The Life of Verdi.(Review)

The Life of Verdi by John Rosselli Cambridge Univ. Press, 220 pp. $49.95; 204 pp. $17.95 (paperback)

Two new, comprehensive studies of Verdi, of moderate length but offering fresh insights: at a time when such imposing works as Mary Jane Phillips-Matz's Verdi: A Biography and Julian Budden's The Operas of Verdi have rightly attained the status of modern classics, this is no mean accomplishment.

Of the two, John Rosselli's is by far the more substantial volume. The author sets forth his goals in a characteristically succint manner: "not to provide new facts but to show Verdi in his historical context," of necessity identifying "certain episodes and works as more important than others." Rosselli provides a remarkably deft, wide-ranging synthesis of more than a century of Verdi scholarship, dipping into the standards (Gatti, Walker, Conati) as well as more cutting-edge studies, including Roger Parker's gently postmodern Leonora's Last Act (1997) and, most gratifyingly, Marzio Pieri's Viaggio da Verdi (1977), a gloriously eccentric book, little known outside Italy.

Rosselli has great strengths of his own as well, including a sophisticated understanding of the opera industry in Italy (the subject of one of his earlier books) and of Verdi's wily manipulation of its evolving laws and practices. He does not shrink from challenging the most sensational trouvaille of Verdi scholarship in recent years, Phillips-Matz's contention that Verdi and his second wife (then companion), Giuseppina Strepponi, abandoned a baby girl, "Santa Streppini," in 1851. Rosselli puts forth this sensible response: "To accept [the allegation], one must suppose Verdi and Strepponi capable of thinking the change of one vowel would be disguise enough (or, if the change was the result of clerical error, of using Strepponi's own name in these particularly delicate circumstances)." Rosselli also provides evocative analyses of the operas themselves: their genesis, position in their historical and cultural milieu, performance history and music -- all without resorting to trendy or forbidding jargon. His discussions of Ernani and, ...