Powers Solita Convention

"La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"
Harold S. Powers
Acta Musicologica, Vol. 59, Fasc. 1. (Jan. - Apr., 1987), pp. 65-90.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0001-6241%28198701%2F04%291%3A59%3A1%3C65%3A%22SFA%22U%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P
Acta Musicologica is currently published by International Musicological Society.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained
prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in
the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/journals/inmuso.html.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For
more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
http://www.jstor.org
Sat Jun 16 15:26:09 2007
"La solita forma"
and "The Uses of Convention"*
H A R O L D S. P O W E R S ( P R I N C E T O N , N E W J E R S E Y )
In the second chapter of Volume I1 of his magisterial three-volume account of

Verdi's operas,' Julian Budden allowed himself a few pages for articulating and
summarizing what Gary Tomlinson later called a "distrust of closely-argued
a n a l y s e ~ " .Near
~
the beginning of those pages Budden wrote (in part):
The International Congresses of recent years have thrown u p a number of highly
interesting attempts to discover Verdi's secrets whether of form, or dramatic effect, sometimes
in terms of key, sometimes of 'constants' which recur from one opera to another whose
meaning we apprehend without necessarily formulating it. It may be traditional and hold
good for other composers as well; or it may apply to Verdi only, and even to one particular
opera. The ground is treacherous even when the strictest principles of inductive logic are
applied. The problem of proving in Verdi connections between musical procedures and states
of mind is not that it is too difficult but that it is too easy. Limit your symbol to a figure of
three or four notes, associate it with an emotion such as 'jealousy', 'power', 'love' or what you
will, and you will have no difficulty in extracting that pattern from an aria or scene in which
those concepts occur. . . . But unless the said pattern presents the constant physiognomy of a
leitmotif or of one of Verdi's own explicit thematic reminiscences the game cannot be played
without allowing for modifications according to context. . . . Obviously the listener must make
up his own mind. (Budden, 11, p. 50)
To this characterization of analytical searches for musical "constants" that have

meanings is appended a footnote reference:
Among the most valuable contributions from this school of thought should be cited: P. Pal
Varnai, Unitri musicale e drammaturgica nel Don Carlo, in: Atti delllo Congresso del I. S. V.
(Parma 1971), p. 402-11, and Leonora e Don Alvaro, in: 1.5. V. Bolletino, No. 6 (Parma 1963-6),
p. 1695-710; P. Petrobelli, Per un' esegesi della struttura drammatica del Trovatore, in: Atti del
111 Congresso del 1. S. V., (Parma 1974), p. 387-400; F. Noske, Ritual Scenes in Verdi's
Operas, in: Music and Letters, Oct. 1973, p. 415-39. (Budden, 11, p. 50)
Budden ended his digression on Verdian analysis with references to more global
styles of analysis, observing that
the problem of explaining the unity of a Verdi opera still exercises the minds of scholars.
Some, like Roman Vlad, look for a Grundgestalt, others following the example of Edward T.
Cone see it in an unobtrusive tonal scheme3.. . (Budden, 11, p. 53)
' The original of this essay was a talk given at a convegno in Vienna in March 1983 that marked the
inauguration of the new critical edition of the works o f Giuseppe Verdi (Chicago University PressIRicordi). It
was greatly enlarged for the volume containing the published proceedings (Nuove prospettive nella ricerca
verdiana. Atti del conoegno internazionale in occasione della prima del Rigoletto in edizione critica, Vienna 12-13
marzo 1983, Parma, Istituto di Studi Verdiani - Ricordi 1987). W e are grateful to the Istituto di Studi Verdiani
(Parma)and its director Prof. Pierluigi Petrobelli of the Universiti degli Studi di Roma, and to Ricordi & C . and
its general editorial director Signora Mimma Guastoni, for consenting to the publication of this essay here in a
slightly revised and updated form.
J. BUDDEN, The Operas o f Verdi, Vol. I1 (London 1978), p. 50-54.
G . T O M L I N S O N , Verdi after Budden, in: 19th-Century Music 5 (1981),p. 182.
R. V L A D , Unita strutturale dei Vespri siciliani, in: I1 melodramma italiano dell'Ottocento, a cura di G . Pestelli
(Torino 1977),p. 45-89; E. T . CONE, O n the Road to 'Otello': Tonality and Structure in 'Simon Boccanegra', in:
Studi Verdiani 1 (1982),p. 72-98. Vlad had earlier prepared a paper on the Structural Unity of Verdi's Simon
'
66
H. S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"
The excursus concludes that

In accounting for the unity of a Verdi opera it is difficult to go beyond Basevi's 'tinta' ...
[which] reveals itself in the pentatonic contours of so much in Simon Boccanegra; the
smooth melodic swell combined with an abundance of death-figures (whose meaning here is
quite unequivocal) of Les Vgpres Siciliennes; the wealth of delicate waltz-like ideas in La
Traviata mostly centred around small intervals; the wide arpeggio reach that marks many of
the themes of I 1 Trovatore. (Budden, 11, p. 53-54)
I would take exception neither to Budden's gentle strictures on the close analysis
of Verdi as it is usually practiced, nor to his conclusion regarding the utility of the
"tinta" concept as a point d ' a p p ~ i Yet
. ~ what is it, after all, if not tinta that Verdian
analysts in search of "constants" are trying to pin down, when they try to account
for "unity" in a single work, or even when they try to account for "style" or describe
"technique" in terms of features that may cut across several works? The difficulty
with the styles of Verdian analysis described by Budden - the picturesque-topical i
la Varnai and Noske, the global-tonal P la Vlad and Cone - is not just that they are
preoccupied with topoi or tonality but also that neither takes much account of the
musico-dramatic presuppositions of Verdi himself, of those expectations and
assumptions about how musical theatre worked or should work, that inform Verdi's
correspondence, the comments and writings of Verdi's Italian contemporaries, and
above all the works themselves.
Our approach to analysis today is generally both prospective and Germanic: we
look at works as we hear them, and we think of each as a predecessor of all that
follows, ultimately of us; furthermore, we approach them with perceptions trained
and honed on the analysis and criticism of instrumental music from North of the
Alps. In other words, we are unduly sensitive to what we see as forward-looking
traits; and we are unwittingly conditioned by the metaphor of ultimate organic
unity that stems from Goethe and Wilhelm von Humboldt, whose music-theoretical
heirs include both Lorenz and Schenker.' What I want to argue for here is a view of
Boccanegra for the Fourth International Verdi Congress held in Chicago in 1974. Judging from the mimeographed
rCsumC edited by the Istituto di Studi Verdiani, it will have been along very much the same lines as this study of I
Vespri siciliani. It is Vlad's approach to analysis in the Boccanegra paper that Julian Budden characterized with
the expression "Grundgestalt" quoted in the text above, but the characterization fits Wad's analysis of I Vespri
siciliani perfectly well. Cone's analysis, like Wad's on Simon Boccanegra, was first presented at the Fourth
International Congress on Verdi Studies in Chicago in 1974. For analyses along similar lines, see W. DRABKIN,
Characters, Key Relations, and Tonal Structure in 11 Trovatore, in: Music Analysis 1 (1982), p. 143-53; D.
LAWTON, On the 'Bacio' Theme in Otello, in: 19th-Century Music 1 (1978), p. 211-220; S. LEVARIE, Tonal
Relations in Verdi's Un Ballo in Maschera, in: 19th-Century Music 2 (1978), p. 143-47, and see the rejoinders by
J. KERMAN, ibid., p. 186-91, and G. MARCO, 3 (1979), p. 83-8, and Levarie's rebuttal, ibid., p. 88-9.
Cone's, Drabkin's, and Levarie's essays tackle tonal relationships over a whole opera, albeit with quite different
initial presumptions about "tonality'' and the Verdian context; Lawton deals just with Act I.
The term "tinta" in 19th-century Italian usage is equivalent to French "couleur", as in "couleur locale" and
similar expressions. It turns up a few times in Verdi's correspondence, the most oft-cited and most clearly
musical instance being in a letter of 24 August 1850 to the President of La Fenice on the subject of Verdi's
involvement with and commitment to the subject of Le roi s'amuse: ". .. mi posi a studiarlo, a meditarlo
profondamente, e I'idea, la tinta musicale erano nella mia mente trovate" (I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, a
cura di G. Cesari e A. Luzio, Milano 1913, p. 1 0 6 ) . This remark of Verdi's bids fair to take on the role in Verdian
analysis and criticism that the little passage on the "poetisch-musikalische Periode" in Wagner's Oper und
Drama has done in Wagnerian analysis.
A prototypical expression of the organic metaphor out of which our analytical notions have exfoliated may be
seen in G. NOTTEBOHM, Ein Skizzenbuch von Beethoven (Leipzig 1865), p. 7-8, as quoted in D.
JOHNSON, Beethoven Scholars and Beethoven's Sketches, in: 19th-Century Music 2 (1978), p. 5 : "Fassen wir
H . S. Powers: "La solita forma"and"The Uses of Convention"
67
opera that starts from a premise that an opera is not in ~ r i n c i p l ea diversification, an

organic exfoliation from a single seed, but rather a synthesis, a unification of diverse
strands. Verdi's contemporary Abramo Basevi, in giving his general definition of
tinta, put the critical issue as follows:
Opera in music . . . would compare badly with a statue, or a painting, where the whole is
considered first of all. In music we would seek in vain a determined idea such that a number of
separate pieces may be clustered around it as though they would make a single whole. The
music finds, rather, in the general concept of the drama a point d'appui, a center towards
which the various pieces that make up the Opera more or less converge, according to the
ingenuity of the maestro, and thus arises what is called the colorito, or the tinta generale. But
the attainment of that colorito is not the end that the musician aims at but rather the means for
suitably associating, with respect to the drama, the various pieces of which the opera is
composed . . . And it is indubitable that the general colorito of an opera reveals the genius of
the maestro better than anything else, because there he shows his gift for synthesis. When the
maestro has come to devise that which is necessary to impart the desired colorito to the music,
by means of the disposition of the notes, the use of harmony, the choice of instruments,
etcetera, then he has created as it were a type, a norm, a constraint to which the individual
pieces, the motives, the accompaniments easily refer, from which results a whole that seizes
and irresistibly draws the hearer.6
Basevi's colorito is musically multivalent, imparted by melody, harmony, and

