Ricerche di S/Confine (Dec 2021)
Dante e Verdi
Abstract
Giuseppe Verdi had a real veneration for Dante. On this account, we can appreciate both Verdi’s mistrust of public commemorative events for Dante and his wariness in setting Dante’s poems to music. Nonetheless, Verdi set to music three of Dante’s texts, all of them religious. The first two, Padre nostro and Ave Maria, were still judged written by Dante, while the third one, the Laudi alla Vergine Maria in the Pezzi sacri, is the high prayer of St. Bernardo to the Virgin in Paradiso. In all of them, the intimate feeling and the sublime appropriate to Dante’s poetry is translated into music following on Palestrina’s style. This musical strategy shows that any resemblance between Dante and Verdi can be found neither in their temperament nor in the role of Fathers of the Nation ascribed to them in the XIX century, but in their awareness of the connection of modern languages with the past ones, in their cultural authority and in their skill to explain the forthcoming reality thanks to a full control of their respective expertises.
