, logical conclusions more than novelties. Like the head of Janus, Otello can equally well be perceived looking forward and backward, and both operas are accepted into the international pantheon whereas too many earlier works (which were, in fact, novel and revolutionary) are relegated to second class status. Shakespeare was read but not produced on stage in Italy until after Verdi produced Macbeth in 1847. No composer so consistently went to the edge politically, writing political subversion between the lines in the early Risorgimento operas. No other dared, as he did in his middle years, to create operas about society's outsiders and antiheroes, portraying a gypsy, a hunchbacked buffoon, a courtesan (Il Trovatore, Rigoletto, La Traviata). He insisted on writing his own embellishments and cadenzas to prevent singers from misappropriating his music - only eventually to eliminate them from his own vocabulary. He perfected the scene and aria, the cabaletta, the orchestral preludes - only to abandon all of them. He brought political drama to the stage (I Vespri Siciliani, Macbeth, Don Carlo, Simon Boccanegra) and experimented with epic drama (La Forza del Destino).

His gradual abandonment of closed forms (arias and duets that have a beginning, a middle and an end) favored an uninterrupted dramatic flow. He transferred much of the musical substance to the orchestra, developing a declamatory/lyric style of recitation. The culmination of by now near-vestigial forms - the storm scene, drinking song, concertato, love duet (now misplaced into Act III from Act II), the prayer - are bound together in Otello and Falstaff to perfection in a new way.

Similarly, he pushed dramatic vocalism into a new territory while summing up the full flowering of the traditional vocal archetypes he had inherited from the past. Desdemona as personification of feminine compassion, goodness, beauty and generosity is descended from Elvira (Ernani), Luisa Miller, Gilda, Leonora, Amelia, Elisabetta and Aida (and the Requiem soprano). Iago, fundamentally evil, has no direct counterpart. Coleridge's famous description of "motiveless malignancy" sets him apart from most other villains. But the lower male voices as nemeses or at least partially evil goes back to the very roots of Italian opera and was almost a cliché in the early 19th century. He personifies the wickedness of all baritones and basses of the 19th century Italian. Iago's roots can be traced through humane portrayals of ambiguous, sometimes sympathetic perpetrators of tragedy (Nabucco, Rigoletto, Macbeth, Renato, Germont) to those without redeeming virtues (Silva, Wurm, di Luna, Don Carlos in Forza, Amonasro). The most important and the direct model for Iago is Paolo, Simon Boccanegra's nemesis.

Conversely, the most striking novelty is Otello himself. Portraying the lover as tenor is not new, of course. But tenor as aging lover (as perhaps befits a composer in his seventies) is unique. He is his last great tenor. The difficulty of performing this role is prodigious. Few in the opera's 120-year history could consistently hold the stage. (Plácido Domingo is a recent example of one of the few who could.) Otello's only tenor successor is light and lyric, a turn-around of 180 degrees: the youthful Fenton of Falstaff, lovingly sculpted as an octogenarian composer would conjure up youth. Tenor as poet, lover and military hero all have their models, but none is a tragic hero in the classical sense. Characteristically impetuous, their passion and excesses can often be explained away by youth and certainly be forgiven. From Manrico to Don Carlo, Alfredo to Radames, they variously personify inherent goodness led astray. Don Alvaro and Riccardo exhibit more inner nobility of spirit. The use of the dramatic tenor as flawed tragic hero crowns Verdi's ability to stretch the limits. It stands as the apotheosis of the tenor in the Italian operatic tradition.

Finally, the enrichment of the orchestra and the symphonic development of Otello and Falstaff owe greatly to Beethoven, to Wagner - how much is still an open question - and partially to the growing interest in Milan for symphonic music. Every opera after Un Ballo in Maschera (including the revised versions of Macbeth and Simon Boccanegra) shows massive steps. The orchestration of Otello has already integrated Fontainebleau and Imperial Spain; the Scottish heath (revisited), the Genovese council chamber scene, ancient Egypt and the Dies Irae. The Act I storm and love duet, the Cypriots' hymn of praise to Desdemona, Otello's soliloquy, the Willow Song and the Ave Maria and the contrabass solo of Act IV, to cite but a few, have precedents but no equals. The Act III trio sets out the plan for Falstaff.

To summarize, no greater Italian masterwork exists. Like all great works, to paraphrase Arthur Schnabel, it is greater than the sum of all possible performances. Its greatness is not dependent on those who interpret it. Despite all the possible dramatic misadventures or vocal inadequacies, this work cannot fail because it is so perfectly conceived, so masterfully executed that not a single note is superfluous or less than inspired. Verdi was to the 19th century what Hadyn was to the 18th. Blessed with long lives, after their prodigious beginnings, they evolved throughout the years, and wrote their greatest works at the end. Verdi left not only his most sublime works, but that of the now 400-year-old tradition. Monteverdi created it, and Verdi perfected it.