instrumentation in various combinations. That whole which a tinta reflects is not a
diversification level by level away from a single germ, not a music-dramatic
superstructure unified by its erection upon a single music-dramatic Urgestalt.
Basevi's notion of tinta suggests rather a supervening musical patina that emerges
from the agglomeration of diverse techniques, conventions, and novelties in several
domains.
An analysis based on the premise that an opera is a synthesis of various pieces has
to be able to deal first of all with these pieces, and with the kinds of pieces they are in
general; without that, discussion of specific devices, local or global, that bring
certain pieces or passages into a special relationship, be it in any one work or across
several works, is ad hoc and vacuous. The conventional presumptions about how a
particular kind of piece is supposed to work that lie behind any specific piece of that
kind might be called its underlying "melodramatic structure." To deal with an opera
es [das W e r k ] als eine organische Bildung auf, so miissen wir auch voraussetzen, dass es auf organischem Wege
entstanden sei und sich von innen heraus zu einem einheitsvollen Ganzen entwickelt habe." R . A. SOLIE, The
Living Work: Organicism and Musical Analysis, in: 19th-Century Music 4 (1980), p. 147-56, lucidly lays bare
the organic roots o f the influential schools o f analysis o f Schenker and RCti.
6
. . . I'Opera in musica . . . ma1 si vorrebbe paragonare ad una statua, o ad u n quadro, ove prima d'ogni cosa si
considera il tutto. Nella rnusica, invano cercheremmo un idea determinata, e tale da aggrupparvi attorno i tanti
pezzi separati, come se dovessero fare un tutto uno. La musica trova per0 nel concetto generale del dramma un
punto d'appoggio, un centro verso cui convergono piu o meno, second0 I'ingegno del maestro, i vari pezzi che
compongono I'Opera; ed allora si ottiene cio che chiamasi il colorito, o la tinta generale. M a il conseguimento di
questo colorito non b il fine che il musicista si propope, bensi il mezzo per associare convenientemente, rispetto a1
dramma, i vari pezzi di cui ['Opera si compone. . . . E indubitato che il colorito generale di un'Opera rivela meglio
d'ogni altra cosa l'ingegno del maestro, perch; ne mostra I'indole sua sintetica. Quando il maestro sia giunto ad
immaginare quel che b necessario ad impartire alla rnusica, mediante la disposizione delle note, I'uso delle
armonie, la scelta degli strumenti ec., il tanto desiderato colorito, allora egli ha creato come u n tipo, una regola,
un termine a cui agevolmente riferisce i pezzi particolari, i motivi, gli accompagnamenti ec., onde risulta un tutto,
che sorprende, e attrae irresistibilmente I'uditore . . . " (A. BASEVI, Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi
[Firenze 18591, p. 114-15).
tt
68
H . S. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"
at the level of its "melodramatic structures," one needs to consider, as Pierluigi
Petrobelli put it in his paradigmatic essay on Aida Act 111,
the interaction of the three main systems - dramatic action, verbal organization, and music . . .
[for] the articulation of the musical language is already [implicitly] present in the
organization of the libretto. In other words, the verbal structure is determined by the
[anticipated] musical setting, and is governed by dramatic principle^.^
Verdi's correspondence is so far the richest available source for acquiring a sense
of the compositional constraints and musico-dramatic presuppositions under which
he and his contemporaries were operating, and even for developing an analytic and
critical terminology, but other letters, books such as Basevi's essays and Pacini's
memoirs, other reviews and essays from the ottocento, not to mention remnants of
oral tradition, can all be put to the question as well. For my own point of departure in
implementing Petrobelli's coordinating approach just mentioned I take Basevi's list
of the movements in the "solita forma de' duetti", given in the first column of Table I.
While not all Basevi's terms are so easily found in Verdi's letters as some, the way
Basevi deals with both the action movements and the set pieces in his discourses
reflects the same suppositions that one finds in Verdi's correspondence with his
librettists. That neither much terminology nor much formal description is readily
found in 19th-century published sources is of course largely a consequence of the
intensely practical nature of a living musical theatre.
Table I is an abstracted layout for the familiar design of the basic musico-dramatic
units of an ottocento opera, a sort of "Sonata Forms" for the Italian lyric stage. Versi
sciolti are used for the scena (and sometimes elsewhere). Versi lirici are used for
both action pieces and set pieces: formal stanzas grouped symmetrically for the set
pieces; integral stanzas, as well as stichomythia and broken lines or stanzas, for the
action pieces. The "Duet" column - the prototype for the others in the Table - is
based on Basevi's "solita forma", adding the preliminary scena and subdividing the
Tempo d'attacco. Basevi's term "tempo d'attacco", so far as I know, was not used by
anyone else, nor is it found in Verdi's correspondence, but it is as useful a tag-word
as any and has at least some historical justification.' Basevi's and Muzio's
identification of the first static lyric movement of a scene as its "adagio" is typical
for the language of Verdi's correspondence and other writings of the time. Except in
rare instances such as these, formal terminology is not used in the abstract but
rather only when specific items are being discussed, and then the actual tempo term
- adagio, largo, andante, etcetera - will be used for the slow movement of the
' P. PETROBELLI, Music in the Theatre (a propos of Aida Act Ill), in: Themes in Drama, 3 : Drama, Dance and
Music (Cambridge 1980), p. 129,139; the connecting and editorial words in brackets are mine. An earlier study
pointing in this direction is P. PETROBELLI, Per un' esegesi della struttura drammatica del Trovatore, in: Atti
del Ill0 Congresso dell'lstituto di Studi Verdiani (Parma 1974), p. 387-40, translated into English by W.
DRABKIN, in: Music Analysis 1 (1982), p. 129-41.
An English-speaking reader needs to remind himself that the verb "attaccare" means both "attack" and
"attach", with both of which it is indirectly cognate. The masculine noun "attacco", in this context, seems clearly
to reflect both senses. It is the "onset" of tempo giusto, versi lirici, regular orchestral phrase structure- but it is
also a "conjunction", mediating between the unmeasured freedom of recitative texture, in which versi sciolti are
almost always set, and the normally absolutely regular musical phrasing of accompanied vocal melody used for
the formal stanzas of the purely lyric and static "adagio" movement.
H . S . Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"
Table I: "melodramatic structure" - three normative scene types
Grand Duet'
ArialCavatina3
0. Scena
Scena
Central Finale
I
\
"Tempo d'attacco" [kineticI4
1. Tempo d'attacco
2. Adagio
3. Tempo di mezzo
4. cabaletta
chorus, ballet, scena,

aria, duet, etcetera
Adagio
Tempo di mezzo
cabaletta
Pezzo concertato [static]

