Verdi v. Verdi (and the Role of the Orchestra)

European opera managers must smile with contempt at their American counterparts for giving away programs.  It's almost as silly as an airline letting you board luggage for free.  But we might as well enjoy it while we can; it gives us stuff like this:

For a poet as complex as Shakespeare, the musical language of the first half of the nineteenth century was not really adequate.  There are wonderful things in Rossini's Otello of 1816 (which is based on a French eighteenth-century translation, far from the original Shakespearean text), in I Capuleti e I Montechi of Bellini (which has very little to do with Shakespeare) and Verdi's Macbeth of 1847 and 1865, but the language of the period did not permit the composers and the librettists to enter fully into the thoughts of the English writer.  Rather, their aim was to transform the drama into a series of closed numbers, arias, duets, etc., of the kind that Verdi was writing and the public expected in 1847.

So musicologist Philip Gossett in "Giuseppe Verdi and Falstaff," in the (free) program for the current San Francisco opera season.  I suppose one way to grasp his point would be to listen to a (pretty good) early Verdi like, say, Nabucco, or an (excellent) Rossini like The Barber of Seville and reflect on the range and variety of devices available to the Verdi of Falstaff that simply wouldn't have been on offer for his earlier self.

Part of it, surely, is the influence of Verdi on Wagner--a complicated topic by any measure, but on even the narrowest reading, the influence is there.  Mrs. B points out wrinkle: the role of the orchestra as a virtual character in the opera itself.  Wagner is partly responsible here, but Mrs. B points also to Puccini, with a notable wrinkle.  That is, in Puccini, the orchestra can be downright obtrusive, whacking you over the head with its own interpretations, leaving nothing to imagination or chance.  The orchestra in Falstaff is a vivid presence, but here I'd say it is not a hindrance.  Rather, you really need the orchestra to keep you on track among the torrent of vocal possibilities under exploration on stage.