Edited by Helen M. Greenwald (2012)
Two-volume set: score pp. LXIII, 405 + critical commentary
NR 140092
Piano vocal score available
CP 140095
Attila, Verdi’s ninth opera and the second of fi ve he composed for the Gran Teatro La Fenice, had its premiere on 17 March 1846. Its genesis spans a two-year period (spring 1844-March 1846), when Verdi was already working on many new projects. Less is known about the origins of Attila than for the other four operas Verdi wrote for La Fenice. Nonetheless, the edition can construct a timeline for Attila that highlights several important issues directly affecting its genesis: the dogged efforts of publisher Francesco Lucca to obtain rights to one of Verdi’s scores; Verdi’s poor health and his deteriorating relationships with both his main publisher Ricordi and the librettist Temistocle Solera; and the composer’s enthusiasm for Attila, König der Hunnen, a curious play by a now-forgotten German playwright, Friedrich Ludwig Zacharias Werner.
This critical edition is the first and only printed score of the opera, considering that the existing version was derived from a manuscript copy prepared around the middle of last century. Moreover, the critical edition constitutes an invaluable instrument for today’s interpreter, for it brings together in a single publication all the information connected with the genesis, tradition and performance characteristics of the opera that up to today have been dispersed in a large number of sources and studies often difficult to access.
The principal sources for this edition of Attila are Verdi’s autograph full score, a document of remarkable clarity and accuracy, perhaps not least because of the opera’s strict engagement with the common musical forms of the Primo Ottocento. Nevertheless, the manuscript exhibits evidence, in its inconsistencies, errors, and omissions, of haste in the last stages of the compositional process.
The critical edition also offers the musical text and all the materials necessary for the performance of two alternative pieces composed by Verdi in the years immediately following the opera’s premiere, clarifying the nature of the substitution of the original musical text on the basis of the markings of the composer present in the autograph scores of both pieces. These substitute for the original romanza of Foresto «Che non avrebbe il misero» at the opening of N. 12: Scena, Romanza, Terzetto e Quartetto Finale. In particular: Appendix 2 contains Foresto’s Scena e Romanza (N. 12a) «Infida! / Sventurato! Alla mia vita», composed at Rossini’s request for the tenor Nicola Ivanoff (already the beneficiary of an alternative piece in Ernani) in view of the performance of the opera in Trieste (28 September 1846); and Appendix 3 contains Foresto’s Romanza (N. 12b) «Oh dolore! Ed io vivea», composed for Napoleone Moriani on the occasion of the first production of Attila at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan (26 December 1846).
In order to better understand Verdi’s compositional thought and modus operandi, Appendix 1 provides the skeleton score (vocal parts for the male chorus and more or less extensive indications of instrumentation) of a long part of the Introduzione (Bars 1a-136a) rejected by Verdi himself in the course of the process of orchestrating the score.
The extraordinary success the opera enjoyed at the time was such that Rossini composed Ritournele pour l'Adagio du Trio d’Attila, for piano, on the occasion of the performance of the Terzetto “Te sol, te sol quest’anima” (third part of No. 12) at his private Parisian residence in 1865, during one of the famous Samedis soir. The edition includes this short fragment (5 bars) in Appendix 4.
The edition integrates into the musical text the metronomic markings that Verdi elaborated after he had completed the score and after the first performances of the opera in Venice. These markings were passed on to the publisher Lucca who inserted them in the first printed version of the score of Attila for voice and piano.
In the introduction and the critical commentary the edition deals with questions relating to instrumentation problems deriving from the physical characteristics of the instruments of the epoch and related performing techniques. It proposes solutions – absent in the existing versions – to problems relating to the use of tympani and trumpets, thus guiding the decisions of the modern interpreter. All the solutions proposed are based both on historically informed studies of performance practice and on a direct analysis of the sources.