Tempo di mezzo [kinetic]
Stretta [static]
I r , . . . la solita forma de' duetti .. . u n tempo d'attacco, I'adagio, il tempo di mezzo, e la Cabaletta"(A. BASEVI,
Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi [Firenze 18591, p. 191). T h e term "scena" is added. Texts for scene will be
in versi sciolti, for the numbered movements in versi lirici (with sporadic appearances o f versi sciolti in kinetic
movements).
T h e subdivision o f the Tempo d'attacco follows P. G O S S E T T , Verdi, Ghislanzoni, and Aida: The Uses of
Convention, in: Critical Inquiry 1 (1974-75), p. 303, 312, passim.
3
. . . le cavatine avevano il suo adagio, r poi il suo tempo di mezzo, ed infine la cabaletta . .. "(Emanuele Muzio,
letter o f 23 July 1847, in: Giuseppe Verdi nelle lettere di Emanuele Muzio ad Antonio Barezzi, ed. L. A. Garibaldi
[Milano 19311, p. 346).
T h e adjectives in brackets are from P.G O S S E T T , The 'Candeur Virginale' of 'Tancredi', in: M T 112 (1971),
p. 327.
8,
particular duet or aria in question. The expression "primo tempo" is frequently used
as well, but it always refers to the first movement in tempo giusto and versi lirici
whatever it may be - the Tempo d'attacco of a duet, the adagio movement of an aria and is therefore too ambiguous to use for an abstract formal terminology. The word
"cantabile" also may well appear in a discussion of some specific duet or aria scene
with reference to its adagio movement, but it may equally well turn up with
reference to a part of a scena or Tempo d'attacco. "Cantabile" designates a sustained
and flowing vocal line wherever it may appear; it is a term for a kind of vocal
texture, and belongs in a semantic domain shared with "recitativo", "parlante", or
"canto spezzato" rather than one that includes "cabaletta" or "tempo di mezzo".
Like "primo tempo", "cantabile" is not appropriate as a term for an indispensable
and fixed stage in the unfolding of a scene complex; whether or not every adagio
movement is cantabile may be moot, but every cantabile is not an adagio m ~ v e m e n t . ~
Basevi's list of terms for the divisions of the duet is mentioned very much en
passant in a passage calling attention to the fact that the Rigoletto/Sparafucile duet
is n o t in the "solita forma." In his discussion of the two duets that follow that one GildaIRigoletto and Gilda/Duca - Basevi used the terms "andante," "andantino,"
"tempo di mezzo," and "cabaletta" for individual movements, but of course he
would have had no occasion to itemize them there, where they could be taken for
T h e distinction between formal and textural terms is developed from Chapter IV o f the unpublished 1975
Princeton University doctoral dissertation o f R. MOREEN, Integration of Text Forms and Musical Forms in
Verdi's Early Operas (University Microfilms International, U M 76-20782). M y o w n notions o f "melodramatic
structure" derive largely from the many exciting hours spent working with Moreen o n this dissertation, and they
begin and end with his brilliantly simple but profound observation o f the threefold correspondence among
patterns o f versification, sequences o f plotting, and musical designs in Verdi's opera, an observation that
combines practical cogency and historical verifiability with sureness o f analytic consequence.
70
H . S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"
granted. Another duet of "insolita forma", one that (unlike the Rigolettol
Sparafucile duet) outraged Basevi, was the DogeIFiesco duet in the Prologue of
Simon Boccanegra (Basevi, p. 269-70). Characteristic of both these duets of "insolita
forma" for two low men's voices is the lack of any occasion for extended singing a 2.
A continuous succession of stanzas in lyric verse meters - ottonario throughout in
the Rigoletto instance, ottonario leading to doppio quinario in the DogeIFiesco duet
- is deployed in varying mixtures of parlante and cantabile vocal textures (to use
Basevi's terms), in dialogue or in single solo stanzas, without any encapsulated setpiece. The Rigoletto duet is uniform in tempo, meter and pacing, though, and never
modulates very far from its tonal center F. The Boccanegra duet, to the contrary,
ranges widely in tonality, with frequent changes of tempo and meter. For instance,
the scene is set in such a way that at the change of poetic meter to doppio quinario,
Simon's "cantabile in u n andantino 318, di carattere pastorale, sulle parole 'Dimar
sul lido', che non dura pi6 di 16 battute" sounds as though a set-piece is at last under
way only to be frustrated. This, several other aborted cantabili, and a general "misto
di recitativo, di parlante, e di qualche cenno di motivo" is what outraged Basevi to
the point that "appena lo stesso Wagner oserebbe cosi lungi avanzarsi".
Muzio's normative list of movements for the solo cavatina, as shown in Table I
column 2, is like Basevi's list of duet movements in that it is mentioned only en
passant; it occurs in a passage calling attention to the novelty of the one-movement
cavatina Verdi composed for Jenny Lind in I masnadieri. The aria norm differs from
the duet norm in that it has no Tempo d'attacco - no movement setting versi lirici in
tempo giusto - between the scena and the adagio movement. The prototypical
situation of Italian Romantic melodrama, the dramatic confrontation, is seen in its
purest form in the Grand Duet, whose Tempo d'attacco is the musical embodiment of
the active aspects of confrontation, that is, of its dramatic component. The adagio
movement that follows is a lyric expression of the emotional position or positions,
momentarily stabilized, that were reached during the confrontation. The adagio
movement of a solo aria scene is a similar lyric expression of an already stabilized
emotional position. Normally, however - and a priori in the case of an aria di sortita,
a cavatina - the emotional position expressed has not been reached in consequence of
an enacted confrontation but is rather pre-existent. Hence the "primo tempo" of a
typical aria scene is not a preparatory Tempo d'attacco but is rather the static adagio
movement itself, preceded directly by a scena in versi sciolti and unmeasured
recitative texture. What has led to the position expressed in the adagio movement of
the aria is described in the scena, rather than enacted in a Tempo d'attacco as it
would have been in a duet. But just as a cavatina may be anomalous in having only
one movement, so too there are anomalous arias sung by a character already on
stage that are directly consequent upon a confrontation. The treatment of the
preparatory portions in such aria scenes is likely to be quite special. For instance,
Luisa Miller Act I1 opens with what is called in the autograph a "Coro, scena ed
aria/LuisaV. Verdi had asked for a duet for Luisa (the prima donna) and the villain's
disagreeable henchman Wurm, but for several reasons Cammarano stood by his
original programma, in which the scene between Luisa and Wurm was to be handled
H.S. Powers: "La solita forma"
and "The Uses of Convention"
71
formally as an aria for Luisa.lo After the opening narrative chorus there is a long
scena for Luisa and Wurm, all of course in versi sciolti, that includes not only several
cycles of threat and reaction but also Wurm's dictation of a letter that he forces Luisa
to write; the actual dictating is done parlante, in tempo giusto, over a rhythmic
motivo in the orchestra - in short, just as though it were a Tempo d'attacco in versi
lirici. And indeed, in purely dramatic terms the scena functions as though it were a
Tempo d'attacco, a confrontation preparing a duet; the "primo tempo" of Luisa's
aria, "Tu puniscimi, o Signore" then expresses Her distress and indignation over
Wurm's demands. In the Tempo di mezzo Wurm has an extended solo passage,
moreover, and he has a full stanza of text in the cabaletta. But though Wurm's part
in the purely dramatic action seems on the surface to be equal to Luisa's, his musicodramatic function, as Cammarano set it up and Verdi composed it, is equivalent only
to that of a messenger, though a rather independent one in terms of the plot. His task
is only to establish positions in the kinetic movements that will provide occasion for
lyric expression at length by the principal character in the static ones. Wurm has no
equal part in this scene: there are no versi lirici for a Tempo d'attacco, he has nothing
at all to sing in the adagio movement, and though he sings in the cabaletta it is only
in the "ritornello" and the coda, between and after the usual two full renderings by
the soloist, which is where a supporting chorus would sing. Nonetheless, from the
critical point of view Cammarano's and Verdi's treatment of the dramatic structure,
versification, and musical setting in this scene show how very far the standard aria
design can be taken for musico-dramatic purposes without any essential departure
from conventional norms. Wurm's non-participation in the formal movements for
emotional expression may have arisen from necessity - a desire for brevity and for
keeping the third bass role at the comprimario level (Copialettere, loc. cit.) - but it is
made a virtue in that it contributes most forcefully to the dramatic characterization
of Wurm as not only cruel but also cold-blooded.
The adagio movement of an aria scene with chorus, or of an aria-finale, is
therefore normally launched proximately from some sort of recitative scena (as
always in versi sciolti), no matter how the context has been set. There are rare
exceptions, though, to test the rule. Just as Luisa Miller's "Tu puniscimi, o Signore"
is an apparent duet scene that really is an aria, so also there are solo arias that are
paradoxically duets, in that they grow out of genuine two-person confrontations in
which the second character is an equal emotional participant, though he or she
remains silent in the lyric movement or movements from some dramatically
plausible or even compelling reason. The musico-dramatic effect of an aria that is
really a duet is as startling as that of a duet that is really an aria. A classic instance is
the original 1833 aria-finale of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia's Largo "M'odi,
ah m'odi, io non t'imploro" and her final cabaletta "Era desso il figlio mio" are
preceded by a Tempo d'attacco and a Tempo di mezzo, respectively, in which her son
Gennaro shares on a more than equal footing. It is of course the presence in this aria
of a Tempo d'attacco, in versi lirici, that is structurally anomalous and that should
lo
Copialettere, p. 471,473-4.
72
H . S . Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"
prompt closer analysis. In that Tempo d'attacco Gennaro refuses to take the antidote
to a poison that Lucrezia has deliberately administered to his companions-in-arms,
and inadvertently to him; he wants to kill her before he dies, and is then stunned by
Lucrezia's revelation that she is his mother. In the ensuing Largo of her aria-finale
Lucrezia pours out her love and begs her son to save himself. At the end of the shared
Tempo di mezzo Gennaro dies, and Lucrezia's cabaletta - Romani and Donizetti
making a virtue of the prima donna's necessity - is an hysterical outpouring of grief
capped by florid calls for the vengeance of Heaven to strike. In the first part of the
scene Gennaro is made to seem, as it were, too shocked by Lucrezia's revelation in
the Tempo d'attacco to participate in the Largo as more than a nearly inarticulate
pertichino; and he could hardly take part in the cabaletta generated by his death. In
the revised ending sung by Frezzolini at La Scala in 1840 the cabaletta was deleted
and the preceding final quatrain of the Tempo di mezzo was replaced by an extended
cantabile sestina for the dying Gennaro, in a different verse meter and a new tempo
and tonality, now with Lucrezia as the pertichina. After Gennaro's new cantabile,
one line of the former final quatrain of the Tempo di mezzo was re-introduced, for
Gennaro's last words "Madre! io m o r o . . . " (sung to the original pitches over
different harmonies), a final wild cry of "E spento.. . i spento!" from his mother,
and a fast curtain. The much more up-to-date 1840 ending is of course a
transformation of what had been originally a conventional aria design, though one
that was already being treated as though it were a duet. If the 1833 original were not
at hand, however, we might well have taken this two-person finale from 1840 as a
new design invented ad hoc.
A Verdian instance that tests the rule is the opening of U n ballo in maschera Act
111. The scene begins with 24 lines of ottonario verse in dialogue for Renato and
Amelia, set musically as a Tempo d'attacco. This is followed by two eight-line
settenario stanzas for Amelia's solo aria "Morrd, m a prima in grazia". There is of
course no cabaletta; the scene continues with Renato's recitative beginning "Alzati!
la tuo figlio 1 a te concedo riveder . . . ",as usual in versi sciolti, in the midst of which
Amelia exits (to the music that began the second stanza of her aria), and soon
thereafter comes Renato's aria "Eri tu". That Amelia's aria is set up with a Tempo
d'attacco in lyric verse rather than a scena in recitative seems to contradict the
generalization for solo arias, but in fact it helps confirm it. This is not a solo scene for
Amelia, for at no point is she alone on stage, and the aria itself is a plea addressed
directly to Renato, who is in control throughout. Though Renato does not sing
during the actual aria, the scene is one for two persons of equal emotional weight. It
begins with a dramatic confrontation of the two that leads in the usual way into a
set-piece, a lyric moment - only during that set-piece one character icily withholds
any response. Once again, the musico-dramatic equality of the character who is
silent in the lyric movement has been established by preparing the aria as though it
were a duet."
" Further o n anomalous aria and duet scenes, see m y Aria sfasciata, duetto senza l'insieme: le scene di confront0
tenore-soprano nello StiffelioiAroldo di Giuseppe Verdi, i n : Tornando a Stiffelio. Popolaritri, rifacimenti,
messinscena, effettismo e altre "cure" nella drammaturgia del Verdi romantico, ed. G. Morelli (Florence 1987),
p. 141-188.
H.S. Powers: "La solitu formu" and "The Uses of Convention"
73
In a Finale, as shown in the third column of Table I, several events or successive

entrances may act as a multiplex "Tempo d'attacco" preparing the principal
anagnorosis or peripateia, the moment of "stupore universale" that launches that
grandest of all operatic genres, the "largo concertato". The preliminary portion of a
Finale is also frequently much more elaborate than the scena of an aria or duet,
comprising anything from ceremonial or festive choruses and ballets to all or part of
an aria or duet scene in its own right; there may well even be an overlapping of
movements. An excellent early Verdi example is the coronation scene in the piazza at
Rheims from Giovanna d'Arco (Act I11 in the autograph, Act I1 in the Ricordi vocal
score). The Act comprises three numbers, identified in the autograph as "Marcia",
"Scena ed aria Giacomo", and "Finale 3"". The "Marcia" in Eb (which includes
chorus and banda) is number 11; it accompanies a grand procession of the Dauphin
(Carlo), Joan of Arc (Giovanna), and many dignitaries into the cathedral of St.
Denis for the offstage coronation. Giovanna's father Giacomo, alone on stage, sings
number 12, comprising a recitative (versi sciolti) and an adagio in f#/F# (two
quatrains of ottonari); he believes himself compelled to denounce his own daughter,
to save her from eternal damnation for trafficking with demons. Giacomo remains
on stage while number 13 (the Finale 3") commences with an offstage choral "Te Dio
lodiam", again in E b (one sestet of endecasillabi lirici), after which he sings a few
more lines of versi sciolti in recitative, then retires inconspicuously into the crowd
emerging from the cathedral with Carlo and Giovanna. As Carlo praises Giovanna
to the adoring crowd the versi sciolti continue - but now they are set in tempo giusto
accompanied by an orchestral motivo in continuous dotted rhythm. The newly
crowned King proposes to build a church in Giovanna's honor; upon hearing this,
Giacomo bursts forth crying "blasphemy", and with his outcry the versi lirici of the
Finale begin, in ottonario meter. The ensuing universal stupefaction at Giacomo's
irruption is sung to the accompaniment of the same dotted-rhythm motivo that had
accompanied Carlo's praises of Giovanna in versi sciolti; the first quatrain of
ottonari then concludes as Giacomo intones "M'odi, o re" on the dominant of f
minor. At this point every preparation has been made for a grand largo concertato to
be led off by the principal baritone - and a set piece does indeed follow, but it is not a
largo concertato. As Budden has described it, "Giacomo's denunciation (Comparire
il ciel m'ha stretto) has a cabaletta-like gait and texture, though it lacks repeat,
ritornello and coda" (Budden, I , p. 218). The piece is indeed brought in as though it
were the cabaletta for Giacomo's adagio; in that case, the offstage "Te Dio lodiam",
Carlo's praises of Giovanna, and above all the quatrain of Giacomo's irruption will
have functioned as a rather elaborate preparatory Tempo di mezzo. The poetry for
the seeming cabaletta continues the ottonari with fourteen more lines, a sestet and
an octave; the melody runs for 28 measures in F Major, cabaletta-style, making a
full and formal cadence m the tonic with line 6 of the octave. Lines 7-8 (divided
among Giacomo, Carlo, and the chorus) come in fortissimo in f minor on Giacomo's
last note, accompanied at first by the reprise of a motivo that had been heard in the
scena just before Giacomo's adagio; in short, the fortissimo passage begins just as
though it were going to be the "ritornello" setting up the conventional repetition of
74
Giacomo's cabaletta. After the first 10 measures, however, the character of the music
changes: the parts of the line comprising the chorus's "Quale orror" and Carlo's
"Che mai narr6" are repeated again and again over a diminuendo repeatedly
establishing the dominant harmony of d b minor, in 10more measures of characteristic preparatory gestures that again point towards a concertato - and this time a
concertato does indeed finally commence: Andante 6/8 in D b Major, with change of
verse meter to doppio quinario, led off by Carlo ("No! forme d'angelo"). To sum up,
what comes after Giacomo's adagio - the offstage "Te Dio lodiam", Carlo's praises,
and Giacomo's irruption - prepares what turns out to be not a concertato but a
cabaletta for Giacomo's aria scene - but when the cabaletta's "ritornello" arrives it
turns into a concertato preparation. Putting the dynamic process just outlined in
tenns of static formal expectations, the Tempo d'attacco for the Finale is turned back
to become a Tempo di mezzo for the preceding incomplete aria scene, whose
completing cabaletta is itself then left incomplete and reincorporated into what turns
out to be after all a Tempo d'attacco for the concertato movement of the Finale. After
the concertato Giacomo subjects his daughter to a three-fold inquisition, one of Frits
Noske's "ritual scenes".12 The stretta follows and concludes the act. Table I1 outlines
the act in diagram form.
Table 11: Giovanna d'Arco: Act I1 (the coronation at Reims)
Giacomo's aria
---
the Finale
Marcia [trionfale]
procession/chorus
0. scena
"Ecco il luogo . . . "
---
2. adagio
"Speme a1 vecchio .. ."
---
---
( "Te Dio lodiam"
offstage chorus
0.
0.
3. tempo di mezzo
recitative (Giacomo)
Carlo's praises
Giacomo's irruption
----
4 . cabaletta
"Comparire il ciel
m'ha stretto"
"Quale orror !"
"Che mai narrb?"
tempo d'attacco
1.
"No! forme d'angelo"
andante (concertato)
2.
Giacomo's inquisition
tempo di mezzo
3.
"Fuggi, o donna maledetta"
stretta
4.
(ritornello)
l2 F . NOSKE,"Ritual Scenes," Chapter 10 o f his The Signifier and the Signified: Studies in the Operas of Mozart
and Verdi (The Hague 1977), p. 234-235.
H. S. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"
75
This is of course just one of many ways in which the normative expectations
embodied in the conspectus in Table I for a Finale may be manipulated for effect.
Another, increasingly common with Verdi, was to conclude an Act by following the
slow concertato with what comes in as though it were a Tempo di mezzo setting up a
stretta, but then to ring down a fast curtain at the point, so to speak, where the
action would again stop and a stretta be sung. What Budden has observed in general
of the cabaletta applies equally well to the stretta:
The cabaletta had another purpose besides that of display. It provided a 'vent' for the
emotion which was strictly controlled in the andante. For an Italian of the period emotion was
like a charge of electricity to be earthed, not a warm bath in which to soak. (Budden, I, p. 16)
By deliberately omitting in a Finale to provide the "vent", by failing to ground the

