WTI Magazine #1    2013 Oct,18

Author : Fiorella Operto and Maria Teresa Cannizzaro      Translation by: The Language Institute

October 12,1906 marked the 414th anniversary of the discovery of America and, like every year for so many years, associations and fraternities of Italian Americans marched from Washington Square, from Broadway, from Lower Manhattan to the West Side. Ten thousand stood in a small square in the area of 72nd St. where the grandson of Charles Barsotti, founder of a famous newspaper, Il Progresso Italo Americano, unveiled a statue dedicated to Giuseppe Verdi. The ceremony was dramatic and significant: when the grandson of Barsotti untied the strings of the drape, a chorus of hundreds of children began to sing, a balloon with the colors of the Italian flag rose into the sky, dozens of doves took flight from the folds of the drape and a cascade of flowers descended on the audience.

The sculptor Pasquale Civiletti had carved the statue from Carrara marble and from the Sicilian marble of Palma di Montechiaro (the Donnafugata of Tomasi di Lampedusa). Giuseppe Verdi is shown in one of his iconographic poses, surrounded by four of his characters: Othello, Falstaff, Aida and Eleonora from La Forza del Destino.

America was living an era of economic growth: the assassinated president, McKinley, had promoted a series of protectionist measures in favor of industry and local manufacturing; under his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. Steel and Ford Motor Company were born, the Department of Commerce and Labor was instituted and the Monroe Doctrine was extended until the acquisition of the Panama Canal Zone.

In 1930 Enrico Caruso made his debut at the Met with Rigoletto. Although by 1930 the statue was already ruined, corroded by pollution, cracked in several places and the square with the together with the surronding area had suffered the vicissitudes of the 1929 crisis: Verdi Square had become Vermin Square.
The vacillations of the public's official reception of the works of Giuseppe Verdi in America seemed to have had the same fate as his New York square.

Giuseppe Verdi was still alive, when his works were performed in New York, New Orleans and San Francisco; in New York, in the wake of interest on the part of educated circles who had admired the works of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini, and Italian Opera in general. In New Orleans, the more direct influence of European culture (French, Spanish) made its mark and paved the way for the love of Bel Canto.
Between 1840 and 1850 there were six premieres of Verdi's operas in New England - not always successful - four of which held by the Italian Opera Company of Havana with its own soloists, orchestra and chorus (New York, Boston, Philadelphia). In 1847 the same Company brought Ernani to America.
Of course, in those years few were the American companies ready to sing Italian or French operas: many of the local ones were performing mostly musicals and operettas of the English tradition, which did not necessitate important voices or vocal registration. Their singers, non-professionals, could handle short songs, recitatives, light duets, certainly not an Othello or an Eleonora. The American city, which before 1840 had a stable opera company, a theater dedicated mainly to opera, a nice orchestra and even a dance troupe was New Orleans where, in 1829, the first newspaper review of an opera was published in a review column.

New York quickly gains rank becoming the commercial capital of the country and, in the 1840's, together with the first baseball team, a European-style opera house, a music academy and experienced companies were opened there.

Life was not always easy for opera. Among the religious communities of New England meandered suspicion towards theaters and shows, and there were preachers who warned against, for example, Mozart's Don Giovanni. La Traviata was prohibited in Brooklyn (1861) and a little later an American soprano refused to sing it, accusing it of immorality.

Nevertheless, interest in the works of Verdi increased and between 1850 and 1860 there were premieres of a second group of Verdi operas. The difference now is that, although the main singers are still from Italy or France, there are American companies in New York and New Orleans. Of these four works, Rigoletto (1866, which had had a lukewarm reception years earlier) was the most important.

