Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

Roy E. Aycock
The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 58, No. 4. (Oct., 1972), pp. 588-604.
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SHAKESPEARE, BOITO, AND VERDI

BY ROY E. AYCOCK

T least twenty-three of Shakespeare's plays have been turned

into operas. T h e masters of opera - Purcell, Rossini, Bellini,
Berlioz, Gounod, Verdi, Wagner, and Britten - have directed their
talents toward Shakespeare, as have the best of the librettists Lorenzo da Ponte, August-Eugene Scribe, Felice Romani, and
Arrigo Boito. Only three of the adaptations - Gounod's Romeo
and Juliet and Verdi's Otello and Falstafl - have achieved a more
or less permanent place in the international repertory; and of these
three, only Otello and Falstafl have an artistic merit worthy of their
sources. Giuseppe Verdi, a lifelong student of Shakespeare, at the
age of almost seventy finally found in the forty-year-old Arrigo Boito
(1842-1918) a poet and librettist whose talents were sufficient to
inspire two of the greatest achievements of nineteenth-century
Italian opera.
Verdi's love of Shakespeare, an adulation approaching idolatry,
persisted, with ever-growing fervor, all his life. References to Shakespeare abound in the correspondence throughout the years: "Tasso's
poetry may be superior, but I prefer Ariosto a thousand times. For
the same reason I prefer Shakespeare to every other dramatist, the
Greeks not excepted."l T o the accusation that his opera Macbeth
indicated he did not know Shakespeare, Verdi responded in a manner as sincere as it is cavalier: "I may not have rendered Macbeth
well, but that 1 do not know, do not understand and feel Shakespeare, no, by heavens, no! He is one of my very special poets, and
I have had him in my hand from my earliest youth, and I read and

1 All quotations from Verdi's letters, unless otherwise indicated, are from Franz
Werfel and Paul Stefan, eds., Verdi, The M a n in His Letters, trans. Edward Downes
(New York, 1942).

Beethoven's Letter to an Unknown Woman

589

re-read him continually." An extremely interesting comment occurs

in a letter to his publisher Ricordi: "Shakespeare was a realist, only
he did not know it. He was a realist by inspiration; we are realists
by design, by calculation." This view, so close to Keats's judgment
of Shakespeare's "negative capability," is one of those echoes dear
to the hearts of influence hunters. There is no evidence that Verdi
had read Keats's poetry, much less his letters. Another testimony to
his devotion to Shakespeare occurs in the instructions he gave to
the baritone Felice Veresi, the first Macbeth: "I would have you
~ his bedside at his
serve the poet better than the c o m p o ~ e r . "By
home at Sant'Agata Verdi kept a bookcase which contained the books
he most frequently read. Among these were two sets of Shakespeare's
complete works, both translated into Italian. Verdi knew very little
English, a handicap which accounts for his being drawn more to
Shakespeare the dramatist than to Shakespeare the poet.
Before the collaboration with Boito, the plays with which Verdi
was most concerned were King Lear and Macbeth. It must remain
an eternal disappointment to opera lovers, especially those who happen also to be students of Shakespeare, that the libretto for King
Lear, which Verdi wanted so desperately to set to music, ended in
flames, a destiny dictated by his will.
Verdi had submitted a detailed scenario based on King Lear to
Salvatore Cammarano in 1850. But the collaboration which resulted
in the completed libretto was with Antonio Somma, an Italian lawyer, patriot, and author of several tragedies. T h e correspondence with
Somma about King Lear, an exchange which lasted about two years,
is one of the most detailed discussions Verdi had with his several
librettists. Some of Verdi's and Somma's decisions about King Lear
may not be to everyone's liking. Verdi wanted three (at the most
four) acts. H e asked Somma to pay close attention to the Fool, who
was to be a contralto. He insisted on an absolutely first-class baritone
for Lear. There was no important part for a tenor. T h e proper kind
of soprano was indispensable for the role of Cordelia. He conceived
of Edmund as a cheerful villain. He could not bear the thought of
Cordelia in armor; he would eliminate her prayer. T h e opera would
open with a fanfare of <rumpets. But this libretto, for which Verdi
obviously had great affection, was never to become an opera. And
it is not certain that he ever wrote any of the music.
2Quoted by Henry W. Simon in the libretto-booklet in the RCA record album
Macbeth (LM-6147).