emotional charge,
Verdi could leave the musico-dramatic electricity with sufficient
voltage to leap the intermission between Acts. Documented instances of this device
are cited briefly at the end of this essay (the matter is dealt with at length in an
essay in preparation on the central Finale of Simon Boccanegra).
It is of course not necessary to invoke Basevi or any other 19th-century critic to
derive underlying ground plans for the presuppositions of "melodramatic structure"; the correspondence of composers, especially Verdi, and the works themselves
are ample. Two modern critics who have outlined schemes that differ in certain
particulars from Basevi's, each in a different way, are Julian Budden and Philip
Gossett.13 Budden's account of the fundamentals of "operatic design" begins from
the solo scene.
Any survey of operatic design in the primo ottocento must begin with the double aria, since
this is in a sense the opera's point of departure - and for many people its raison d'ttre. The
practice of dividing an aria into two sections contrasted in tempo was not new in Rossini's
time. One has only to think of Donna Anna's ' N o n m i dir' and the Queen of the Night's '0
zittre nicht'. But it was Rossini who set the seal on the convention whereby every principal
should have at least one aria in two self-contained sections - the first slow and expressive, the
second fast and brilliant and known as the cabaletta. It was he, too, who carried furthest the
expansion of this two-part structure into the 'scena' with its long preceding recitative, and its
short interlude (with or without chorus) between the contrasted sections of the aria.14
Having begun with the aria scene as primordial structural shape, on historical
grounds, Budden described the normative duet scene as though
it were derived from
aria scene design. Here I must part company with him, for the Grand Duet of Italian
Romantic opera seems to me essentially an ottocento invention; it is its most
characteristic form, and it has no 18th-century prototypes, as does the aria scene, or
for that matter, the central Finale. For analytic purposes in particular, it seems to me
far preferable to regard the duet scene as the fundamental norm - the Grundgestalt,
so to speak - and the aria scene as (formally speaking) a contraction of it. Budden's
BUDDEN, I, p. 13-22 (see also 11, p. 17-21,24-27,37-40); P. GOSSEIT, Verdi, Ghislanzoni, and Aida: The
Uses of Convention, in: Critical Inquiry 1 (1974-75), p. 291-334. Gossett's and Budden's accounts of the basic
skeleton of musico-dramatic scene structure in ottocento opera are dealt with here not only on account of their
singular merits but also because they are published and accessible. The most extensive and most convincing
demonstration of "melodramatic structure" is Moreen's unpublished dissertation cited in note 9 above.
BUDDEN, I, p. 13. Budden refers the reader in a footnote to Friedrich Lippmam's account of "the evolution of
the Metastasian exit aria into the scena and aria of Rossini's time" (cf. F. LIPPMANN, Vincenzo Bellini und die
italienische Opera seria seiner Zeit = Analecta Musicologica 3 [Koln-Wien 19691, p. 53ff.).
"
76
derivation of the duet scene from the aria, rather than vice versa, led him to an
underlying scheme for the ottocento duet that has three rather than four movements,
which in turn leads to problems in the analysis of even some of Rossini's duets.
Next in importance to the aria came the duet. Here the same andante-allegro design is
normally expanded by a preceding allegro. In the so-called 'gran duetto' the favourite pattern
is that of the Semiramide-Assur duet in Act I1 of Sen~irarnide.'~
The "favourite pattern.. . of the Semiramide-Assur duet" is cited, with variants,

as occurring in a number of other duets, and described as follows:
It consists of three movements: A. An Allegro in which the same finite melody is given out
.successively, though to different verses, and in certain vocal combinations at different pitches,
by each singer, ending in a substantial cadence. This is followed by a passage of dialogue
during which the music modulates towards a new key and so leads into B, an andante which
yokes the two voices in a chain of thirds.. sixths.. [or] tenths. . . . A brief transition, usually
in brisk rhythm and prompted by some kind of intrusion.. . will usher in C: a moderato or
allegro in which once more the two voices will sing the same melodic period successively;
then there will be a ritornello and the melody will occur yet again sung by both voices in
unison, in dialogue, or linked together in whatever way the combination will allow.16
Budden's "brief transition, usually in brisk rhythm and prompted by some kind
of intrusion" corresponds with the action movement called "Tempo di mezzo" by
Basevi, Verdi, and others later on. Given that his point of departure was the aria
scene, it is not surprising that Budden regarded the music coming between the
adagio and cabaletta movements of a duet as transition rather than as an
independent preparatory movement like the movement preceding the adagio, to
which he did give independent status. In most of Rossini's arias, and not
infrequently in his duets, the brief transition between the two parts is brief indeed,
sometimes near to the vanishing point. Curiously, however, this is not the case in the
SemiramideIAssur duet that Budden cited as model for his three-movement
pattern; from several points of view the "transition" between the adagio and the
cabaletta is much more efficiently grasped as a second independent action
movement preparing the cabaletta, just as the first action movement prepares the
adagio. For one thing, at 56 measures the passage is hardly "brief"; more
significantly, it has its own independent verse meter, with two stanzas and a
subsequent passage of dialogue just like the opening Allegro movement; and
finally, it incorporates a substantial central passage (quoted from the Act I Finale)
in an independent musical tempo and tonality. It is of course not a rounded and
closed form - action movements never are - but it is much more than a "brief
transition". There is no reason not to regard the passage as an independent action
movement and call it, for convenience, a Tempo di mezzo. (Also characteristic in this
piece and of duets and Finales in general is the return of a motivo, first heard in the
Tempo d'attacco, in the Tempo di mezzo, and again in the ritornello of the cabaletta.)
Gossett's standard duet design for Rossini as outlined in The uses of convention,
and a fortiori his background "convention" for Verdi, comprises four divisions rather
than three. His instance is also from Serniramide Act I1 - it is the duet a bit further
l5
l6
BUDDEN, I, p. 17.
Ioc. cit., p. 17-18.
H . S. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"
77
on for Semiramide and Arsace - and he has ~ r i n t e dthe full text and every essential
musical motivo. Curiously again, in most respects Budden's instance for his threemovement scheme, the SemiramideIAssur duet, would have served better to
illustrate Gossett's four-movement design than Gossett's own instance, the Semiramide1Arsace duet. In the latter the Tempo di mezzo is only 33 measures long, and
more than that, it shares not only verse meter but also tonality and tempo with the
cabaletta. Gossett's description of Semiramide's duet with Arsace, as excerpted
below, will serve rather better, with one or two points of intemal difference in detail
excepted, as a description of her duet with Assur.
The text is constructed, typically, in four parts, beginning with a confrontation which
dramatically motivates the entire composition. .. . The initial confrontation in the typical
Rossinian duet is presented in parallel poetic stanzas, which Rossini normally sets to the same
or very similar music. . . . With their positions stated, the characters can now interact in
dialogue over the orchestral theme from the opening of the formal stanzas. This dialogue . . .
leads to a new key, and with it the second section.
This intemal cantabile is a lyrical contemplation of the dramatic situation. Though
characters may have different or similar views, they [eventually] express them in concert.. .
In the third section, which often recalls music from the opening, action is taken, new
positions are defined. The music freely follows the events.. .
Musically and dramatically, the third section prepares the final one, known as a cabaletta.
The cabaletta is the lyrical conclusion of a multi-partite composition; cabalettas are found in
arias, duets, ensembles, even finales.17
The subdividing of Basevi's Tempo d'attacco into stanzas followed by dialogue

that is shown in my Table I follows Gossett. Though Verdi's Tempo d'attacco
movements do not normally include sets of solo stanzas at the opening, the memory
of the practice persisted. The dynamics of the ViolettaIGermont duet in Act I1 of La
traviata, for instance, can properly be grasped only with the realization that
Germont's "Pura siccome u n angelo" and Violetta's " N o n sapete quale affetto"
constitute a musically sophisticated outgrowth of the simple Rossinian convention of
an opening pair of stanzas for the two characters seriatim. They are shown in Table
111, separated by six lines of endecasillabi sciolti, as part of a complex Tempo
d'attacco. Six quatrains of settenari follow Violetta's outburst, from Germont's a
piacere "E grave il sacrifizio / M a pur tranquilla uditemi", into "Bella voi siete e
giovane" and on to his "Tai detti a u n genitor", with three responses from Violetta.
These words and music constitute the concluding dialogue section of a highly
developed Tempo d'attacco, though to be sure the baritone is doing most of the
talking; note that there is no singing a 2 until the last 14 measures - and that only in
the revised version of 1854 - when Violetta sings her first quatrain in the new verse
meter a parte accompanied by Germont singing fragments of the last quatrain of
settenario verses. The first opportunity for a contemplative lyric moment arises only
now, after the confrontation has finally been resolved with Violetta's submission.
"Dite alla giovine", therefore, is the adagio movement, in which the characters sing
extensively a 2, and complete stanzas of text are repeated in order to carry the
musical elaboration. The cabaletta begins after 10 measures Sostenuto followed by
"
GOSSElT, op. cit.(see note 13), p. 302-05
78
20 measures Allegro, which by position function as a relatively brief Tempo di

