Jérusalem

• 1. Introduction

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  Jérusalem opened at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris on the 26th of November 1847, a grand opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi. It was not a new story. Four years earlier, Verdi had written an Italian opera called I Lombardi alla prima crociata, and this French work was an adaptation and partial translation of it. Verdi described the result as having transformed I Lombardi out of recognition. So why did a composer already known in Italy cross the Alps to remake an existing opera for a French stage? Why did a tenor become a baritone, a leading role vanish entirely, and the whole structure dissolve and reset? And what was happening in the composer's own life, in an apartment in Paris, while he wrote the music? The answers run through a crusade, a director's invitation, and a love duet written in two hands.

• 2. Crossing The Alps

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  Léon Pillet, the director of the Paris Opéra, invited Verdi to compose for the company in November 1845 and again in February 1846. Verdi at first declined. The Paris Opéra was officially the Académie Royale de Musique, and this was Verdi's first encounter with it. Among 19th-century Italian composers, interest in writing for Paris had been growing, drawn by money, prestige, and flexibility of style. Musicologist Julian Budden points to those who had already crossed the Alps, the best known being Rossini and Donizetti. Vincenzo Bellini, before he died in 1835, had been planning a French grand opera of his own. Verdi had also considered adapting librettos written by Temistocle Solera in earlier years, texts that music historian David Kimball saw as having something of grand opera in their structure. Within a week of arriving in Paris on the 27th of July 1847, Verdi received his first commission from the company and agreed to adapt I Lombardi to a new French libretto. Both Donizetti and Rossini had used the same strategy for their Paris debuts, letting a composer try his hand at grand opera without writing something entirely new.

• 3. Reshaping The Crusade

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  Eugène Scribe advised Verdi that a French libretto should be prepared, and the work went to Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz. The pair had written the libretto for Donizetti's most successful French opera, La favorite. Setting the story around French involvement in the First Crusade of 1095 to 1099 forced significant changes to the location and the action. Characters' names shifted from Italian to French. One character, Arvino, was renamed the Count of Toulouse, though elements of him passed to the principal tenor role, Gaston, and he became a baritone instead of a tenor. Several roles were deleted, including the leading tenor part of Oronte. The central romance gained more prominence and a happier ending. Verdi added a standard ballet and new music, then removed material he felt was weak. As musicologist Roger Parker notes, only a few of the original numbers remain in their former positions. Budden argues the revision has far greater strengths than many Italian and English writers acknowledged. The diffuse drama Solera had distilled from an epic poem, he wrote, was replaced by a far tauter, more concentrated plot.

• 4. A Love Duet In Two Hands

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  Giuseppina Strepponi is the one woman for whom there is real evidence in this part of Verdi's life. The singer first met Verdi around 1842, when he was writing Nabucco, and she sang the first Abigaille, continuing in the role despite a declining voice. She retired and moved to Paris in October 1846, became a singing teacher in November, and planned a concert of Verdi's music for the following June. The two had exchanged friendly correspondence for years, and she had offered the composer advice. Mary Jane Phillips-Matz recounts that Verdi lived in an apartment around the corner from Strepponi's house, and that news of this reached Italy in the phrase that Verdi had been seen chez Strepponi. The most striking trace is in the music itself. A handwritten love duet in Verdi's autograph score for Jérusalem contains alternative lines in her handwriting and in his. British music critic Andrew Porter called this one of the more romantic discoveries of recent years. Baldini writes that at the end of 1847 Verdi rented a little house in Passy and went to live there with Giuseppina, though Phillips-Matz dates the move to Passy to June 1848. When the time came to leave Paris, Verdi made straight for Busseto to wait for her there.

• 5. The Years Between

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  Il corsaro belongs to this same Paris stretch, an opera Verdi wrote from a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave that took place in Trieste in October 1848. He also worked with Salvadore Cammarano on two librettos. One was La battaglia di Legnano, whose January 1849 Rome premiere he attended. The other was Luisa Miller, presented in Naples in December 1849 after Verdi's return to Italy. Verdi and Emanuele Muzio had arrived in Paris on the 2nd of June 1847 on the way to London for I masnadieri. Verdi sent Muzio ahead to London to confirm that Jenny Lind, the subject of rumours about her reluctance to come to England, was present and ready. After the bloody uprising in Milan against the Austrians on the 18th of March 1848, Verdi returned to Italy from early April to mid-May. He also went to Rome to oversee rehearsals of La battaglia di Legnano, from before Christmas 1848 to early February 1849, after its premiere on the 27th of January 1849. Otherwise he remained in Paris, where he had written of being able to lead the life I wish.

• 6. A Crusade On Stage

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  Late at night in the palace of the Count of Toulouse, Hélène is with her lover, Gaston, whose family and hers have long been in conflict. A solemn reconciliation is planned for the next day, before Gaston leaves for the First Crusade. The Count gives Gaston his daughter's hand, and the Papal Legate announces that the Pope has appointed Gaston to lead the Crusade. Roger, the Count's brother, is quietly furious, for he loves Hélène. He plots with a soldier to kill the man not wearing the white cloak awarded to Gaston. The attack strikes down the Count instead, and Roger arranges for the captured murderer to name Gaston as the instigator. Cursed by all, Gaston is ordered into exile. The later acts move to Palestine, near Jerusalem. Roger has wandered the desert for years in remorse. Hélène is captured and brought to the palace of the Emir of Ramla, where she and Gaston are reunited. In the harem gardens, the Emir orders that Hélène's head be thrown to the Count if the Christians attack. Gaston is condemned and his helmet, shield, and sword are smashed in a public square. At the edge of the Crusaders' camp, Roger hands Gaston his sword, urging him to fight for the Lord. After the battle for Jerusalem is won, the mortally wounded Roger is brought into the Count's tent. He confesses that he planned the murder, then takes one final look at Jerusalem and dies.

• 7. A Stage Life Of Its Own

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  Calisto Bassi translated the French text into Italian, and the work was performed as Gerusalemme at La Scala, Milan on the 26th of December 1850. It failed to supersede I Lombardi in the affections of Italian audiences. Parker judges it superior to Lombardi in various ways, yet says it failed to establish itself in either the French or the Italian repertory. The opera was given in Turin in 1850, and between 1854 and 1865 in Venice, Verona, and Rome twice. The US premiere came at the Théâtre d'Orleans in New Orleans on the 24th of January 1850. In the 20th century the work resurfaced. Gianandrea Gavazzeni staged it in Italian at La Fenice in Venice in 1963. A 1975 RAI production gave a concert version in French with Katia Ricciarelli and José Carreras. It took over 140 years for the opera to reach its UK premiere, given by Opera North on the 31st of March 1990 at the Grand Theatre in Leeds. Budden, weighing what Paris did for the composer, wrote that it fixed his dramatic imagination, refined his scoring, sharpened his harmonic palate, and in general made possible the amazing advances of the next few years.