Lyric Opera 2019-2020 Issue 3 Luisa Miller

Lyric Opera of Chicago | 28 Luisa Miller : Verdi looks to the future There are memorable heroines in Giuseppe Verdi’s early operas, but Luisa Miller is the only one who will make you cry. In the entire opera, Luisa has just one moment of happiness. Once her sparkling, ecstatically lovestruck opening aria is over, the plot leads her on a harrowing path of sorrow and betrayal. We feel for her at every moment, and by the end she’s wrenched our hearts to a degree few other operatic leading ladies can match. Audiences owe Verdi a huge debt of gratitude for that unforgettably touching characterization, and indeed, for all the other strengths of this work that make it a glorious experience in the opera house. Luisa Miller presents a Verdi who at the time (1849) was in his mid-thirties and finally on the brink of fulfilling all his gifts as an incomparable creative artist. If you’re just beginning to explore this opera and others from the first decade of his career, you have spectacular adventures ahead, for the vocal thrills run high, the emotions deep. The wealth of stupendous music illuminates stories that exude white-hot passion and rich humanity. To his audiences, the Verdi of Luisa Miller had already demonstrated extraordinary talent (he had 14 operas under his belt), so they knew to expect high-quality work from him. While his previous operas hadn’t all been equally triumphant, the greatest of them – Nabucco , Ernani , and Macbeth – had shown everyone that he was capable of profoundly thoughtful, meaningful music drama. The feelings communicated by all his protagonists reached out to the public with a vividness and an immediacy that were unique. By Roger Pines When the circumstances of a premiere were comfortable for him (not always the case), Verdi was able to relax and work with a certain confidence. From the very start, though, he was never, ever satisfied; like Gaetano Donizetti before him, he often tortured himself with worry, doubt, and frustration, especially when he didn’t get the singers he wanted for a premiere or a major revival. Through and through he was a man of the theater, and serving the theatrical side of a work was always as crucial to him as musical excellence. Even in the early years, whenever he supervised a production, he insisted on total dedication from the artists and could never rest until a scene was right (the story was told by the first Lady Macbeth that he rehearsed her big duet with the leading man 150 times). By the 1840s he was gaining increasing respect in Italy as someone who represented in every way a new standard – a new vision – of what opera was meant to be onstage. Luisa Miller exemplifies everything that makes the earlier operas of Verdi so exciting for audiences. This work comes at the tail end of Verdi’s self-named “galley years,” when he was perfecting his craft and gradually finding his way as a musical dramatist. But Luisa Miller is also at the same time a transitional piece, a bridge connecting Verdi’s early operas with the mastery of what he would produce just a few years later. In Luisa Miller listeners can relish the vigor and tunefulness of Rigoletto , a dramatic fire anticipating Il trovatore , and a tragic romance reminding us that La traviata was soon to come. If you know the most dramatic works of Verdi’s nineteenth- century predecessors, the early operas will sound familiar to you. From the very beginning (his “debut” was Oberto , premiered in 1839), Verdi imported the rhythmic energy that characterized the Act One: Duchess Federica arrives at Walter’s castle. Act Three: Miller (Vitaly Bilyy) comforts his unhappy daughter Luisa (Leah Crocetto). All production photos from San Francisco Opera, 2015/16 season. Photographer: Cory Weaver