mezzo. The convention of repeating the cabaletta after a "ritornello" is converted to
a poignant gesture of infinite pathos: the final "Addio" quatrain of new text is sung
through once, beginning in bb minor fortissimo as though it were going to be a
"ritornello"; the character of the music changes midway, and Violetta sings a
reprise of her second cabaletta quatrain "Conosca il sacrifizio", sung now adagio,
almost unaccompanied, and broken off without its last line. (See Table 111.)
For a critical appreciation of a scene like this to be well founded analytically, the
historically attested pattern of the "solita forma" must be taken into account not just
in general but with some attention to detail as well. The description of this duet and
explanation of its relationship to the "normal formal scheme" in David Kimbell's
recent book Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism is a case in point. Kimbell's
Chapter 19 on "the popular trilogy" begins with a section on "the transcending of
convention", with descriptions of the "MiserereUscene and ' A h fors't lui" as
manipulations of the normative aria design that are as correct as they are c ~ l o r f u l . ' ~
For his reading of "Miserere" / "Quel suon, quelle preci" / "Ah! che la morte
ognora" as a "transition from cantabile to cabaletta" of Leonora's "D'amor sull'ali
rosee" / "Tu vedrai che amore in terra" - in short, as an elaborate Tempo di mezzo there is of course direct confirmation in Verdi's correspondence with Cammarano.19
But Kimbell's account of the way in which the Violetta/Germont duet transcends the
conventions leads him to a generalization that is critically oversimplified and
historically misleading.
The position held among the solo arias by the 'Miserere' scene is held among the ensembles
by the scena e duetto from Act I1 of La Traviata. It shows a comparable phenomenon - the
elaboration of the normal formal scheme until one almost ceases to be aware of its relevance.
One may perhaps legitimately regard 'Morrh, la rnia rnernoria' as the cabaletta, but this is
preceded by not one cantabile but two - the first ('Bella voi siete') dominated by Germont, the
other ('Dite alla giovine') by Violetta - and these in turn are preceded by two short arias,
again one for each character. The scheme of the whole scene may be diagrammed thus:
i. Recitative
iii. Transition
v. Link
viii. Transition
ii.
iv.
vi.
vii.
ix.
Aria (Germont) 'Pura siccome un angelo'

Aria (Violetta) 'Non sapete'
Cantabile i 2 'Bella voi siete'
Cantabile i 2 'Dite alla giovine'
Cabaletta i 2 'Morrh, la mia memoria'
It is one of the supreme examples in Verdi's work of the new tendency, stemming from the
Act I finale of I Due Foscari and the gran duetto in Act I of Macbeth, not to simplify the
emotional tensions of the scene until they match the standard operatic pattern, but to enrich
the pattern with a profusion of new lyrical growths until it is capable of reflecting every
emotional fluctuation, no matter how fine, in such a dramatic encounter.'O
So far as segmentation into whole units goes, there is no difference between

Kimbell's outline and the outline in Table 111. The difference is in the structure:
D. R. 8 . KIMBELL, Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism (Cambridge 1981), p. 419.
In Verdi's scenario, sent Cammarano on 9 April 1851, Part 4 begins: " I @ . Grand'Aria Leonora, intercalate dal
Canto dei moribondi e Canzone del Trovatore" (Copialettere, p. 120). O n his p. 295 Kimbell has quoted the
beginning o f the letter that sets u p this part o f the scenario: "Eleanora has no part in the song of the dead and the
troubadours' canzone, and this seems to me one of the best positions for an aria."
KIMBELL, op. cit., p. 425-6.
l9
"
Table 111: La traviata, Act 11, scenes 4-5, Violetta/Germont duet (1854)' - no. 5
movement
0. Scena
versification
sciO'ti ("')
sciolti (11')
1.
lines
(4
words (and actors)

Alfredo? . . . (V, servants)
Madamigella Val6ryi (G,V)
4. Cabaletta
"ritornello"
"cabaletta"
-+a
C -t a -t f f
-t
-t
tempolmeter
Allegro
All-",Mode, All-"
VIEb
Ab
Ab + Vlc
24
16
Allegro moderato, 414

(animando ...)
2x6
Non sapete quale affetto (V)
stable
c+C
44
Vivacissimo, 618
cadential
stable
modulating
%ii7/f
f - t Ab-t Db
db -t sequence + Vleb
a piacere, 618
stable
Eb
unstable
modulating
eb + Cb (> VIE)
e + VIG (= Vlg)
sacrifizio (G)
( EBellagravevoiilsiete
e giovane (G, V)
1x4
Cosi alla misera (V, G)
2x9
1x4
1x4
Dite alla giovine (V)

[S], piangi, o misera (G)
[Dite . . . Piangi . . .] a 2
sciolti (11')
"P di mezzo"
'measures
Pura siccome un angelo (G)

stable
Ah comprendo.. .no! giammai! (V,G) modulating
6x4
3.
3tonalitieslharmonies
3x4
6
"P d'attacco"
2. Andantino
'tonal state
---
1x4
r] ~mponete. . . (V, G)
. . . tra breve ei vi fia reso (V, G)
Morri,! la mia memoria (V)

No, generosa, vivere (G)
Conosca il sacrifizio (V)
Premiato il sacrifizio (G)
[Conosca . . . Premiato . . .] a 2
Qui giunge alcun.. . Addio! (V, G)
[Conosca ... Addio] (V, G)
>g -t Bb
Bb
bb
Bb
Andante piuttosto mosso, 214
22
Andantino, 618
10
20
24
14
'16
Sostenuto.
414
Allegro,
Allegro moderato, 414
... adagio a piacere
' In the original (1853) version of this number the Andantino movement - - "Dite alla giovine" - - was in E Major. The first eight measures of the music for Violetta's
anticipatory stanza of doppi quinari - - "Cosi alla misera" - - were retained; the present fourteen-measure conclusion, modulating to eb minor and accompanied by Germont,
replaces a twelve-measure original ending on V of c# minor in which Violetta sings alone. The first six measures of the "Tempo di mezzo" had the same rhythms in 1853, but
the succession of tonal centers bringing the music away from "Dite alla giovine" obviously had to be adjusted; from Violetta's "Qua1 figlia m'abbracciate" onward the
harmonies and tonalities are the same in both versions of the duet.
Tonal states are defined as follows:
shifting: a succession of harmonies neither establishing any tonal center(s) nor directed towards one.
unstable: a series of local tonicizations with no clear tonal focus or direction.
modulating: a succession of harmonies or local tonicizations with a clear sense of tonal direction.
semi-stable: a continuing tonal center is weakly established (no full cadence).
stable: one or more tonal centers are strongly established and/or confirmed by full cadence(s).
structured: a closed group of local tonics is subordinated to a single tonal center.
' Degree letters designate roots of triads or local tonal centers, depending on context. Upper-case letters (or Roman numerals) are for Major tonalities and triads (or chords
based on Major triads), lower-case for minor (or diminished if preceded by superscript "or').
' In measure counts linked by brackets the last measure of the first count and the first measure of the second overlap.
80
H . S . Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"
Kimbell's units i, vii, viii, and ix correspond with units 0,2,3, and 4 in Table 111; his
units ii-iii-iv-v-vi, to the contrary, are treated as subdivisions of unit 1 in Table 111,
there called "Tempo d'attacco" (though there is obviously more than one "tempo" "movement" - in the literal sense of the word). Table 111, in short, has two levels of
articulation where Kimbell's model is a simple concatenation.
The need for a doubly articulated analytical layering of the segments of this duet
- whatever one may choose to call them - arises not from their number but from
differences among them in internal design. The naivete of Kimbell's analysis is most
evident in the placing of his units vi and vii on the same structural level, regarding
them both as the same kind of number (a "cantabile"), the difference being that one
is dominated by Germont, the other by Violetta. Kimbell's unit vii, "Dite alla
giovine", is indeed a "cantabile" in the formal sense that he seems to intend, that is,
a lyric set piece: first each character sings a stanza alone, which takes up 28
measures; of the remaining 28 measures, sung entirely a 2, the first 16 comprise a
complete repetition of the words and music of Violetta's stanza, accompanied
throughout by Germont, who sings every half-line of his own stanza except the first
(not in their original order everywhere); that opening half-line finally becomes the
head-motive of the coda, which thus begins as though his stanza too were going to
be repeated, but then takes a different turn and concludes with a typical cadenza
comune. Kimbell's unit vi, "Bella voi siete", is mostly "cantabile" in vocal texture,
but is structurally nothing like "Dite alla giovine". There is no singing a 2, except in
the latter part of Violetta's "Cosi alla misera" stanza that anticipates the verse meter
of the Andantino in the revised version; and Germont goes straight through his
settenario text with no repetitions save one "dunque" until the penultimate line is
twice repeated, quickly, at the final cadence, which is not elaborated. Though
Violetta has relatively few words to sing in the settenario stanzas, compared to
Germont, this part of the duet is as much musico-dramatic dialogue as if their lines
were equal in number; it is as kinetic dramatically as it is ongoing verbally.
Germont is applying three specious persuasions one after another, and each one
evokes a brief but dramatically significant punctuating response from Violetta: first,
"Ah piic non d i t e . . . ", then "Gran Dio!", and at last, with "E vero!", she is
vanquished; after her a parte contemplative reflection in "Cosi alla misera" she
addresses Germont in submission with "Dite alla giovine", and the first static
movement in the duet is under way.
Whether one calls Kimbell's units ii through vi a "Tempo d'attacco" or not, they
function like one: each character states an initial position ("Pura siccome un
ange1o"and "Non sapete quale affetto"); with their positions stated, the characters
now interact in dialogue ("Bella voi siete"). The differences from the simplest
Rossinian Tempo d'attacco are twofold: first, the initial positions are stated in music
of strongly contrasted character, and the dialogue of confrontation goes on to music
of yet a third cut; second, there are transitional passages interpolated between the
two initial statements of position ("Ah comprendo.. . no! giammai!") and between
the dialogue and the set piece (Violetta's "Cosi alla misera"). But these make for a
difference in degree, not in kind. The duet is indeed, as Kimbell put it, "an
81
elaboration of the normal formal scheme", but the "profusion of new lyrical
growths" is not a consequence of adding more units ad hoc - extra "arias", extra
"cantabiles" - to the main sequence of the "normal formal scheme until one almost
ceases to be aware of its relevance". The scheme is as relevant as ever, and the
"profusion of new lyrical growths" is rather an elaboration on the several parts of
the scheme without disturbing their fundamental arrangement. Verdi's constant
play on the gestures and junctures pertaining to the normative pattern for duets
shows that at every moment he was firmly depending on his prospective audience's
awareness of the pattern in order to make his effects; the simple "solita forma de'
duetti" clearly underlies the complex surface both psychologically and formally.
Gossett's way of accounting for "the elaboration of the normal formal scheme
until one almost ceases to be aware of its relevance" captures the multi-layered
structural richness of such designs. Gossett did not discuss the ViolettaIGermont
duet specifically, but his historical generalization is the necessary presumptive
background for its critical analysis.
The most vulnerable part of the duet was its opening movement. Even many of Rossini's
duets seek alternative means of setting the parallel stanzas. By the middle of the century,
often only two more formal musical sections remain: the slow and lyrical cantabile, section 2,
and the cabaletta, section 4. The opening becomes freer both in text construction and musical
setting; the third section keeps its character while enlarging its role in the design.*'
Gossett then went on to show how the ViolettaIAlfredo duet in Act IV of La

