Overture to The Sicilian Vespers
Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)

Composed 1853-1855.
Premiered on June 13, 1855 in Paris.

Paris was, in the 1850s, the leading social and artistic center of Europe, the cultural capital of the world — “the New York, London, Paris and Berlin of our own day all rolled into one,” wrote British musicologist Francis Toye in 1930. Louis Napoleon, nephew of the great Bonaparte, was elected president of the new Second Republic after the insurrections of 1848 overthrew King Louis-Philippe. In December 1851, he staged the coup d’état that elevated him to Emperor as Napoleon III. Though his powers were nearly dictatorial, his reign (until 1870, when his “Second Empire” collapsed under Bismarck’s invasion during the Franco-Prussian War) was of immense benefit to Paris. With the Industrial Revolution already well advanced in England, Napoleon encouraged the economic expansion and modernization of the ancient city’s infrastructure. He appointed Baron Georges Haussmann to oversee the virtual rebuilding of Paris — the city walls were finally completely demolished so that broad boulevards could cross the central districts (wide streets were also more difficult for revolutionaries to barricade than were the narrow, twisting alleys they replaced), the water and sewer systems were rebuilt, and the Bois de Boulogne became the model for the developed and carefully combed modern urban park. To celebrate and publicize the progress of his early years of rule, Napoleon commanded that a great fair, an International Exhibition, take place in 1855. The Paris Opéra was to participate by commissioning a new French grand opera to be premiered during the festivities. Roqueplan, Director of the Opéra, chose to offer the contract to the most popular theatrical composer of the day — Giuseppe Verdi.

Verdi, a shrewd businessman, was eager to produce an operatic hit in Paris. His Italian operas had not met with the artistic and financial success there that they were enjoying elsewhere, and only the early Jérusalem (I Lombardi alla prima Crociata fitted with French words and some new music) had been given in the Parisians’ native tongue. Additionally, he was curious about the modernization of the city (he always kept his farm at Sant’Agate one of the most up-to-date in the Duchy of Parma), and Giuseppina Strepponi, his mistress since the death of his first wife, wished for them to leave for a time the cold, intolerant village atmosphere of Busseto, whose residents found their unwedded living situation distasteful. Verdi and Giuseppina arrived in Paris in October 1853.

Verdi was constantly in demand as a guest of the city’s best salons, including the Saturday soirées at the home of the retired Rossini, who on one such occasion supplied the piano accompaniment to the quartet from Rigoletto. Verdi was fascinated by Haussmann’s work on the city, especially the demolition of the slums between the Louvre and the Tuileries, and the building of two artificial lakes in the Bois de Boulogne. Progress on the new opera, Les Vêpres siciliennes, however, was not smooth. The book was to be supplied by the venerable Eugène Scribe, librettist to Meyerbeer, Auber, Rossini, Halévy and many others, but he seems to have largely assigned the work to an assistant named Duveyrier (Scribe’s factory of writers was said to have been rivaled in volume of output in Paris only by that of Dumas), who revised an 1839 libretto (Le Duc d’Albe) for which Donizetti had supplied the music but which had never been staged. Such an arrangement precluded the interchange between composer and librettist that Verdi so valued, and his initial frustration with the text was only exacerbated when the requests he made for changes were icily ignored. Still, Verdi observed his contract and pressed on, slowly, until the first four (of five) acts were completed in October 1854. Rehearsals began, but were soon stymied when the prima donna assigned to the premiere vanished from Paris with a wealthy baron. Verdi, frustrated, exercised his short temper regularly in the following weeks, even applying to have his contract cancelled, but the errant soprano reappeared before a decision could be made on that point and preparations went ahead. Additional difficulties had to be overcome (“Verdi is at loggerheads with the people at the Opéra. I feel sorry for the poor man,” wrote Berlioz to a friend), but Les Vêpres siciliennes was finally premiered on June 13, 1855 to public and critical acclaim. (“A great and fine work! A great and fine success!” trumpeted the Journal des Débats). It was given fifty times in Paris during the following season, and first presented in Italy at Parma on December 26, 1855, and in America in 1859.

The story of The Sicilian Vespers concerns the Easter Monday uprising on March 30, 1282 by the people of Palermo against the French forces occupying their island. The ringing of the bells for Vespers on that day was the signal for the start of the revolt. The libretto of Scribe/Duveyrier emphasized the theatrical elements of the story — its crowd (i.e., chorus) scenes, grandiose settings and murderous ending. (Wagner, living in Paris at the time after having been run out of Germany for his part in the 1848 revolution in Dresden, called the opera “a night of carnage.”) The text, built on the formulas of French grand opera that reveled in spectacle, allowed Verdi little chance to exploit the operatic style of direct, intense, personal expression that he had developed in Rigoletto (1851), La Traviata and Il Trovatore (both 1853), and, except for the Overture, little of the music that he supplied for it reaches the heights of his middle-period masterpieces. The Overture, the last Verdi wrote in the sonata-with-slow-introduction form characteristic of Rossini’s theatrical prefaces, borrows several themes from the opera, one of which he pilfered from Giovanna d’Arco (“Joan of Arc”) of 1845. As well as any music given to the orchestra, the Sicilian Vespers Overture conjures the magical world of footlights and greasepaint that Verdi ruled for half a century.

Notes by Dr. Richard E. Rodda