Luisa Miller
WE can almost put our fingers on the exact moment when Verdi's Luisa Miller ceases to be a conventional melodrama acted out by passionate puppets and be- comes a true drama of the quick and the dead--the moment when the greatest dramatist of the nineteenth century stirs to life at the vibration of a sympathetic chord struck within him by the predicament of his characters. It comes, perhaps, in the finale of the first act at the point where Luisa is told by her father that her lover and betrothed, Rodolfo, is a nobleman in disguise and that she must consider herself betrayed (tradita!), since he is planning to marry Frederica, Duchess of Ostheim—at which Rodolfo himself appears and, kneeling, reaffirms his devotion and his deter- mination to marry Luisa. Routine operatic stuff: but at the sight of this pair whose love is doomed to go down before jealousy, misunderstanding, intrigue and general skulduggery, Verdi's heart seems to expand with compassion; in a beautiful phrase for solo clarinet above tremolando strings we hear that supremely Verdian note of pathos and noble melancholy which is increasingly to dominate the opera.
Luisa Miller is an imperfect work, largely, I think, because the libretto which Cammarano made from Schiller's Kabale und Liebe, though a. perfectly respectable piece of work, is not able consistently to fire Verdi's humanity. (It is short- sighted to criticise Verdi for being satisfied with the mediocre standards of Piave, Solera, Cam- marano and the like; the point is that deep down he was never satisfied until he worked with Boito, he continually struggled to cultivate a stronger literary feeling by his own exertions, and he created operas that are memorable, in spite of limited or insensitive librettos.) The centre of the work, the agony of Luisa and Rodolfo, really lives and moves us. The rest, though it inspires fine things which would make the reputation of most other composers, remains prisoner to Italian convention.
Even here the vigour and growing imaginative- ness of Verdi light up many frowsty corners. Count Walter's aria in Act I (faintly prophetic of King Philip's monologue in Don CarlosVin which the remorseful father, with murder on his conscience, longs for the love of the son who spurns him, Miller's stiff but dignified aria in the same act, the sinister music (bare staccato octaves in a repeated rhythmic pattern over a rising chro- matic bass) to which Wurm forces Luisa to write the letter forswearing Rodolfo—these things and many others, so nearly bursting the bonds of con- ventional expression, show Verdi striving towards a mature dramatic style. But only in the music inspired by the plight of Luisa and Rodolfo does he fully attain it. His genius is still subject to the system. He could not bring all the characters to life and create out of the stock material of Luisa Miller the rounded, peopled world which exists in his next but one opera, Rigoletto.
Fortunately the central situation comes to occupy the stage more and more as the opera goes on. In the finale of Act 1, where Wurm and the Count make a public attempt to part the lovers by force, the work for the first time comes alight. Act 2, already moving with greater free- dom, contains such interesting things as the letter scene, in which Luisa's music raises the work to a new intensity, a very fine unaccompanied quartet whose plangent soprano line poignantly belies Luisa's assumed indifference, and Rodolfo's beautiful lament `Quando le sere al placido,' with its Donizettian grace and more than Donizettian vehemence, the 'divine cantilena' which so moved Boito even in his Wagnerian youth. The third act is fine from beginning to end. The duet between Luisa and her father reminds one of Gilda and Rigoletto, the long and climactic scene which follows between Luisa and Rodolfo has
touches of La Traviata. They are only less mov- ing because the drama does not have the same individual vitality; the music is as fine. The Luisa- Rodolfo duet touches such heights of anguish and desperate tenderness that Un Ballo in Maschera and even Don Carlos do not seem very far away. Luisa Miller would be worth reviving for this scene alone.
The production by the San Carlo Company at Edinburgh made no attempt to raise the opera out of the trough of convention from which its best passages redeem it. The characters were fustian romantic stereotypes. The setting (fixed, with modifications) was effective enough in its browns and golds and egg-shell blues, shining with a curious pale glow like candle-grease or the interior of a grot, but did virtually nothing to point the social contrast, the clash between cottage and castle, which is a feature of the work even in Cammarano's dilution of the Schiller play. And, to begin with, the orchestral playing under Alberto Erede was crude, not least in intonation. Nevertheless the performance had an impressive competence. None of the singers let it down, none of them bawled, all conveyed a reassuring sense of tradition and basic style, and the lovers, Margherita Roberti (a firm-toned, musicianly soprano who always sounded on the verge of great things and in the hands of a great conductor or producer might yet achieve them) and Renato Cioni, a tenor with a dry, virile timbre, well focused and tight only at the very top, and the orchestra with them, rose splendidly to the oppor- tunities which Verdi, freed from restraint at last, his imagination flowing unchecked, had lavished on them in that magnificent final scene.
DAVID CAIRNS
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