OBERTO. BIRTH OF AN OPERA - Giancarlo Rizzi

GIANCARLO RIZZI: OBERTO. BIRTH OF AN OPERA

On the evening of November 17, 1839, La Scala raised the curtain on the opera of a young composer from the province of Parma; it was titled Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, the composer was a certain Giuseppe Verdi, and the poet Temistocle Solera; but no further details were provided. Even today, more than 150 years later, we know little about the origin of the libretto, very little about the events that led the master to set it to music, almost nothing about the rehearsals, and we have few and very contradictory reviews of the premiere. Nor is it clearer what role was played by some well-known figures in the theatrical world of the time: Bartolomeo Merelli, for example, a professional impresario and former poet, and Pietro Massini, who worked hard to bring the opera to the stage. Then there are the librettists. The verses of Oberto bear the signature of Temistocle Solera, but on closer inspection, another name preceded him: a poet for pleasure, chancellor at the Court of Milan, a lover of historical novels, and the author of a story he expressly claimed as his own: Lord Hamilton, by Antonio Piazza. And those titles?: Lord Hamilton, Rochester, Oberto, which appear and disappear in the master's correspondence and change as the names of the characters in the score change, replaced at the last minute with a stroke of the pen.
The investigation into this early period of Giuseppe Verdi's artistic career is so problematic for musicologists and biographers that some scholars assert that in the absence of certain data, even legends can suffice. We have tried to do better, and by comparing documentary sources, we have provided a plausible reconstruction of the birth of this first, troubled, and still little-known opera, which for all enthusiasts, and despite any research and proof of authorship, evokes only one name: that of Giuseppe Verdi.

GIANCARLO RIZZI was born in Verona in 1982. After studying piano and composition at the Conservatories of Verona and Milan, he pursued orchestral conducting at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and perfected his skills with Lorin Maazel in the United States. He has conducted and collaborated with major European opera companies, including the Theater an der Wien in Vienna and the Rossini Opera Festival. In 2021, he founded the Profumo d’Opera Festival, bringing Giuseppe Verdi's operas to the places where the protagonists of his first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, lived. He holds a degree in ancient literature from the University of Verona and is a professor of orchestral conducting at the Conservatory of Cosenza.