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n.4/2000
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Adriano Bassi |
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As regard to the
musical Scapigliatura, its natural ideological seat is Lombardy and
especially Milan, where experienced compositors and on continuous research of
new sounds and styles turned incandescent the cultural climate of the town.
The most quoted name of this period is that of Arrigo Boito, that embodied
the essence of the Milanese Scapigliatura. The musical
theatre was the most important referring point of the Scapigliatura and just
in Boito we find the exact stylistic features of this renewal movement; in
fact the compositor and Verdi's librettist was in search of parity among
arts, besides the will to turn the melodrama closer to reality, without going
on the way of Verdi. Between Boito and Verdi fortunately it was introduced
Shakespeare and that was further glue for these two marked personalities,
contributing to create masterpieces we still listen at avidly. This way Verdi
tolerated the so hated Scapigliatura even if he did not understood the strong
will of Boito in changing all costs the tradition, by revaluating the
symphonic music on damage of the melodrama. Still in the
Boito-Verdi pair we find the real essence of the Scapigliatura, since it was
just Verdi to approach, at least spiritually, the movement, trying to
understand also the problems of the conductor Faccio, since the attempts of
the two young “scapigliati” leaded to new solutions for the evolution of the
melodrama, without being influenced by the phenomenon of Wagner. Verdi, maybe
to please his friend Boito, put in the Otello and in Falstaff some novelties,
a little ambiguous, some well-made elegances, maybe too much self-satisfied
that could made Boito and all his musical court exult. Boito himself clashed
against a rock-like press and public reaction that did not want to accept
those too excessive novelties; indeed his Mefistofele, represented at the
Scala in 1868, met a whole “débacle”, recovering only in 1874 at Bologna,
completely renewed. We find elements
linked to the source of the Scapigliatura also among young compositors as A.
Ponchielli with the Gioconda, on the text of Boito or in A. Catalani that
referred to the Gounod's model too. Still in Milan,
another young musician, born in Pola in 1854, and named Antonio Smarriglia,
belonged to the group of the Scapigliatura that have R. Wagner as idol. Here it is the
introduction of this movement in its whole aspects, leaving wide space also
to special tension moments. With the two
last operas of Verdi it must be deemed as finished the direct relationship
between the Scapigliatura and the music. From the tough
position of Boito it rose, at any extent, the will to shake schemes and
traditions off, which were already obsolete and the epilogue of this movement
can be identified in Puccini till Tosca, since the compositor ideally
partnered the Scapigliatura world, and chose foreign subjects or, better
said, cultural references belonging to other countries. In Manon Lescaut
and Boheme it is breathed an unconventional spirit that approaches the
Scapigliatura way. Finally, it is Puccini to offer a starting point for a
reflection, the musical architectures base on an exact formal scheme that
follow the basic rules of the Scapigliatura itself. Rodolfo Celletti
analyses deeply the figure of Puccini, siding him to the Scapigliatura, and discovering
also the limits of this Italian movement that remained a provincial movement,
lacking that vital sense Boito did not succeed in creating.
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Adriano
Bassi
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