590

T h e Mi~sicalQuarterly

M a ~ b e t h the
, ~ earliest of Verdi's three completed Shakespearean
operas, has never received the acclaim given Otello and Falstafj.
After the Paris production of 1865, for which he made extensive
revisions, Verdi himself said: "Taking everything into consideration,
Macbeth is a fiasco. Amen. But I confess that I did not expect it. I
thought I had done pretty well, but it seems 1 was wrong." Such a
confession is especially poignant, for in dedicating the opera to his
patron and father-in-law, Antonio Barezzi, Verdi had written: "Now
I send you Macbeth, which I prize above all my other operas."
Francis Toye's assessment is an accurate one:
Little need to be said about this libretto, for which, as has already been stated,
Verdi was himself mainly responsible, the industrious Piave only supplying the
verses, in two instances touched u p or supplemented by Maffei. I t is not Shakespeare. Indeed, if the conventional view be adopted, that the principal charm of
Shakespeare is to be sought in the beauty of his language, it is about as far removed from Shakespeare as possible, because Piave's imagination was decidedly
pedestrian.4

T h e process of turning spoken drama into opera is necessarily

one of cutting, condensing, simplifying, for the obvious reason that
words set to music are of longer duration than words merely spoken.
It appears inevitable, therefore, that an opera based on a play can
rarely compete in literary merit with its source. T h e derived work
of art must depend on the quality of its music and singing for its
attractions. Thus.the ultimate test is how skillful the librettist and
the composer are in transforming the source into music drama. It
is more difficult for the opera lover who happens also to be a student of Shakespeare to ignore this duality of composition - the
creative versus the adaptive ability - than it is for someone who
comes to, say, Verdi's Macbeth strictly as an opera lover, unburdened
with an intimate acquaintance with Shakespeare's play, especially
its poetry. Lovers of the play may not be willing to adjust themselves
to the Piave-Verdi Macheth, the music notwithstanding. T h e follotving is an example of Piave's operatic version of a famous passage in
the last act of the play.
3 Macbeth, opera in four dcts; music b) Giuseppe Verdi; verses by Francesco
Maria Piave and Andrea hfaffei; first performance, Florence, March 14, 1847; re~ i s e dversion, Paris, April 21, 1865.
4 Giuseppe Verdi, His Z.ife and W o r k s (New York, 1959), p. 264.

Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

No, non temo di voi, nt: del fanciullo
Che vi conduce! Raffermar sul trono
Questo assalto mi debbe,
0 sbalzarmi per sempre! . . . Eppur la vita
Sento nelle mie fibre inariditat
Pieta, rispetto, amore,
Conforto a' dl cadenti,
,4hI non spargeran d'un fiore
La tua canuta e t i .
Nt: sul tuo regio sasso
Sperar soavi accenti;
Ah! sol la bestemmia, ahi lasso!
La nenia tua sarh.5

T h e source in the play reads:

I cannot taint with fear. What's the boy Malcolm?
Was he not born of woman? T h e spirits that know
All mortal consequences have pronounced me thus,
"Fear not, hlacbeth, no man that's born of woman
Shall e'er have power upon thee." T h e n fly, false thanes.
(V, iii, 3-7)
This push

Will cheer me ever or disseat me now.

I have lived long enough. My way of life

Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf,

And that which should accompany old age,

As honor, love, obedience, troops of friends,

I must not look to have, but in their stead

Curses, not loud but deep. . . . . .6

(V, iii, 20-27)

A comparison of the operatic rendering of this passage from Macbeth

with Boito's handling of passages from Othello will demonstrate
Boito's superiority in assimilating Shakespeare.
T h e characters of Macbeth have been reduced from the over
twenty in the play to eight in the opera, of whom two - Duncan
and Fleance - are mutes. Gone entirely are Ross, Lennox, Donald5"No, no fear have I of you or of the boy who leads you. This battle will keep
me on the throne or unseat me forever. Yet I feel life within me grows dry. Pity,
respect, love, comfort of declining years; ah, no scattering of flowers will cheer your
hoary age; no one will breathe soft wortls on your royal tombstone; ah, only curses,
ah, alas! A dirge will be your epitaph." (For this ant1 subsequent translations from
the Italian I take full responsibility.)
6 All quoted passages from Shakespeare are from G . B. Harrison, etl., S h c t k r ~ j ~ r t i ~ e ,
T h e Conzplete W o ~ k s(New York, 1952).

