Friends, this editorial by Alberto Mattioli from La Stampa is making the rounds on Facebook. I made an on-the-fly translation for the benefit of those who do not read Italian.

I apologize for my very approximate understanding of Italian political jargon and would welcome corrections. Also, please note that I added the information about 150 years of Italian unity, which Mr. Mattioli called simply “unity celebrations.”

Opera: And so it ends

We’re closing. Down with the curtain. Opera in Italy survived invasions, pestilence, dictatorships, fires, and two world wars.

Irony of fate: Opera is being killed by a little decree with a ridiculous name, “A Thousand Extensions,” which was approved yesterday. A Christmas gift that brings a thousand problems. Because while charity to cinema has been extended thanks to fiscal incentives, the reinstatement of the FUS (Single Fund for Entertainment) has been removed from the decree (and, while we’re on the subject, so has the Extraordinary Plan for Pompei—but that, you know, is a pile of stones that interests hardly anyone).

The FUS is reduced to EUR 258 million, its lowest level ever, which is supposed to finance all of Italian entertainment and, above all, the most Italian of art forms: opera. In 2011, opera houses will receive a total of EUR 125 million, down from EUR 190 million in 2010 and EUR 222 million in 2009. Which is to say, state funding has been cut in half in two years. Now, in support of opera all over Italy, we are spending the same amount that the French government dedicates to the Opéra (of Paris) alone. We are left hoping that, who knows, the funds will be reinstated before the bill becomes law.

At this point, we need to make the usual speech and explain that opera is a basic part of our identity at home and of our prestige overseas; that Cavour made Italy but Italians were made by Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini; that we are mutilating the celebrations of 150 years of Italian unity by depriving them of their soundtrack… and so on and so forth, stating the obvious to a political class (all of it, on the right and the left) that either does not know these things or pretends not to know them. It’s wasted breath.

I would add two points. The first is that the cuts, as usual, will be indiscriminate—that is, they will strike all theatres equally, those that have done good work and those that have done poor work (along with those who have done no work at all), both the virtuous and the depraved: the Teatro Regio of Turin, which has 14,000 subscribers and only half the staff of the Rome Opera, which has 2,500 subscribers. Second, anyone familiar with the way opera houses work knows that the greater part of their expenses, 50% and up, is fixed. In other words, they are salaries. Since salaries, by decree, have already been cut, the axe is destined to fall on productions.

The wondrous result of all this: Our theatres will remain costly but will raise the curtain less and less—as if a furniture manufacturer were to spend all of its money paying employees and had nothing left to buy wood. And to think that, when Sandro Bondi became Culture Minister, we breathed a sigh of relief: Finally someone with the political weight to transform the Cinderella of our country’s cultural heritage into a princess. Instead, we’re not even left with a glass slipper.

Luisa Miller, with a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano based on the drama Kabale und Liebe by Friedrich Schiller, had its world premiere on 8 December 1849 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.

For Gabriele Baldini, Luisa Miller is a masterpiece in its own right and also marks a crucial stepping-stone on Verdi’s path towards Rigoletto and La traviata.

While by no means everything in Luisa Miller is surprising—indeed, many things seem to repeat well-tried formulæ—the complete work is in a different world: the passions are lived more intimately, almost to the point of immodesty, not through surrendering to their immediate expression, but through meditating on their most ambiguous aspects.

The opera’s dark, restless overture, with more than a whiff of Beethoven about it, is much admired; and “Quando le sere al placido,” Rodolfo’s aria, is among the most beautiful that Verdi wrote.

For the birthday of Luisa Miller, though, I offer you the final scene as sung by the Metropolitan Opera’s reigning Verdi trio of the late 1970s: Renata Scotto, Plácido Domingo, and Sherrill Milnes. I can tell you (because I saw this very cast, twice, in the house!) that the recording exaggerates the edge in Scotto’s voice, and that the performance as a whole was shattering. (I think that I have never heard pandemonium to surpass what erupted after Domingo sang “Quando le sere al placido.” Follow the link to hear what everyone was screaming about.)

Rufus Wainwright dressed as Verdi

Last night, during his triumphant concert at Carnegie Hall, the singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright announced that his opera Prima Donna would be produced at New York City Opera in 2012.

Wainwright is a great Verdian, who often refers to Verdi as “papa.” He even dressed as Verdi for the Prima Donna world premiere in Manchester in 2009. I interviewed him for Newsday back in 2004.

“Well, I think anything that’s effective is art,” he said. “What comes from the heart, goes to the heart: That’s the only rule I go by. There are ‘pop’ things that I despise for being made for marketing purposes, but there are ‘art’ things that I find way too cold and intellectual. It’s ‘that which is moving’ that gets me.” His words echo those of Verdi, whom Wainwright has called a role model. “The question is not whether music belongs to a system,” Verdi wrote, “but whether it is good or bad. That question is clear and simple and, above all, legitimate.”

Reminded of that pragmatic view, Wainwright nodded. “I love how Verdi entertained the public on the one hand, and at the same time gave them food for thought. He always roots against injustice, whether it’s with the Jews in Nabucco or even here in Otello. It starts off so warlike and militaristic, but all of that fades away quickly once human emotions come into play.”

I hear little or nothing of Verdi in the only music from Prima Donna that I have heard, the beautiful closing aria “Les feux d’artifice t’appellent.” However, I hear Violetta and Germont all over Wainwright’s song “Dinner at Eight”—in the curve of the melody, and in the song’s devastating nexus of family love and emotional blackmail.

Wainwright has recorded music of Verdi, too—“Un dì, felice,” in duet with David Byrne. But don’t expect to find that posted here!

Maria Callas would have turned 87 today. She was born in New York on 2 December 1923.

Among singers of the twentieth century, Callas alone, perhaps, possessed both a temperament and a technique equal to the demands of Verdi’s music. Her Verdi rôles in the theatre comprised Gilda, Violetta, both Leonoras, Elisabetta di Valois, Lady Macbeth, Elena, Aida, Amelia, and Abigaille.

Elvira in Ernani was not one of Callas’s stage rôles, but she recorded Elvira’s cavatina “Ernani, Ernani, involami!” under the baton of Nicola Rescigno in 1958. She sang the aria frequently during her 1959 and 1962 concert tours.