This, the official America. We can imagine that the Italian Americans who emigrated to America before the great migrations of the late 1800's (1880-1920) belonged to the generations who had lived - badly - the unification of Italy and who originated mostly from the south of Italy; at the end of the Civil War (1861-65), in addition, America encouraged the immigration of foreign workers to replace the many who had died during the war. We can imagine that many of these immigrants did not even know they were "Italian ", that they spoke only dialect and that most were illiterate. How many of them knew and had listened to the works of Giuseppe Verdi in Italy? Very few. The language of Verdi's opera librettos had to be very difficult for illiterate peasants and in the small villages the band movement (the famous local bands) which eventually brought the arias and Verdi romances throughout Italy had not yet developed. That these poor immigrants could attend the theaters of New York is really hard to imagine. On the stages we see instead the lace and ribbons of the rich New York ladies, the fans and the gossip, described - with anger - by Edith Wharton.
Between 1880 and the early 1900's, Verdi's works were forgotten, being regarded a " hurdy- gurdy " composer (we would say, in the oom-pah or organ-grinder tradition). The Wagner wave became widespread in America, supported also by communities of people of German origin (no doubt larger than those of Italian origin). Not only in America was Verdi forgotten in those years if we speak of a "Verdi, the foreigner in Italy."

What George W. Martin calls the " Verdi Renaissance" exploded with Giulio Gatti- Casazza, at the Met, and with Arturo Toscanini, celebrating the centenary of Verdi's birth (1913) with Un Ballo in Maschera. In 1918 Rosa Ponselle made her debut at the Met as Eleanora, with Enrico Caruso and Giuseppe De Luca. Ten years earlier, Caruso had been a big success, again at the Met, with Aida and Rigoletto. Verdi is popular: in many American cities, local bands played Verdi arias, especially Miserere (Leonora who sings with the choir. We imagine a band playing Miserere, following the funeral procession of some Italian American, in some cities in the United States) and the Chorus of Gypsies.

Verdi Square was coming back to life: the Gershwin brothers, Toscanini, Stravinsky, poets and writers would stroll and meet there. Since then, although with varying popularity, Verdi has not been forgotten. For most of our compatriots who left Italy from the late 1800's, Giuseppe Verdi had to be by now a familiar name, or at least, his famous arias listened to and loved. We can imagine that the Italian Americans identify with the successes of Adelina Patti, Rosa Ponselle, Francesco Tamagno, Lina Cavalieri, Enrico Caruso, Giuseppe De Luca, and later, Mario Lanza, Tito Schipa, Titta Ruffo.

The question is still open. How does a "high" culture, but one relatively close to the isolated communities and surrounded by a foreign language and culture, develop? We may think that communications facilitated the creation of a base of knowledge of Italian music and literature among Americans of Italian origin: in 1920 the radio comes into the homes of Americans and with it, the music and language.

On going problems. Talking to and interviewing Italian Americans who remember the stories of their grandparents and great-grandparents, searching among documents (newspapers, registries - birth names are important: so many Aide's and Radames' in Emilia Romagna! So many Joseph Green's declared at Immigration!) and gathering Oral History which reveals more than many statistics.

The conference "Verdi and the Italian Americans" being held in Rome, at the Capitoline Museums on October 10, 2013 could be the beginning of a similar research and the building of a transoceanic network, to arrive at the publication of one - or more - books.

The reception of the works of the Master of Busseto by the official America and the unofficial America of the Italian Americans

Fiorella Operto and Maria Teresa Cannizzaro
Assiciazione Passato e Futuro
associazionepassatoefuturo@gmail.com 

References
Emelise ALEANDRI , The Italian - American Immigrant Theatre in New York City, Arcadia Publishing, 1999

Roberta Montemorra MARVIN and Hilary PORISS , Verdian Opera in a Victorian Parlor, in Fashions and Legacies of Nineteenth- Century Italian Opera , Cambridge Univrsity Press, 2010

George W. MARTIN, Verdi in America. Oberto through Rigoletto , University of Rochester Press , Rochester, 2011

Vincenza Scarpaci , The Journey of the Italians in America , Pelikan Publishing Company, Gretna (Louisiana ), 2008