592

T h e Musical Quarterly

bain, and the two Siwards. T h e most surprising deletion is the

Porter, a part which the later Verdi would surely have amplified.
But more significant - and perhaps more reprehensible - is Verdi's
reshaping of the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and of
the relationship between the two. Verdi's Macbeth needs only the
cryptic prophecy of the witches to launch him on his career as a
murderer. Gone is Shakespeare's hesitating, uncertain, consciencestricken Macbeth. Gone is the Macbeth whose nature is "too full o'
the milk of human kindness / T o catch the nearest way." Gone is
the Macbeth who says, "We will proceed n o further in this business."
Gone is the Macbeth who says, "I dare do all that may become a
man. Who dares to do more is none." Verdi's Macbeth does not need
his wife's goading. There is no reluctance to overcome. And yet
Verdi builds u p Lady Macbeth's role. Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth,
once her husband has committed himself to a life of crime, practically withdraws from the action, to reappear later, of course, as a broken
human being. Verdi's Lady Macbeth is her husband's partner, a
sharer of his intentions. Through the process of that inexplicable
alchemy called poetry, Shakespeare's Macbeth and Lady Macbeth
both manage to emerge as sympathetic characters. Not even the
power of Verdi's music is able to achieve a similar verdict for the
co-protagonists of the opera.
Musical considerations must be offered for such a drastic altering
of the source. In the absence of a major part for a tenor, and, of
more significance, without the attractions of a love affair, Verdi
concentrates his efforts on Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, and the witches.
Lady Macbeth's most "Shakespearean" numbers in the opera are
her "letter scene," based closely on its source in the play, Act I,
scene 5; and, of course, her "sleep walking" scene, which is almost
word for word from the play. Her part is expanded by the expected
duets with Macbeth and by the interpolation of a not inappropriate
drinking song (brindisi) during the banquet scene. Verdi's belief
in a diabolical Lady Macbeth accounts for his not wanting a celebrated soprano of his day - Eugenia Tadolini - to sing the role:
Mme. Tadolini looks beautiful and good, and I should like Lady Macbeth to
look ugly and evil. Mme. Tadolini sings to perfection, and I should like Lady
Macbeth not to sing at all. Mme. Tadolini has a stupendous voice - clear, limpid,
powerful; I should like in Lady Macbeth a voice rough, harsh, and gloomy. Mme.
Tadolini's voice has angelic qualities; I should like the voice of Lady Macbeth
to have something diabolical about it.

Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

593

Students of Shakespeare may justly wonder why Verdi, with such

a view of his lady-villain, ignored such lines from the play as Lady
Macbeth's
Come, you spirits
That tend of mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, topfull
Of direst cruelty.
(I, V, 41-44)

They may wonder, too, why he did not turn the encounter between
Macbeth and Macduff into one of those magnificent tenorlbaritone
duets that became a special delight in the later operas.
Even before his collaboration with Verdi, Arrigo Boito had
achieved a measure of fame as a composer, poet, musician, freethinker, intellectual, and librettist. He and his lifelong friend and
fellow student, the composer-conductor Franco Faccio (whose career
was climaxed by his conducting the first performance of Otello)
acquired a fashionable reputation as enfants terribles in the artistic
milieu in which they moved. Of course, Boito, even without Verdi,
has a secure place in the history of opera on the basis of his Mefistofele, for which he wrote both the libretto (loosely based on Goethe)
and the music. Though Faust is the hero of this work, it is evident
that Boito's interest is in Mephistopheles. The Iago he created some
years later for Verdi's Otello owes much to the villain in his own
opera. Thus we have a full circle of influence: Goethe's Mephistopheles owes something to Shakespeare's Iago as well as to Marlowe's Dr. Faustus; and Boito's titular character is derived from
Goethe.
Boito's only other opera, Nerone, which he worked on for many
years, was never completed. It was produced, in its incomplete form,
at La Scala on May 1, 1924. It appears that Boito's exposure to the
genius of Shakespeare and to a musical talent vastly superior to his
own in Verdi inhibited his own creative instingts. It is a compliment
to his self-knowledge that he devoted his considerable talents to the
subservient role of librettist. Before he submitted his services to
Verdi, he had furnished Ponchielli the libretto for La Gioconda.
Boito's love for Shakespeare was as profound as Verdi's, and in 1865
he provided his composer-friend Faccio with a libretto based on
Hamlet. T h e opera, called Amleto, was produced at Genoa in 1865.
Since then, perhaps mercifully, it has not been heard again. Winton

