Giuseppe Verdi Giuseppe Verdi's life
and art were dedicated to the cause of Italian unity.
One of his early operas, Nabucco, contains the well-known
choral hymn, "Va
pensiero sull'ali dorate," so much in tune with
the sentiments of pan-Italian nationalism, that it
became the unofficial anthem of early Italian unity.
Verdi's relationship with the southern Kingdom of
Naples (or the Kingdom of the Two Siciles), with the
king, Ferdinand II, and with
the royal censors was mixed, to say the least. In 1848,
the San Carlo theater in Naples played Nabucco, but later
rejected Verdi's Gustavo III,
a true story with a regicidal theme and even rejected
the watered-down result since known as Un Ballo in Maschera.
Thus, it comes as a
surprise to read that Neapolitan musicologist Roberto de Simone has
recently uncovered a patriotic hymn from 1848 entitled La Patria, composed
by Giuseppe Verdi and dedicated to none other than King
Ferdinand of Naples! The year 1848 —one year after the
publication of The
Communist Manifesto— was one of widespread
revolution throughout Italy and Europe, movements in
name of constitutional government and, even more
—revolution. Naples had the reputation by the 1850s of
being reactionary; it was an absolute monarchy ruled by
an autocrat who once claimed to have no understanding of
what a "united Italy" might even mean; his kingdom, he
said, "started at sea water [Sicily] and ended at holy
water [the Vatican States]."
How does it figure that the great Italian patriot,
Verdi, would dedicate a piece of music to one who seemed
to stand in the way of Italian unity?
Ferdinand II of Naples
The year 1848 revealed Ferdinand
to be either indecisive or two-faced. In January, a
revolt in Sicily broke out, and he quickly granted a
constitution to the island. Shortly, thereafter, a
massive wave of popular revolution swept the northern
Italian Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia (which was ruled by
Austria). The Austrian army retreated and volunteers
from all over Italy flocked to get in on what seemed
like a unification whose time had come. The Savoy
king of Sardinia and Piedmont (the eventual rulers
of united Italy) moved to invade and help drive out the
Austrians. Ferdinand of Naples sent an army of 12,000
troops.
That
seems amazing, but less so if one considers how things
might have gone: the unification of Italy might not have
needed Garibaldi and the violent
overthrow of the south in 1861. A Bourbon-assisted
defeat of the Austrians and subsequent unification a
decade earlier might have led to an Italian
confederation with the Bourbon king a strong player and
perhaps even on the throne of the whole nation. Things
didn't work out that way, however; the Austrians under
General Radetsky struck back efficiently against the
popular revolutionaries; and the Savoy army faltered.
With that handwriting on the wall, Ferdinand withdrew
his army from the north in May of 1848. Then, the
King/Granter of Constitutions and Potential Helper of
Unification showed the other side of his personality. He
revoked the Sicilian Constitution, and brutally put-down
the subsequent revolt in Palermo, earning himself the
name of the "Bomber King".
In any
event, when Verdi wrote his Patria, perhaps Ferdinand seemed to be
the only potential real king going. He was the ruler of
the south, an ancient kingdom more powerful than any
single power in the north (and possibly more powerful
than all of them combined). He was a strong figure,
certainly more so than the Piedmont monarch, Charles
Albert. So Verdi recycled some music from his opera Ernani (1844) and
dedicated it to Ferdinand II; it was a good ploy to
further Italian unity and perhaps fill the king's head
with visions of a glorious future. The frontispiece of
the music found by De Simone at the Naples Conservatory shows it to
be printed by Girard, Naples, 1848. La Patria, words by
Michele Cucciniello, music by "Gius. Verdi", and full of
every monarchist's favorite cry, "Viva il
Re!"
update (Jan 2009):
Alas,
as much as I rather enjoy the quirky notion that Verdi
wrote music to move the king of the Two Sicilies to sally forth
in the name of Italian unity, there is another
possibility. David Rosen, Professor emeritus of Music at
Cornell University, has written me a kind note
cautioning against simply jumping on the band-wagon (my
pun, not his!); that is, just because it says “music by
Gius. Verdi” on the cover, that does not necessarily
mean that Verdi authorized it, approved it, or had
anything to do with publishing it, much less that Verdi
sat down together with a Neapolitan librettist to
compose praise to the king. Indeed, there are at least a
few reasons why it is more likely that the wordsmith,
Cucciniello, simply took Verdi’s melody without asking,
wrote his own words to it, and published it. For one,
Verdi hated occasional music, and even if he had written
a piece, he would not likely, if he had really wanted to
inspire the king, have tried to pawn off a recycled
four-year-old piece of music.