Newsday, July 2005

Giuseppe Verdi and his operas are so beloved and familiar that many musicians call him "Papa Verdi." He died almost within living memory, in 1901, and we have film of his funeral with teeming crowds in attendance. "Tosca's Kiss," Daniel Schmid's endearing documentary (recently released on DVD), shows that Verdi remains a vivid presence at the Milan rest home for musicians that he founded and considered his "most beautiful work." Even in New York, Verdi is part of our everyday landscape, towering in marble and limestone over Verdi Square, north of Lincoln Center.

Still, to filch a phrase from another legendary musician, Papa's got a brand new bag. Last weekend the Caramoor Festival presented "La Traviata," one of Verdi's most familiar operas, in a strikingly unfamiliar guise: uncut and with the rarely performed second verses of many arias dripping with flourishes, in accordance with mid-nineteenth-century performance practice. It was part of an entire day devoted to lesser-known aspects of Verdi, and part of larger trends in the musical world that have brought about dramatic changes in how Verdi's music is perceived and performed.

Several events and tendencies have contributed to this re-examination of Verdi. The historically-informed practice movement long ago expanded from pre-1800 music to embrace "moderns" like Verdi. One of the finest recordings of his Messa da Requiem is a period-instruments version led by John Eliot Gardiner, based on the critical edition of the score. Philip Gossett of the University of Chicago, who spearheaded the ongoing Verdi edition (scheduled for completion in 2015), recently won a $1.5 million award from the Mellon Foundation, which cited the "decisive change in the place and understanding of Verdi's operas" brought about by Gossett's work.

The groundbreaking scholarship of Gossett and others has had a powerful impact on what audiences hear in performance. The Met uses the new edition of Verdi's early masterpiece, "Nabucco." In recent years, bass Samuel Ramey, an unrivaled master of bel canto's dazzling, expressive vocal ornaments, has delivered gonzo renditions of the prophet Zaccaria's fulminations—utterly unlike the bare-bones performances of last century, but probably in line with what Verdi would have expected.

San Francisco will hear Gossett's freshly scrubbed score of "La Forza del Destino" next season—and Verdi's long-forgotten, surpassingly truculent first version of the opera has played around the world of late. Opera Rara has released recordings of "Macbeth," "Don Carlos" and "Les Vêpres Siciliennes" in earlier or more ample versions than the ones usually heard. The earliest, uncensored version of "Un Ballo in Maschera" has been reconstructed, staged and recorded—though it was never even given in Verdi's lifetime.

Conductor and scholar Will Crutchfield curated Caramoor's "Traviata”" offerings. They included an enlightening lecture on Verdi's singers, with scratchy but mesmerizing recordings of artists who actually worked with the master. As Crutchfield noted, even with this documentary evidence, many degrees of separation remain between Verdi and us. The composer is known to have disliked some of the singers, while others were recorded decades after they sang with him. Still, what a revelation to hear basses Edouard de Reszke and Francesco Navarini spinning luscious trills, or to bask in what Crutchfield called the "affectionate, nuanced, charming" phrasing of Adelina Patti—an artist for whom the persnickety composer had boundless esteem, but whose singing departs radically from the vigorous, muscular vocalism now thought of as "Verdi style."

Crutchfield also conducted Caramoor's semi-staged performance of "La Traviata," which starred up-and-coming star Georgia Jarman as Violetta. Feisty and extroverted, in blooming vocal health, Jarman did not quite persuade as Verdi's consumptive prostitute, but she sang beautifully, with a delicious lilt to her phrasing and a fine point to her words. What's more, she brought passion and flair to Crutchfield's imaginative ornamentations—nervous, fluttery variations for the second verse of "Ah, fors'è lui," and despairing, harmonically tortured flourishes for the reprise of "Addio del passato."

Crutchfield's work illustrated the practical rewards of recent Verdi scholarship: performances that soar, exploiting individual singers' vocal and expressive capabilities, while avoiding the prissiness of "come scritto" ("as written") renditions as well as the butchery of "traditional" (translation: mid-twentieth-century) versions of Verdi’s scores.

And yet: The complete "Traviata" was preceded by a concert featuring the 1853 version of the Violetta-Germont duet. Its vocal lines were more elaborate and flew consistently upward (in part to accommodate the high range of the first Germont). Given a chance to revise the scene in 1854, Verdi seems to have opted for a more inward, conversational contour.

Frilly or austere: Which is the "authentic" Verdi? The debate continues, with Papa Verdi and his enthusiasts much the richer for it.

Marion Lignana Rosenberg is a freelance writer.