594

T h e Musical Quarterly

Dean, in a stimulating essay entitled "Shakespeare and Opera," says

about the Boito-Faccio Amleto:
By far the most interesting feature is the superb libretto, the first ever written
by Boito, admirable alike in language, construction and handling of the play.
Every step is clearly motivated, every character developed in action. As in 'Otello',
Boito reconciles Shakespeare with operatic conventions without debasing him,
and it is astonishing how little he needs to omit or alter. All the big scenes the mouse-trap play, the closet, Ophelia's funeral - fall easily into place, and
so do the soliloquies '0 that this too too solid flesh would melt' (at the beginning
of Act I) and 'To be or not to be'. There is no model for the unorthodox brindisi
in the coronation scene, led by Claudius, with Gertrude, Hamlet and Ophelia
each contributing a stanza (the last two aside) and the King at intervals repeating
his first words: 'Requie ai defunti', dutifully answered by the courtiers with
'E gloria a1 re!'; but it expresses the situation and the characters with singular
economy and irony. The chief differences from the play are that the Ghost
does not mention Gertrude on either of his appearances, and Boito actually
shows Ophelia's death (as described by Shakespeare), preceding and accompanying it with distant rumbles of revolt against Claudius. There is a telling
detail during Claudius's monologue in the closet scene: he tries to repeat the
Lord's Prayer, but repeatedly breaks down and flies in terror. At the first production that last act followed the play almost exactly; when the opera was revived
for a single disastrous performance in 1871, a much shorter and weaker end with
only one death, that of Claudius, was substituted. We can only regret that Verdi
did not set this libretto.7

Though Boito and Verdi had first met in 1862, the meeting
which was to have as its result the famous collaboration occurred in
1879. In a letter to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, Verdi recalls the
meeting:
You dined with me, together with a few friends. We spoke about Othello, about
Shakespeare and about Boito. The next day Faccio brought me the sketch of
Otello, which I read and found good. "Write the libretto," I told him. "It will
come in handy for yourself, for me, or for someone else."

Thus was established a relationship between two devotees of Shakespeare, a friendship destined to give the world two of the greatest
masterpieces of the Italian repertory. Six years later, February 5,
1887, was to be a glorious event for Verdi, for Boito, and for Italian
opera.8 Whether it was a glorious event for Shakespeare, however,
is a matter on which opinions vary.g
Hartnoll, ed., Shnkespen~e in Music (Neli York, 1966), pp. 165-66.
opera in four acts; music b y Giuseppe Verdi: libretto by Arrigo Boito;
first performance, Milan, February 5, 1885.
9For an argument that the play is a far greater work of art than the opera and
that Verdi's Otello is not the flawless masterpiece that many consider it to be, see
7 Phyllis

8 Otello,

Shakespeare, Roito, and Verdi

595

Drastic condensing is one of the inevitable exigencies of transforming a play into an opera. T h e fourteen characters or more of
the play are reduced to eight principals in the opera. Eliminated
entirely are Bianca and Desdemona's father, Brabantio. T h e structure of the play is altered, the first act jettisoned all together. T h e
opening of the opera in Cyprus corresponds to the opening of the
second act of the play, the necessary exposition coming intermittently. I n his decision to begin his libretto with Shakespeare's second
act, Boito shared Dr. Johnson's view: "Had the scene opened in
Cypress, and the preceding incidents been occasionally related, there
had been little wanting to a drama of the most exact and scrupulous
entrance, "Esultate," surely one of the most
r e g ~ i l a r i t y . "Otello's
~~
dramatic entrances in opera, establishes him as a powerful commander. T h e first act ends with the exquisite love duet, an exchange
drawn in part from the "wooing" scene of the first act of the play.
This duet, at the opposite end of the love scale from the impetuosity
of Romeo and Juliet, is a serene expression of mature love, a devotion so far advanced in mutual confidence that the lovers can
reminisce about their courtship, a reciprocal faith that serves as a
most poignant foreshadowing of the destruction which is to befall
them.
I n the second act of the opera Iago continues with his manipulation of the others. He declaims his famous and controversial Credo
(a showpiece for the baritone); he plants his seeds of jealousy; he
acquires the ominous handkerchief; Otello (in a magnificent number
for the tenor) bids farewell to his peace of mind. Iago makes Otello
frantic with an account given by Cassio, in his sleep, of intimacies
with Desdemona. T h e act ends with a celebrated duet for baritone
and tenor in which Iago joins Otello in a pledge of vengeance.
T h e third act corresponds to the last scene of Act I11 and scenes
1 and 2 of '4ct IV. T h e two scenes between Desdemona and Othello
(in Acts I11 and IV of the play) become one scene. This third act,
Joseph Kerman, "Verdi's Otello, o r Shakcspearc Explained," H t ~ d s o ~ R
z eview, VI
(1953-54), 266.77 (reprinted in chap. 5 of Kerman's Opelo ns D I ~ I I I[New
I ~ L York, 19561).
Shaw, in an article o n Vercti in T h e Ar~glo-Snuo?~
Rei'rer11 (XIal-ch, 1901), wrote: "'The
truth in that instead of Otello being a n Italian opera xvritte~iit1 t!le st\le of Shakespear,
Othello is a play written by Shakespear in the st\le of Italian opera. . . . IVith such
a libretto, Verdi was quite at home: his success with it proies, not that he could
occupy Shakespear's plane, but that Shakespear could on occasion occupy his, rvhich
is a very different matter."
10 Arthur Sherbo, ed., Johnson on Shakespeare, \'ol. VIII of T h e Yale Edition
of the IVorks of Samuel Johnson (8 \ols.; Piew H a l e n , Conn., 1968), p . 1048.