traviata "parallels the Rossinian model in most respects",2' observing that it
exemplifies a way station on the road to the five duets in Aida, the goal of his essay.
Beginning with a close analysis of the whole of the AmnerisIRadamPs duet in Aida
Act IV, Gossett demonstrated how Verdi's correspondence with Ghislanzoni reveals
the strength and persistence of the underlying "solita forma" - or as he put it in his
title, "the uses of convention". The dramatic role and musical structure of cabalettas
in three more duets - AmnerisIAida in Act 11, AidaIRadamPs in Act 111, RadamPsI
Aida in Act IV - is dealt with in the same manner.u The remaining duet in Aida,
AmonasroIAida in Act 111, has no cabaletta, and is not analyzed in Gossett's essay.
There are only four places in Verdi's letters to Ghislanzoni that even refer to this
duet, and while Gossett has cited or quoted them all, they are much less informative
than the letters and textual suggestions that concern the other four duets. Gossett's
only analytical comment on the AmonasroIAida duet is embedded in his conclusion,
where he ranks the duets in terms of their "uses of convention".
Each of the duets in Aida belongs, to a greater or lesser degree, to a tradition fully
embedded in the history of nineteenth-century opera in Italy. At one end, the AmnerisRadames duet fulfills practically all the basic requirements of the Rossinian model; at the
other the Amonasro-Aida duet consciously avoids them [italics mine]. But a reading of
GOSSETT, op. cit., p. 306.
" ibid., p. 306-10.
Regarding the AmnerislAida duet in Act 11, see now M . CONATI, Aspetti di melodrammaturgia verdiana. A
proposito di una sconosciuta versione del finale del duetto Aida-Amneris, in: Studi Verdiani 3 (1985),p. 45-78,
and cf. GOSSETT, op. cit., p. 321-4,and especially his note 33,in which the general shape of the now recovered
original version is predicted.
82
Verdi's letters to Ghislanzoni leaves no doubt as to their overwhelming influence on the

composer and his
Pierluigi Petrobelli's analysis of the Amonasro/Aida duet puts its relationship to

the conventions in slightly but significantly different terms.
. . . for dramatic purposes, Verdi rejects in this duet [italics mine] the conventional
organization in four parts which had been customary in Italian opera from the time of
Rossini: allegro, cantabile, allegro, and cabaletta. . . . The verbal structure [sc. versification]
. . . implies the musical structure in its points of articulation. The position of the set pieces, and
their internal organization, are results of the overall conception of the musical drama; in
giving binding instructions to Ghislanzoni Verdi refuses or accepts, according to the needs of
the drama, the conventions of nineteenth-century Italian opera. The duet has the form of an
arch, whose culminating point coincides with the parola scenica: 'Dei Faraoni tu sei la
schiava !' . . .25
Petrobelli's formal outline is summarized in his own words below. The units to
which it alludes also appear in the first part of Table IV below.
The dialogue between Amonasro and Aida . . . is articulated in various sections; each of
them is a well-calculated step forward in the crescendo of dramatic tension, and the verbal
structure is clearly differentiated.. .
a) Amonasro informs Aida that he knows all her feelings.. .eleven- and seven-syllable lines
are freely alternated in recitative style.. .after this recitative the duet proper begins.
b) Arnonasro [and Aida]: 'Aida will be able to see her country again'. . .two quatrains of
eleven-syllable lines.. .
c) 'The cruel Egyptians have invaded and soiled their beloved country'. . .two quatrains of
eleven-syllable lines. . .
d) 'The time of revenge has come.. .' a quatrain of eleven-syllable lines to Amonasro.
Section b), c), and d) form a unity.. .
e) .. .it is up to Aida to get from Radames the military secret; Aida refuses violently.. . four
eleven-syllable lines of recitative.
f ) Amonasro: 'Let then the Egyptians come to destroy our country'. .. two quatrains of sixsyllable lines.. . plus a couplet of six-syllable lines. . .
g) 'The Egyptians will raid Ethiopia'. . . A sestet of seven-syllable lines. . .
h) 'The ghost of Aida's mother will come to curse her'. . .Again a sestet of seven-syllable
lines [with a different rhyme scheme].
i) 'You are just the Pharaohs' slave'. . .Two quinari doppi without rhyme for the parola
scenica.
j) Aida .. . will do what her father requests.. .Amonasro hides himself.. . two quatrains of
quinari doppi .. .
As a whole, then, the duet is articulated in three distinct parts, each of them characterized
by its metre and rhyme scheme, in turn determined by their dramatic content and function.
The two 'bridges' in recitative style between the three parts do not function as links; they
serve to emphasize the parola scenica and isolate it from the symmetry of the musical
discourse. In any case, for dramatic purposes Verdi rejects in this duet the conventional
organization in four parts which had been customary in Italian opera from the time of
Rossini: allegro, cantabile, allegro, and ~abaletta.'~
In addition to proposing a tripartite sectional division of the action - Amonasro
tempting, Amonasro terrorizing, and Aida submitting - and while describing the
close correlation of this action with both verse structure and gross musical features,
25
26
ibid., p. 333.
PETROBELLI, op. cit. (see note 7 ) ,p. 133.
ibid., p. 130-33.
H . S. Powers: "La solita formarrand "The Uses of Convention"
83
Petrobelli's discussion also deals with a number of musical details in the duet (and
earlier in the act), relying on Noske's hypothesis of the musical "sign".27 For now,
however, I want only to consider whether in fact "Verdi rejects in this duet the
conventional organization into four p a r t s " , as Petrobelli put it, or merely "consciously avoids" it, as Gossett has it, for I think there is an important methodological distinction behind the apparently slight difference in meaning. If Petrobelli's
"rejection" is the right implication for Verdi's compositional procedure, then one is
required to construct an ad hoc analysis, what in the Old New Criticism would be
called a "contextual" analysis solely in terms of the work itself, which is essentially
what Petrobelli has done. In the weaker implication of Gossett's "avoidance", the
conventions may be glimpsed still lurking in the shadows, or heard whispering
behind the scenes, and we should be able to discern the traces Verdi left in avoiding
them. And though there is precious little about the duet in the known Ghislanzoni
correspondence, what little there is may be of some help.
O n 28 September 1870 Verdi wrote Ghislanzoni:
10 sono sempre d'opinione che le cabalette bisogna farle quando la situazione lo domanda.
Quelle dei due duetti non sono domandate dalla situazione, e quella specialmente del duetto
tra padre e figlia non parmi a suo posto. Aida in quello stato di spavento e di abbattimento
morale non pu6 ne deve cantare una ~ a b a l e t t a . ~ '
As we know, Verdi came in the end to accept the idea of a cabaletta for the Aidal
Radamgs duet, but never for the AmonasroIAida duet. In his letter of 7 October,
having received a first set of revisions from Ghislanzoni for the third act, Verdi
pursued the matter, and himself supplied some text for what became the-two final
quatrains, Aida's submission and Amonasro's grandioso response, Petrobelli's third
main section.29 In a letter dated the next day (8 October) Verdi continued his
criticism.
I1 duetto tra Radames ed Aida t riuscito, secondo me, di gran lunga inferiore all'altro tra
padre e figlia. Ne 6 causa forse la situazione o forse la forma che 6 piu comune di quella del
duetto ~recedente.~'
Eight days later, having received a third version of the scene, Verdi reassured
Ghislanzoni en passant about the final shape of the AmonasroIAida duet.
In quanto a1 duetto tra padre e figlia, le varianti non pregiudicano nulla. Anzi Aida,
secondo me, dice ora quel che deve dire, ed t in ~ i t u a z i o n e . ~ ~
From these fragments we learn only that Verdi himself thought the form was
unusual, and that the duet has no c a b a l e t t a . From that last, however, and from the
contexts of Verdi's comments comparing the Amonasro/Aida duet with the Aidal
Radam6s duet that follows it, we can readily suppose that the unusual form of the
AmonasroIAida duet was perceived by Verdi not as sui generis but rather as a
deviation from a norm more nearly exemplified in the Aida/RadamPs duet. Though
27 See F . NOSKE, op. cit., especially p. 294-321, comprising Chapter 12, "Don Carlos: the signifier and the
signified", and Appendix I , "Semiotic devices in musical drama".
Copialettere, p. 645-6, quoted b y GOSSETT, op, cit., p. 324. A complete English translation is available in H .
BUSCH, Verdi's Aida: the History of an Opera in Letters and Documents (Minneapolis 1978), p. 69.
Z9 Copialettere, p. 651, English translation in BUSCH, op, cit., p. 7 5 .
Copialettere, p. 651, English translation in BUSCH, op. cit., p. 7 6 ; also quoted b y GOSSETT, op, cit., p. 325.
31 Copialettere, p. 653, English translation in BUSCH, op. cit., p. 7 8 ; also quoted by GOSSETT', op. cit., p. 325.
84
the only explicit deviation is the elimination of a cabaletta that Ghislanzoni evidently
had initially supplied, there is enough in the observations taken as a whole, given
Verdi's generally positive attitude toward the conventions as Gossett and Moreen
have shown it, to warrant trying to grasp the duet as a radically modified evocation
of the "solita forma" rather than as an outright rejection of it. To summarize the
conclusion embodied in Table IV, I would not regard Petrobelli's first and second
main sections as separate divisions on the same structural level as his third but
rather as parts of a single complex Tempo d'attacco, comparable to that of the
ViolettaIGermont duet. His third main section, then, is brought in as though it were
the adagio movement, but it is a movement that is never completed. (See Table IV.)
The opening scena leads on to what may easily be heard as an echo of the
Rossinian convention of matched opening stanzas, now collapsed and alternating
between the characters rather than seriatim: "Rivedrai. ..rivedrc3" and "Pur
rammenti .. . ben rammento". Petrobelli's second main section ("Su dunque
sorgete") is separated from and contrasted with the first ("Rivedrai le foreste
imbalsamate") exactly as are the first and second sections of the Tempo d'attacco in
the duet from La traviata ("Pura siccomc un angelo" and " N o n sapete quale
affetto"), even to the interpolation of a few lines of transitional versi sciolti and the
explosion into a fast 618 c minor (contrasted with a preceding slower major tonality
farther on the flat side). The preparations for the fast 618 c minors in the two duets
are of course exactly the same, dramatic'ally and musically, with the soprano
indignantly refusing a scheme proposed by the baritone with "no! giammai!" on a
dominant harmony of the forthcoming c minor. As in the Traviata duet so too in the
Aida duet the confrontation continues, but the next two stages are compressed. Aida
makes no independent statement of position, and the fast 618 movement that begins
in c minor, therefore, is not the soprano's but the baritone's, in which he makes his
arguments. Amonasro's are as specious as Germont's, but savage where Germont's
were suave. Aida's three sets of punctuating interjections of "padre" and "pietri",
moreover, are not progressively submissive responses to a seemingly compelling
logic but rather a series of desperate outcries at a psychologically brutalizing
violence. But in both duets the occasion for a static and contemplative lyric
movement with musical extensions comes only when the soprano's resistance has
been completely broken, and in both duets that resistance is broken in a passage that
begins the poetic meter of the following set-piece - coincidentally doppio quinario in
both - but which Verdi made the climax of the preceding action piece: Violetta's
"uomo implacabile", Amonasro's "tu sei la schiava". At this point the dramatic
confrontation is over and the formal adagio movement can begin. It starts in both
duets in the usual way with a solo for each character: first, the soprano voices her
submission; then the baritone (having treacherously won his point) can afford to
wax lyrically generous. In the ViolettaIGermont duet the adagio movement
continues in the usual way, with an extended elaboration a 2 and full stanza
repetition, but in the AmonasroIAida duet Amonasro's cantabile and Aida's
beginning of a response are interrupted by the approach of Radamss. They never get
to the a 2 singing in this aborted adagio movement, in short, and on the face of it
Table IV: Aida, Act 111, AmonasroIAida duet, Aida1Radami.s duet

