Edited by Andreas Giger (2017)
One-volume set: score pp. LVIII, 486 + critical commentary | NR 140167
Piano vocal score | CP 140170
I due Foscari, Verdi’s sixth opera and his second on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, was first performed in Rome at the Teatro Argentina on 3 November 1844.
Its publication history is marked by a curiosity, albeit not a unique one, that explains many of the problems with the traditional available scores: the version first printed in the vocal scores of Blanchet (Ricordi’s representative in Paris) and Cramer & Beale (Ricordi’s representatives in London) predates the version performed at the premiere. When Verdi arrived in Rome for rehearsals, he had already completed part of the orchestration, which allowed Ricordi to begin assigning numbers to the engraver nearly three weeks before the premiere. These numbers were also sent to Blanchet and to Cramer & Beale, but whereas Ricordi reprinted in his vocal score some of the passages Verdi revised during rehearsals, Blanchet and Cramer & Beale did not.
In May 1845, Escudier acquired the rights for Verdi’s operas in France and soon thereafter announced the imminent publication of his own vocal score. Like Ricordi’s, it is a mixture of the original and updated versions. To complicate matters, three different pre-premiere versions were published in Naples by Cali, Girard, and Del Monaco. This transmission of versions similar yet distinct in many respects affected the preparation of the currently available performing materials; they present a work that is in many ways less coherent than the work Verdi intended to be performed. Most importantly, the available full score is in part based on Verdi’s autograph (housed at the Ricordi archives), in part on information in the original vocal score, and in part on one or more corrupted manuscript copies, most notably those derived from the score housed at the Naples conservatory, which was copied at the Ricordi shop before Verdi had completed all the revisions; it was subsequently updated by Verdi himself, then modified by at least one Ricordi scribe, and eventually corrupted (with a happy ending) for the 1845 performance in Naples.
The critical edition primarily relies on Verdi’s autograph (the principal source) and his autograph corrections in the Neapolitan exemplary, carefully evaluating, in the case of discrepancies, the respective dramatic strengths and providing the alternate version in a footnote to the score, in the critical commentary, or both. These sources alone have already revealed a substantial number of problems with the circulating materials. Additional problems include inauthentic stage directions (and often in the wrong place), nonsensical markings of articulation and dynamics (Verdi’s autograph dynamics are frequently softer), as well as superseded or censored text.
The earliest published vocal scores by Blanchet and Cramer & Beale, which reflect a very early stage of the composition, help recover erasures in the autograph and allow us to fix problems of dynamics and articulation (especially such instructions as pizz. and arco) and to include supplemental performing instructions and stage directions. Finally, several manuscript copies show substantial changes made for performances at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1845.
No manuscript of the libretto of I due Foscari in either Piave’s or Verdi’s hand is known to survive. The primary source for the vocal text, punctuation, and stage directions is, in the first place, Verdi’s autograph full score, supplemented by his updates in the Neapolitan score and the first edition of Piave’s libretto, printed by Ajani in Rome before the premiere in November 1844.