596

The Musical Quarterly

perhaps the most enthralling, contains the famous handkerchief

scene; the contrived eavesdropping on the conversation between
Iago and Cassio during which Cassio produces the handkerchief;
Otello's increasing jealousy and his avowal to kill Desdemona; the
arrival of Lodovico with the news of the change of command, from
Otello to Cassio; the public insult of Desdemona; and the exultant
triumph of Iago over Otello.
Act IV of the opera is a compression of Act IV, scene 3, and
Act V, scene 2, both in Desdemona's chamber. Shakespeare's willow
song remains almost intact; and appended to this beautiful number
is an equally beautiful Ave Maria, not to be found, of course, in
the play. Except that Iago does not kill Emilia, the act keeps close
to the play. T h e ending, for which Verdi was chiefly responsible:
Un bacio. . . . un bacio ancora.

Ahl . . . un altro bacio.

is very close to Shakespeare's

I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this,
Killing myself, to die upon a kiss.

This passage is accompanied by the music from the love duet which
ends the first act. The ending of the opera, in its return to the love
motif of the first act, emphasizes Otello as a tragic love story. Boito
omits Othello's eloquent self-defense:
I have done the state some service, and they know't.

No more of that. I pray you, in your letters,

When you shall these unlucky deeds relate,

Speak of me as I am, nothing extenuate,

Nor set down aught in malice. T h e n must you speak

Of one that loved not wisely but too well,

Of one not easily jealous, but being wrought,

Perplexed in the extreme, of one whose hand,

Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away

Richer than all this tribe -of one whose subdued eyes

Albeit unused to the melting mood,

Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees

Their medicinal gum. Set you down this,

And say besides that in Aleppo once,

Where a malignant and turbaned T u r k

Beat a Venetian and traduced the state,

I took by the throat the circumcised dog

And smote him, thus.

(V, ii, 339-56)

Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

Thus the play, while not less a tragic love story than the opera, by
giving the last scene to Othello in his grandiloquent sorrow, becomes, far more than does the opera, a working-out of Othello's
hamartia and a fulfillment of the tragic idea. Structurally, then, there
is much condensing, some rearrangement of scenes, some additions
for musical purposes. There is also much simplification of character.
It is in the characterization that the student of Shakespeare, if
he happens not to be enthusiastic about opera, is likely to be disappointed by the Boito-Verdi libretto.ll Verdi's main concerns, both
dramatically and musically, were with Otello, Desdemona, and
especially Iago; with two lovers and an evil intruder, a kind of triangle he was an old hand at manipulating.
No one denies that Shakespeare's Othello makes great demands
on plausibility. Othello, with all his nobility, is endowed with a
naivete which approaches obtuseness. And even though he speaks
the finest poetry of Shakespeare's tragic heroes, and though he surely
elicits the sentiment of "the pity of it all," he rarely wins the kind of
sympathy given to Hamlet or Lear. Boito's Otello, in the necessary
process of simplification, outdoes his Shakespearean prototype in
gullibility. Boito's Otello is far more easily duped by Iago than
Shakespeare's Othello. The Otello of the opera is significantly deminished in stature from Shakespeare's Moor, who, it will be recalled, is "of a free and open nature"; "is of a constant, loving, noble
nature"; is "one that loved not wisely but too well"; is "one not
easily jealous, but, being wrought, perplexed in the extreme." There
is nothing latent about the jealousy of Boito's Otello. Missing from
the libretto are some of those great passages given to Othello, lines
which would seem to have inherent musical possibilities, such as:
But yet the pity of it,
Iago! 0 Iago, the pity of it, Iagol
(IV, i, 206-7)

and
It is the cause, it is the cause, my soul.
Let me not name it to you, you chaste stars!
It is the cause.
(V, ii, 1-3)

Boito's knowledge of English was no greater than Verdi's, and

11 I say the "Boito-Verdi" libretto because a careful reading of the correspondence
indicates that Verdi had a greater hand in shaping the libretto than is generally
believed.

