Edited by Alberto Rizzuti (2008)
Two-volume set: score pp. LXIII, 484 + critical commentary | NR 138851
Piano vocal score | CP 138854
The principal source for this edition of Giovanna d’Arco is Verdi’s autograph score. It is housed in the Ricordi Historical Archive and is bound in four volumes, one for each act. As he did with most of his scores, Verdi wrote out the autograph of Giovanna d’Arco in two phases: first he created a skeleton score, then he completed the orchestration.
The finished autograph score is full of authorial changes. These vary from simple corrections of mechanical errors (instruments entered on the wrong staff, etc.) to more substantial modifications of melodic lines and even to major structural revisions. Of particular importance for a critical edition of Giovanna d’Arco are the original words Verdi set to music, given that the text was heavily censored for religious and political reasons. In the absence of Solera’s autograph libretto, it is only Verdi’s autograph score that allows us to recover the original form of the text.
The autograph score is a document of notable clarity and precision. Meant to be read by skilled copyists and trained musicians steeped in the compositional and performing traditions of the day, the manuscript presents various interpretative problems today. Mechanical errors – incorrect transpositions, confusion about the names of characters, and the like – are generally easy to emend; only occasionally does one experience difficulty interpreting signs drawn very quickly or imprecisely.
More significant problems arise from the presence of traces of the compositional process (corrections or revisions of earlier layers), from Verdi’s frequent use of incomplete or abbreviated notation, or from internal incongruities in the verbal text. In some cases, however, there are alternative lines present in the vocal parts. Both are valid, though mutually exclusive, and can appear either on the same staff or, for extensive passages or those of an ornamental nature, on adjacent staves. In the latter case, the passages notated on the staff above the one normally assigned to the character must be considered equivalent alternatives (so-called ‘oppure’ passages).
Verdi’s working method was often responsible for inconsistencies not only between parallel passages, but even between two or more instruments playing analogous parts. Some of these contradictions result from his method of preparing the score in two phases. Normally the editor resolves the discrepancy in favor of the later reading.
Editorial interventions made with a view toward regularizing such discrepancies are clearly signaled in the score, when possible through typographical means; otherwise the divergent readings in the autograph appear in footnotes. The critical edition tends to adjust discrepancies among parallel instrumental parts and analogous vocal parts to make them uniform, generally privileging the parts Verdi entered last.