movement
0. Scena
aersification
sciolti
lines
words (and actors)
1 10
Ciel! mio padre
'tonalstate
. . . (Ai, Am)
unstable
I "'
1. "P d'attacco"
5ciolti (11"
1.
"P d'attacco"
modulating
2x4
5ciolti (11%) 5
2x9
2x4
5ciolti
1x8
---.
1x4
---
"P di mezzo"
sciolti
4.
Cabaletta
"ritomello"
8"
---
sciolti
' See Table 111, notes 2, 3, 4.
28
36
2x9
3.
V7/f
bb + Bk
stable
2x9
ip
.-+ bb-+
b f . . V/c
18
( iX4
1x8
2. Andantino
+ eb..
meter
stable
Su dunque sorgete (Am)

stable
Ah padre! . . . pieti (Ai, Am)
6+6
Flutti di sangue scorrono (Am)
unstable
Ah! pieti padre . . . tu sei la schiava (Ai, Am)
I"
2. Andante ...
Rivedrai (Am)/Rivedri, (Ai)

Sposa felice (Am)/Un giorno solo (Ai)
Pur rammenti (Am)
Ah! ben rammento (Ai)
. . . In armi ora si desta (Am)
Chiscoprirlapotria?. . .no! giammai! (Ai,Am)
1x4
4
'tempo
a costoro schiava non sono (Ai)

{ Padre,
Pensa cheunpopolovinto, straziato (Am, Ai)
(orchestra]
Pur ti riveggo (Ra)/T'arresta, vanne (Ai)
D'Amneris sposa . .. non ti macchiar (Ai, Ra)
Prode t'amai (Ai) . . . Odimi, Aida (Ra)
Nel fiero anelito
Fra il suon, -fra i plaus~
N6 d'Amneris paventi (Ai, Ra)
{L
Fuggiam gl'ardori inospiti

a o r e t e vergini
(Ai)
Sovra una terra estrania (R;)
[Li tra foreste vergini (Ai)]
[I1 riel de' nostri amori (Ra)]

Sotto il mio ciel, piu libero (Ai)
[. . . Abbandonar la patria (Ra)] a
{ :::
1x4
10
. . . fuggiamo! (Ra)
Si, fuggiam da queste mura (Ra)
Nella terra awenturata (Ai)

Vieni meco, insiem fuggiamo (Ai, k a ) a 2
Ma dimmi, per qua1viaeviterem (Ai, Ra, Am)
shifting
semi-stable
unstable
tempo ic
stable
J = 144
tu non m'ami (Ai)
stable
structured
unstable
All-"vivo
stable
32
6 = 92
modulating
unstable
Ab+C+F
-+ E + c# (= db)
10
16
molto rit.
. . . Allegro
[etcetera]
Metronome marks are Verdi's; words are entered here only if no metronome numbers are given.
414
414 [!I
86
H. S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convrnt~on"
there would seem to be no question of Tempo di mezzo, nor of course of cabaletta.

The initial impact of the beginning of the subsequent AidaIRadamPs duet, however,
is as much that of a linking Tempo di mezzo as it is that of a brand-new Tempo
d'attacco. The doppio quinario verse of the AmonasroIAida duet continues into the
AidalRadamPs duet for two more quatrains; at the same time, the tempo reverts to
the Allegro giusto ,= 100 of the opening stanzas of the quasi "tempo d'attacco" of
the Amonasro/Aida duet; even the initial head motive of Radamgs's "Pur ti
riveggo" - heard nine times in an orchestral crescendo before he bursts in - is a
transformation of Amonasro's initial motive "Rivedrai" (Aida's "Rivedro"). The
general device evoked here is that of overlapping two numbers before the first has
been rounded off, more crudely exemplified with the enchained aria-scene and
Finale in Giovanna dJArco as outlined in Table I1 above. The musico-dramatic
function of RadamPs's entrance and opening exchange with Aida, with Amonasro
hidden among the palms, is at first ambiguous; it could conceivably be setting up a
duet cabaletta a 3, as in Ernani Act I, scene 2. Only after the opening quatrains of the
AidaIRadamPs dialogue have been sung and the verse and vocal texture have been
changed to versi sciolti and recitative (at Aida's "Prode t'amai, non t'amerei
spergiuro") are we sure that in fact a new number has been launched, leaving the
old one ~ n f i n i s h e d . ~ ~
The AidaIRadamPs duet - also outlined in Table IV - is by far the more obviously
conventional of the two duets, but even here the conventions are manipulated for
maximum effect. For instance, the opening parallel stanzas of the cabaletta, with the
same tune, are as old-fashioned in gross design as can be; what comes next is not.
The fifth quatrain, "Vieni meco, insiem fuggiamo", starts out by returning to the
tune of RadamPs's opening "Pur ti riveggo", as though it were to be an old-fashioned
Rossinian "ritornello" echoing music from an earlier kinetic movement, preparing
for the usual reprise a 2 of the words and music of the cabaletta. This "ritornello" is
itself sung a 2, however, and turns out in fact to be all there is of an a 2 finish for the
cabaletta. By starting this cabaletta in such a particularly old-fashioned way Verdi
ensured that the shockingly abrupt ending of its vocally grandiose "ritornello"
would bring into vivid musico-dramatic focus Aida's crucial question to follow, in
which RadamPs is tricked into betraying his country and his honor. As in the
AmonasroIAida duet most subtly, so more blatantly in the AidaIRadamgs duet the
manipulation of an underlying normative pattern and its traditional gestures and
junctures is at the heart of the musico-dramatic power of the whole.
Petrobelli's structural analysis of the AmonasroIAida duet, though more
developed and more sophisticated than Kimbell's outline of the ViolettaIGermont
duet, is also based on a concatenation of units rather than a two-level hierarchy, and
Petrobelli shares with Kimbell the conclusion that Verdi's way with the "solita
A very different sort of continuity from one number into the next is produced at the end of Aida's Romanza "0
cieli azzurri" that precedes the duet with Amonasro, where Verdi interrupted the orchestral postlude on a tonic
six-four chord for Amonasro's entrance. Gossett quoted a letter of Verdi's to Tito Ricordi written 26 August 1871
directing that Act I11 be copied consecutively as a single unit, though Verdi had certainly conceived and
composed it as a series of numbers (GOSSETT, op. cit., p. 327 note 34, and see BUSCH, op. cit., p. 205).
32
H . 5. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"
87
forma" was to drop it when it was incapable of reflecting the more complicated
phases or nuances of a particular dramatic confrontation. That Verdi felt free to drop
the "solita forma de' duetti" when necessary we know already from the Rigolettol
Sparafucile duet, which gave rise to Basevi's itemization of the standard divisions in
the first place. But when Verdi abandoned the "solita forma" altogether, it had to do
not with a greater degree of complexity or subtlety of verbal and dramatic design
but rather with a different kind of verbal or dramatic design altogether. For intricacy
and nuance alone, the "solita forma" was capable of any amount of elaboration and
adjustment in Verdi's hands, as Gossett and Moreen have shown,33and as Tables I11
and IV and the accompanying discussion purport to illustrate.
Gossett's background presupposition for finales, like his normative convention for
duets, calls for four movements, as opposed to the three movements that Budden's
normative design for operatic finales envisions. Budden's general description of the
central Finale highlights its origins in opera buffa, just as his general description of
the ottocento aria scene was rooted in its 18th-century genesis. It is probably the
evolutionary emphasis that led him to deny independent status to what became the
Tempo di mezzo. The presumption of the Tempo di mezzo as an essential part of the
normative scheme for finales, however, is as important in analyzing Verdi's way
with finales as the presumption of the Tempo d'attacco is to a proper understanding
of his way with duets.
Budden has brilliantly captured the essence of the musico-dramatic effect of the
typical central Finale in a metaphor that is so right psychologically as completely to
transcend its somewhat whimsical opera buffa vulgarity. First comes a straightforward description of the Rossinian ensemble-finale.
However elaborate it may be its kernel is usually a pattern of three movements. The first is
fast, and based on one or more orchestral themes which are repeated, extended sequentially
into different keys, or even developed [the Tempo d'attacco]. The second movement is slow.
Here every one is 'struck all of a heap', as the result of some unexpected revelation. The
dramatic development comes abruptly to a halt, as all express their utter astonishment [the
Largo concertato] ... Then suddenly the music breaks into furious activity. No longer
numbed by shock the singers become only too articulate. But.. . they are far too excited to do
anything but shout and gesticulate [the stretta].
Then comes the metaphor.