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T h e Musical Quarterly

perhaps the poetic qualities of such lines escaped them both. Or

perhaps the equivalence of music and poetry, if there is one, is not
susceptible of demonstration. Perhaps poetry and music, though
often handmaidens, just as often have separate, inviolable sovereignties. Both lovers of spoken drama and of music drama have reason
to cherish the last act of Shakespeare's Othello and of Verdi's Otello;
and for the student of Shakespeare who happens also to be an opera
lover the pleasure is, of course, doubled.
T h e simplification in the transference from play to opera continues in the characterization of Desdemona. T h e critical mind succumbs to the power of Verdi's music, just as it does while under the
spell of the play. T h e Desdemona of the libretto is a gentle, loving,
obedient, befuddled, guileless wife, simple-minded to the point of
fatuousness. There is no hint in the libretto of a Desdemona strongwilled enough to defy society, custom, and an overbearing father.
Gone is the Desdemona who "shunned the wealthy curl'd darlings"
of her nation; gone is the Desdemona whose logic and wisdom control her allegiances. I n the play, she says to her father, before the
gathered assemblage:
My noble Father,
I do perceive here a divided duty.
T o you I am bound for life and education,
My life and education both do learn me
How to respect you, you are the lord of duty,
I am hitherto your daughter. But here's my husband,
And so much duty as my mother showed
T o you, preferring you before her father
So much I challenge that I may profess
Due to the Moor my lord.
(I, iii, 180-88)

While Boito's Desdemona is certainly no prude, she is not Shakespeare's heroine, who is capable of exchanging lightly risque badinage with Iago, the clown, and Emilia without seeming to be less
the lady. Desdemona's handling of herself in the handkerchief scene
-even in the play - puts a burden on one's willingness to disbelieve. In the libretto, her denseness is fairly incredulous. Even so,
Verdi provides for the handkerchief scene one of the most dramatic
duets in all opera. Only the operatic Desdemona could inspire such
criticism as the following:
I n Shakespeare she is a bervildered innocent who understands almost anything
of what goes on around her or in Othello. I n the opera she is n full-grown Italian

Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

599

woman, understanding jealousy, capable of adultery and of answering the charge

against her.12

Even a cursory reading of the play is sufficient to refute such a view

of Shakespeare's Desdemona. It must be confessed, however, that
the music Verdi writes for Desdemona, among the most poignantly
beautiful in the entire soprano repertory, quite disarms criticism.
Whether the opera Otello is superior to the play Othello is a
futile question. What is beyond question, however, is that Boito
provided Verdi with the best libretto the maestro had ever set to
music. T h e following corresponding passages from the play and
the opera are an example of how skillfully Boito performs his function as an adaptor.
Ora e per sempre addio sante memorie,

Addio, sublinli incanti del pensier!

Addio schiere fulgenti, addio vittorie,

Dardi volanti e volanti corsier!

Addio, vessillo trionfale e pio,

E diane squillanti in sul mattin!

Clamori e canti di battaglia, addio!

Della gloria d'Otello e questo il fin.13

Shakespeare's Othello says:

Oh, now forever
Farewell the tranquil mind! Farewell content!
Farewell the plumed troop and the big wars
T h a t make ambition virtue! Oh, fare~lell,
T h e spirit-stirring drum, the ear-piercing fife,
T h e royal banner and all quality,
Pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war!
And, 0 you mortal engines, whose rude throats
T h e immortal Jove's dread clamors counterfeit
Farewell! Othello's occupation's gone.
(111, iii, 347-57)

Boito's skill reveals itself not so much in the comparison with the
source, but in comparison with any of Verdi's earlier librettos, or
with Boito's libretto for Ponchielli's Ln Gioconda or with the
libretto of his own Mefistofele. A creative ability superior to his
own was necessary to ~jrodRoito's considerable talents.
Martin, Verdi, His Music, Life and T i ~ n e s(New York, 1963), pp. 525-28.
and forever farewell, sacred memories; farewell, sublin~e enchantments
of the mind; farewell, shining troops; farewell, victories, swift-Hjing shafts, ant1 racing
steeds; farewell, triumphant and sacred flag and the ringing releilles in the morning;
the clamor and song of battle, farewell. All of Otello's glory is gone."
12 George

