Death of a patriot who fought for Venice
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| Arrigo Boito met Verdi in Paris |
Arrigo Boito, who wrote both the music and libretto for his
opera, Mefistofele, died on this day in 1918 in Milan.
Of all the operas based on Goethe’s Faust, Boito’s
Mefistofele is considered the most faithful to the play and his libretto is
regarded as being of particularly high quality.
Boito was born in Padua in 1842, the son of an Italian
painter of miniatures and a Polish countess. He attended the Milan Conservatory
and travelled to Paris on a scholarship.
It was there he met Giuseppe Verdi, for whom he wrote the text of the
Hymn of the Nations in 1862.
He fought under the direction of Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1866
in the seven weeks of the Third Italian War of Independence, against Austria, after which Venice was ceded to Italy.
While working on Mefistofele, Boito published articles,
influenced by the composer Richard Wagner, in which he vigorously attacked
Italian music and musicians.
Verdi was deeply offended by his words and by 1868, when
Mefistofele was produced in Milan, Boito’s opinions had provoked so much
hostility there was nearly a riot.
The opera was withdrawn after two performances, but a
revised version, produced in 1875, still survives.
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| Boito and Verdi in 1892 |
Influenced by Beethoven and Wagner, the opera was
unconventional. Boito’s second opera, Nerone, was completed after his death by
Vincenzo Tommasini and Arturo Toscanini and produced in Milan in 1924.
Boito and Verdi were reconciled in 1873 and Boito revised
the libretto for Simon Boccanegra. He also produced a libretto for both Otello
and Falstaff.
He wrote the libretto for Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Giocondo
in 1876 and also produced a volume of poetry and several novels.
Boito received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from
the University of Cambridge in 1893.
After his death in 1918, he was interred at the Cimitero
Monumentale in Milan.
A memorial concert was given in his honour at La Scala in
1948 when the orchestra was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. This concert has
since been issued on CD.
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| The Scrovegni Chapel features the brilliant frescoes by Giotto |
Travel tip:
Padua in the Veneto, where Boito was born, is one of the
most important centres for art in Italy and home to the country’s second oldest
university. Padua has become acknowledged as the birthplace of modern art
because of the Scrovegni Chapel, the inside of which is covered with frescoes
by Giotto, an artistic genius who was the first to paint people with realistic
facial expressions showing emotion. His scenes depicting the lives of Mary and
Joseph, painted between 1303 and 1305, are considered his greatest achievement.
At Palazzo Bo, where Padua’s university was founded in 1222, you can still see
the original lectern used by Galileo and the world’s first anatomy theatre,
where dissections were secretly carried out from 1594.
Travel tip: