It is said that the operas of Giuseppe Verdi can be divided up into three major periods: the early, starting with Oberto and ending with Luisa Miller; the middle, beginning with Rigoletto and ending with La forza del destino; and then his late period, starting with the epic Aida and ending with his second, sublime comedy, Falstaff. (In fact, some critics have averred that there is a fourth period just for Falstaff alone, since it departs so radically from what has come before.) And of those twenty-eight operas Verdi composed, the one I keep returning to with obsessive regularity is Simon Boccanegra, in his late middle period. In almost all his operas, Verdi fuses the political with the personal, but hardly better than in this grand, episodic opera.
The action of the opera takes place in the mid-14th century, where in the space of a week the hero-pirate Simone is elected doge of Genoa, but loses his daughter (temporarily) and her mother (permanently). Many years later, he is reunited with his grown daughter, but faces furious opposition from his daughter's grandfather, her aristocratic suitor, and members of his own regime. Although he manages to unite all the discontented parties, Simone is ultimately poisoned and dies blessing his newly wedded daughter and his successor.
So, why this particular work? What makes Simon Boccanegra as appealing and as important as the popular La traviata, Rigoletto, and Aida?
The brilliance of Simon Boccanegra is represented in miniature in the great, anchoring Council Scene in Act 1, which all on its own is a gem of musical dramatization. Boccanegra as doge tries in vain to pacify his bellicose council. Outside a riot is heard. Two consipirators in the council detach themselves from the group. A herald is sent out to calm the rioters. The people then sweep in, carrying with them two armed aristocrats. Harsh accusations are exchanged, and Boccanegra is almost killed. Suddenly, his daughter Amelia enters. She calms the frenzy, and searches for the villain who planned her abduction. But again voices are raised, and Boccanegra himself silences them:
"Fratricides! Plebians and patricians, people of a ferocious history! While the seas beckon you Genoese to your hereditary pursuits, instead brothers tear at each other's hearts." That's the parental scolding, but then Boccanegra, this ex-corsair who has worn the doge's cap for a score of years, takes a different tack:
"I weep for you, for the tranquil rays of the sun on your hills, where olives bloom in vain, I weep for the lying beauty of your flowers, and I cry "peace" and I cry "love!""
Then follows an ensemble winding around the last two lines of Boccanegra's speech, containing asides from each of the principal charcters, while the chorus murmurs like the waves of the sea. And here revealed is the utter, transcendant brilliance of the Boito/Verdi partnership: an aged aristocrat rages against Boccanegra's rule, a resentful courtier promises further villainy, but those discordant voices are woven into a wider tapestry, which ends not with a bombastic bang, but with a pianissimo whisper. Enjoy it here, in a famous 1978 performance with Cappuccilli, Freni, Ghiaurov, Luchetti, Schiavi, and Foiani.
That declamatory speech and subsequent ensemble alone are enough, in my view, to annihilate many of the more popular full operas in current repertory, but the scene isn't over. Just as the clamorous plebs and patricians have been calmed by Boccanegra's oratory, so too have the principal characters, and now it is the doge's turn to exact revenge on his daughter's abductor. But the villain isn't openly denounced and arrested; no, far more dramatically, he is hailed as the tribune of the people and then ordered to curse the instigator of the kidnapping plot, in other words, himself. Under duress, he complies, and then the entire assemblage joins him in the malediction. Utterly terrorized, the reprobate flees the room with the whispered curse following him. On this one, superb scene, the opera is centered.
As has often been said, Simon Boccanegra is the Lear opera Verdi never wrote (he had already composed an outstanding adaptation of Macbeth). So why isn't it performed more often? Why should anyone, even a regular opera afficionado, care about it? It provides many juicy roles for male voices of the appropriate stature, though it must be said that women are sparsely represented in this man's world of political skullduggery. Does the episodic nature of the piece--the prologue is separated from Act 1 by twenty-five years--make it less palatable? Perhaps it's the notable lack of famous arias (the tenor and soprano each have one, but they are not well known, and the title character has none), save for the renowned basso soliloquy here. And then there is a mess of dissatisfied groups in the opera: the Guelphs, the plebians, the patricians, the Grimaldis, the Fieschis, and the Adornos. This history, vital to the action, is difficult for even the best directors to clarify for a modern audience.
And even a Boccanegra partisan like myself must mourn that Boito didn't revise the libretto even further due to the usual operatic plot holes: Amelia is lost to Simone, when in a bizarre turn of luck she is not only made the inheritor of the vast Grimaldi fortune, but also put in the care of an elderly aristocrat, who turns out to be none other than her grandfather, Fiesco. Paolo, the villain of the piece, has been cursed, denounced by the senate in particular and by Genoa in general, but, even after fleeing, he evidently has the run of Boccanegra's prisons and even the doge's study. Lastly, and most incredibly, Boccanegra has a comically incompetent security detail...three different potential assassins are able to infiltrate the doge's chamber, leading to the eventual, ultimate success. An adopted orphan girl is a better bodyguard than a corps of Genoa's troops!
However, to give this opera its due we must take into account the character of Simone himself. From his first dashing entry in the Prologue, his mind is not on the throne but on his beloved and on reconciliation with her father Fiesco. When next we see him, a quarter of a century later, he attempts to bring the exiled Grimaldi family back into the fold. In the great Council scene, he argues for peace with Venice against determined resistance, and allows the clamorous peasants with pitchforks into the chamber. Subsequently, he forgives his daughter's lover his murderous intent, grants him his freedom, and allows him to marry Amelia. Lastly, far from arresting the threatening Fiesco, the doge brings him into the new family that he has created on his deathbed.
Though the opera ends with the hero's demise and choral Lear-like utterances of despair and dismay ("Every happiness on earth is a false spell; In a mantle of woe Nature enfolds herself"), the mood is somber but not desolate. With the now-married lovers re-united with the aged Fiesco and with an appreciative Genoa to support them, there is, at least, hope.
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