13 "Kow

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T h e Musical Quarterly

But the most fascinating character to both Boito and Verdi was
Iago. For a long time in their correspondence about the opera (which
they referred to by the code name of "the chocolate scheme") they
called the work Iago. Shakespeare's Iago has indeed undergone a
sea change in the hands of Boito and Verdi. That irresistible b&te
noire of Shakespearean commentary, Iago's motivation, is peremptorily circumvented by a transparently convenient stratagem. T h e
Boito-Verdi Iago has no need to call upon thwarted ambition,
cuckoldry, or other untenable reasons to support his villainy. H e is a
devoted offspring of an evil god.
T h e most controversial episode in the opera, and the most
blatantly un-Shakespearean, is Iago's famous Credo, a most impressive baritone aria. It must be quoted in full.
Credo in un Dio crudel che m'ha creato
Simile a se e che nell'ira io nomo.
Dalla vilti d' un germe o d'un atomo
Vile son nato.
Son scellerato
Perch6 son uomo;
E sento il fango originario in me.
Si! questa e la mia f&!
Credo con fermo cuor, siccome crede
La vedovella a1 tempio,
Che il ma1 ch'io penso e che da me procede,
Per il mio destino adempio.
Credo che il giusto 6 un istrion beffardo,
E nel viso e nel cour,
Che tutto & in lui bugiardo:
I.agrima, bacio, sguardo,
Sacrificio ed onor.
E credo I'uom gioco d'iniqua sorte
Dal germe della culla
A1 verme dell'avel.
Vien dopo tanta irrision la Morte.
E poi? La Morte 6 il Nulla,
k vecchia fola il Ciel.14
14 "I believe in a cruel God who has made me in his image and whom, in hate,
I worship. From some vile germ of nature or paltry atom I was born. I am evil because I am human. I feel the primeval slime in me. Yes, this is my creed. I believe
as firmly as ever did a little widow before the altar that whatever evil I think or do
is decreed by Fate. I believe that the honest man is but a mocking player in his
face and in his heart, that everything about him is false- tears, kiss, glance, sacrifice, and honor. And I believe that man is Fortune's fool from the germ of the
cradle to the worm of the tomb. After so much folly comes death. What then?
Death is nothingness, and heaven is a worn-out story."

Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

601

None of Iago's soliloquies in Othello is in close correspondence

with this Credo. T h e only suggestion of similarity occurs near the
end of Act 11: "And what's he then that says I play the villain," a
speech which contains the curse "Divinity of Hell." T h e Credo does
have some fleeting Shakespearean overtones. "Fortune's fool" is
directly from Romeo and Juliet; the rationalization that a god-made
villain cannot help his conduct has a parallel in the opening soliloquy of Richard 111; the metaphor of man as an actor is a favorite
with Shakespeare, most notably, of course, in As You Like It; the
idea that men are playthings for the gods is reminiscent of Gloucester's "As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for
their sport." But such a transcendent villain as the Boito-Verdi Iago
is not only absent from Othello but from all Shakespeare. Not even
Aaron in Titus Andronicus goes through the simultaneous process
of worshiping a cruel god and denying an afterlife. On matters of
theology Boito and Verdi were less reticent than Shakespeare.
Verdi was at first enthusiastic about Boito's melodramatic, theatrical Iago. He wrote to his librettist: "Most beautiful, this Credo;
most powerful and wholly Shakespearean." Verdi's enthusiasm here
renders suspect his frequent assertions that he knew his Shakespeare.
T h e truth of the matter - and quite understandable - is that
Verdi saw the musical possibilities of Iago's Credo - a baritone
aria. Italian operatic tradition almost prescribed a villain, a tradition
which Verdi himself was partly responsible for. Many a baritone
owes his career to Guiseppe Verdi.
It may be argued that Verdi did not have a very clear intellectual
conception of Shakespeare's Iago. His was a thoroughly theatrical
conception. H e wrote to Domenico Morelli, the Neapolitan painter:
If I had to act the part of Iago, I should make him long and lean, with thin
lips, small eyes set, ape-like, too close to the nose, and a head with a receding
brow and large development at the back. His manner would be abstracted, nonchalant, indifferent to everything, incredulous, smart in repartee, saying good
and ill alike lightly, with the air of thinking about something else. A man like
that might deceive everybody, even u p to a point his own wife.