The scheme is a musical elaboration of that most universal and elementary of all jokes - the
pratfall. The victim strides purposefully along [in the Tempo d'attacco], then steps on a
banana-skin [the peripateia]. His legs fly up and he lands on his coccyx. There follows a
split second of innocent wonder as he surveys the universe from a new and unexpected angle
[the concertato]; then as his ganglia awake to life and transmit painful messages to his
brain, he lets out a howl of agony [the stretta]. In these three stages we have the three
movements of the Rossinian finale.34
To whatever extent all this may be true for Rossini, as a general model it would be
improved by an independent slot for the transition between the concertato and the
stretta. (Why not "the ganglia" and "their painful messages" as Tempo di mezzo,
since it is more often than not a messenger that effects the necessary change of mood
"
References in notes 9 and 13 above.
BUDDEN, I, p. 18-19.
88
between the two set pieces?) In a footnote to the passage just quoted Budden
summarized Gossett's "more detailed and slightly different analysis of the
Rossinian finale", which runs (in Gossett's own words) as follows.
There are four basic elements of a mature Rossini finale, though additional movements are
usually added. Two are 'kinetic', that is, action takes place in them or emotional positions are
developed; two are 'static', that is, emotions or situations are contemplated. Each kinetic
section prepares a static one. The kinetic sections are often constructed around the same
orchestral motif, serving as a background for dialogue which advances the action. These
sections can be quite free in design, though they almost always use a dominating thematic
element in the orchestra. The static sections are more restricted, with the final sections usually
constructed as a cabaletta. . . . Most finales include an introductory section. It can take many
different forms, though a large choral number or homophonic ensemble are typicaL3'
The omission of an independent Tempo di mezzo slot from the normative analytic
model for Verdi's central Finales can leave the critic in an awkward cul de sac, as is
illustrated by an observation of Budden's regarding Verdi's transcending of the
Rossinian model. Concluding his general outline of the melodramatic structure of
central Finales, Budden had this to say about Verdi and the stretta movement.
Here too Verdi had no alternative but to follow his predecessors, and once again it was a
long time before he found a more convincing solution than they. . . .But at least in the stretta
no soloist's honour was involved, so that Verdi could afford to dispense with it earlier than
with the cabaletta. By the time of Luisa Miller it is no longer de rigueur; and once it has fallen
away, the preceding slow movement, deprived of the contrast, loses its original identity to
become merely one of those moments of lyrical expansion such as one expects at the high
point of any opera. In I1 Trovatore Verdi winds up the finale to Act I1 in much the same way as
his mature arias, with a single phrase of cantilena from a soloist.36
Verdi's correspondence with Cammarano and De Sanctis about the central

Finales of both the operas cited by Budden is very instructive, and in both cases he
specifically ruled out a stretta, as Budden has pointed out in his discussions of the
individual ~peras.~'To
rule out a stretta, though, is to imply that one might have been
there, one that would then have been the last movement of a more standard form.
But since Budden's model is a three-movement form without Tempo di mezzo, the
best he could do as an analytical observation on what comes after the concertato in
the Act I Finale of Luisa Miller was an ad hoc description that leads to what I find to
be an inverted critical judgment.
Verdi.. .ended with an allegro in three mounting stages; but it is nothing like a
conventional stretta. Nor is there any operatic model for this type of ending. Verdi had gone
far beyond the example of his Italian predecessors in allowing the original drama to dictate
his formal ideas.38
The Act I ending of Luisa Miller is indeed nothing like a conventional stretta,
which (among other things) would have been a static set piece. There is an operatic
model for it, however: it is very much like a conventional Tempo di mezzo. There is a
sequential set of impassioned challenge and response phrases alternating with
orchestral flourishes, a passage in parlante texture over a developed orchestral
35
37
P. GOSSETT, The 'Candeur Virginale' of 'Tancredi', in: MT 112 (no. 1538, April 1971),p. 327-8.
BUDDEN, I, p. 19-20.
BUDDEN, I, p. 422; 11, p. 65-6.
BUDDEN, I, loc. cit.
89
motivo on a walking bass, and a final short tutti outburst. This would have been a
splendid preparatory Tempo di mezzo for a stretta had there been one, and for
convenience we might as well continue with the term, but what it prepares is not a
stretta but an unexpected fast curtainjon that analysis, rather than supposing that
Verdi was "allowing the original drama to dictate his formal ideas", it is more
appropriate to suppose that Verdi saw in the ending of Schiller's Act I1 something
that was eminently musicabile, something that could be handled through the norms
of expectation of the musical theatre suitably manipulated for a novel effect. It is not
that Schiller's dramatic design was shaping Verdi's operatic design but rather vice
versa: Verdi saw what was operatic in Schiller's Act I1 ending, and he saw that he
could make it work through the expected conventions, not by ignoring them, but by
thwarting them.39
In the Trovatore central Finale it was not a matter of telling the poet not to provide
a stretta, however, but of omitting one already
as Verdi wrote in his letter
to De Sanctis of 14 December 1852, long after Cammarano's death.
Sappiate che nel finale del2" atto (che 6 il primo che aveva fatto Cammarano) quasi senza
accorgermene ho fatto del primo tempo non un adagio, come s'usa sempre, ma un tempo
mosso, vivo ecc. Ho creduto (se non m'inganno) di aver fatto bene, almeno ho fatto come ho
sentito: un largo mi sarebbe stato impossibile. Dietro questo ho pensato di sopprimere la
stretta, tanto piii che non mi sembra necessario pel dramma, e forse Cammarano non l'ha fatta
che per secondare l'uso. Eccovi dunque come io ho fatto, e che vi prego di sottoporre a1
giudizio del signor Bardare, e che se non approvera stamperemo il libretto virgolando la
stretta (cosa che mi ~piacerebbe).~'
Verdi's letter continues with six decasillabi, which (with one more line apiece for
each of the opposed choruses of warriors) are those that now follow the concertato,
beginning with the entry of Ruiz and the rest of Manrico's men crying "Urgel viva".
These verses must have been Cammarano's, perhaps modified or compressed by
Verdi, but certainly not invented by him. It would seem excessively scrupulous to
have left Cammarano's stretta text in the printed libretto, in the customary quotation
marks for text not set to music, and at the same time to have replaced his
preparatory text or to have added text not by him without comment. Furthermore, in
other recommendations via De Sanctis to the poet Bardare (who handled the final
revisions of the libretto after Cammarano's death) Verdi referred to abridgements
and similar modifications - the Act IV Finale is a case in point - and the lines
beginning "Urgel vival'were most probably arrived at in the same way. But however
they originated, they constitute a brief kinetic movement following the static
concertato. This is what would have been a typical Tempo di mezzo had
Cammarano's stretta been set and that is how Basevi referred to the passage in
question: "Dopo un allegro vivo, che sta in vece di tempo di mezzo, chiudesi l'atto,
For the same point about Luisa Miller generalized to the Schiller/Cammarano/Verdi relationship as a whole,
see now the brilliant review of KIMBELL'S Verdi in the Age of Italian Romanticism by F. DELLA SETA, in:
Studi Verdiani 2 (1983), p. 259: ". . . d inaccettabile l'idea che Verdi attendesse di essere fecondato da Schiller; il
problema non 2 di dipendenza dal modello, ma di scelta, all'interno di questo, dei motivi suscettibili di essere
trattati in musica . . .".
BUDDEN, 11, loc. cit.
" LUZIO, Carteggi verdiani, I, p. 14-15.
39
90
H . S. Powers: "La solita jorma"and "The Uses of Convention"
ripetendosi quell'ultimo period0 del cantabile del soprano, gii notato a1 principio del
pezzo concert at^."^'
The central Finales in Luisa Miller and I1 trovatore - and in several others too, all
the way to Falstaff - are thus easily construed in the large as a consistent kind of
variant of a standard operatic design, one in which a kinetic action movement "in
vece di tempo di mezzo" after the concertato leads to a curtain "in vece di stretta", so
to speak. To take such scenes at the first level of analysis as modifications of a basic
convention of musico-dramatic structure rather than as novelties leads the analyst
and critic to think in terms of new effects produced by manipulating a few simple
norms of expectation, instead of leading him into constructing an endless series of
new forms, one for each new situation. In other words, it allows him to deal with
melodramatic structures in terms of how they work rather than what they are - and
that, I would contend, is what usually concerned Verdi himself most nearly, from
choice of subject through shaping the programma and the ~ l a of
n versification to his
choice of tempos, tunes, timbres, and tonalities. Verdi saw to it that action, words,
and musical elements were coordinated, attending now to one, now to another, until
they were inextricably fused, his aim being always the maximum effect for music in
the theater. To do that, Verdi neither ignored the "solite forme" - the conventions of
the Italian musical theatre - nor conformed to them. He used them.
"
BASEVI, op. cit. (see note 3), p. 219. Interrupting the final cadential progression to recall the words and
melody of the last couplet from Leonora's stanza in the concertato was of course entirely Verdi's compositional
act. For a full account of the genesis of the Act I1 Finale of 11 trovatore, see now J . N. BLACK, Salvadore
Cammarano's Programma for 11 Trovatore and the Problems of the Finale, in: Studi Verdiani 2 (1983), p.
7S107.

Powers Solita Convention

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Powers Solita Convention

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

"La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

"La solita forma"

and "The Uses of Convention"*

In the second chapter of Volume I1 of his magisterial three-volume account of

To this characterization of analytical searches for musical "constants" that have

Cone see it in an unobtrusive tonal scheme3.. . (Budden, 11, p. 53)

H. S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

The excursus concludes that

H . S. Powers: "La solita forma"and"The Uses of Convention"

opera that starts from a premise that an opera is not in ~ r i n c i p l ea diversification, an

Basevi's colorito is musically multivalent, imparted by melody, harmony, and

H . S. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

at the level of its "melodramatic structures," one needs to consider, as Pierluigi

Petrobelli put it in his paradigmatic essay on Aida Act 111,

H . S . Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

Table I: "melodramatic structure" - three normative scene types

"Tempo d'attacco" [kineticI4

chorus, ballet, scena,

Pezzo concertato [static]

H . S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

H.S. Powers: "La solita forma"

and "The Uses of Convention"

H . S . Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

H.S. Powers: "La solitu formu" and "The Uses of Convention"

In a Finale, as shown in the third column of Table I, several events or successive

H . S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

"Ecco il luogo . . . "

"Speme a1 vecchio .. ."

( "Te Dio lodiam"

"Che mai narrb?"

"No! forme d'angelo"

"Fuggi, o donna maledetta"

H. S. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

By deliberately omitting in a Finale to provide the "vent", by failing to ground the

H . S . Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

The "favourite pattern.. . of the Semiramide-Assur duet" is cited, with variants,

Ioc. cit., p. 17-18.

H . S. Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

The subdividing of Basevi's Tempo d'attacco into stanzas followed by dialogue

GOSSElT, op. cit.(see note 13), p. 302-05

H . S . Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

20 measures Allegro, which by position function as a relatively brief Tempo di

Aria (Germont) 'Pura siccome un angelo'

So far as segmentation into whole units goes, there is no difference between

words (and actors)

Allegro moderato, 414

Non sapete quale affetto (V)

Cosi alla misera (V, G)

Dite alla giovine (V)

Pura siccome un angelo (G)

. . . tra breve ei vi fia reso (V, G)

Morri,! la mia memoria (V)

Andante piuttosto mosso, 214

Allegro moderato, 414

... adagio a piacere

H . S . Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

H . S. Powers: "La solita forma" and "The Uses of Convention"

Gossett then went on to show how the ViolettaIAlfredo duet in Act IV of La

GOSSETT, op. cit., p. 306.

" ibid., p. 306-10.

H . S . Powers: "La solita forma"and "The Uses of Convention"

Verdi's letters to Ghislanzoni leaves no doubt as to their overwhelming influence on the

Pierluigi Petrobelli's analysis of the Amonasro/Aida duet puts its relationship to

H . S. Powers: "La solita formarrand "The Uses of Convention"