Verdi the Craftsman

Abstract

Not until the middle of the twentieth century did scholars become aware of the extent to which Verdi prepared elaborate sketches for most of his operas. Although not all of these documents are currently accessible, a growing number of them has been made available to scholars through the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani in Parma. At the same time, the compositional processes employed by Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti have also received increased attention. Sketches, skeleton scores, and layers within autograph manuscripts have been examined, and they provide evidence of the complex process through which even the most tuneful of melodic inspirations came into existence. This article examines, in particular, the sketches for Rossini's Semiramide and Bellini's I puritani. For Verdi it gives examples from the very beginning of the compositional process (in Latraviata) and for significant changes made at the end of that process, in the recasting of Gustavo III / Una vendetta in dominò (1857-58) into Un ballo in maschera (1858-59).