Little wonder that the famous actor Salvini bluntly told Verdi that
his Iago was not Shakespeare's Iago. "You, Verdi," he wrote, "have
made him a melodramatic villain with his Credo and his outcry of
later admitted that the Credo and the end
'Ecco il leone.' '''"oito
15 Quoted
(1928), 164.

by John

Klein, "Verdi and Boito,"

TI?^

Musical Quarterly, X I V

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T h e Musical Quarterly

of the third act shocked him more when he saw them on the stage
than he had intended in the libretto. Boito's part in the characterization of Iago is easier to understand. An ardent admirer of Byron
and Oscar Wilde, he was always drawn to the sensational. In creating
his Iago he went straight back to his own Mefistofele, indulged in a
little self-plagiarism, and gave his titular hero a brother in vallainy.
T h e phenomenal success of Otello merely whetted the poetic
ambitions of Boito (who now sensed immortality by the coupling
of his name, as partner and collaborator rather than as a servant,
with Verdi's) and the financial ambitions of the publisher Ricordi.
It was no secret that Verdi had long wanted to write a comic opera.
It was also known that all his life he had been fond of Falstaff. It
took very little urging to get Verdi to undertake Falstafl.16 Boito's
libretto, based on T h e Merry Wives of Windsor, is the only libretto
in his long career for which Verdi did not suggest a change. Before
he met Boito, he had had chronic frustration with his librettists.
About Falstaff, Verdi wrote, "Boito has provided me with a lyric
comedy unlike any other."
It is n o literary heresy to assert that the Boito-Verdi Falstafl is
superior to its source. T h e chief reason, of course, is that T h e Merry
Wives of Windsor is probably Shakespeare's least successful comedy.
It would be lower than it is in the hierachy of English drama if
Shakespeare's name were not indisputably attached to it.
Boito's libretto, as its title promises, concentrates on Falstaff to
a greater degree than does T h e Merry Wives of Windsor. T h e pruning of characters and episodes is more severe than in Otello. T h e
more than twenty characters in the play are reduced to ten in the
opera. Gone are Shallow, Slender, Evans, Nym, Rugby, Simple,
William Page, and Master Page. Page's daughter Anne becomes
Nannetta Ford. Also out is the whole episode of Falstaff's disguise
as Mother Prat. T h e most impressive feature of Boito's libretto is the
skill with which he assimilates passages from both parts of Henry I V .
Among the many borrowings, the most prominent are a version of
the "plague of all cowards" speech and the "Quand 'ero paggio Del
Duca di Norfolk ero sottile" ("When I was the Duke of Norfolk's
pageboy, I was slender"), which is a deft telescoping of Falstaff's
boast to Hal: "When I was about thy years, Hal, I was not an eagle's
talon in the waist, I could have crept into any alderman's thumb

16Falstaff, opera in three acts; music by Giuseppe Verdi; libretto by Arrigo

Boito; first performance, Milan, February 9, 1893.

Shakespeare, Boito, and Verdi

603

ring" (1 Henry I V , 11, iv, 362-64) ; and Shallow's reminder to Silence:

"Then was Jack Falstaff, now Sir John, a boy, and page to Thomas
.\lowbray, Duke of Norfolk" (2 Henry I V , 111, ii, 27-28).
Of the borrowings from Henry I V , Part 11, most important are
Falstaff's assertion near the end of the opera: "Son io che vi fa
scaltri l'arguzia mia crea l'arguzia degli altri" ("It is I who makes
them all clever. My wit creates wit in others"), which is a reworking
of Falstaff's famous "I am not only witty in myself, but the cause
that wit is in other men" (2 Henry I V , I, ii, 10-12) ; and the magnificent solo passage which opens the third act of the opera. Falstaff,
cold from his dunking in the Thames, praises the therapeutic properties of warm wine, a passage indebted to part of Falstaff's long tribute
to the efficacies of sack in the third scene of Act IV.
In the Merry Wives Falstaff ousts Bardolph and Pistol because
they refuse to pander for him. Boito ingeniously attaches this dismissal to Falstaff's famous discourse on honor. Boito's Falstaff declaims
L'Onore!

Lardi! Voi state ligi all'onor vostro, voi!

Cloache d'ignominia, quando, non sempre, noi

Possiam star ligi a1 nostro. 10 stesso, si, io, io,

Devo talor da un lato porre il timor di Dio

E, per necessita, sviar l'onore usare

Stratagemmi ed equivoci, destreggiar bordeggiare.

E voi, coi vostri cenci e coll'occhiata tbrta

Da gatto-pardo e i fetidi sghignazzi avete a scorta!

I1 vostro Onor! Che onore? che onor?

Che onor! che ciancia!

Che baja! - Pub l'onore riempimi la pancia?

No. - Pub l'onor rimettervi uno stinco? - No pub.

N6 un piede? - No. - Ne un dito? - No. -

N6 un capello? - No!

L'onor non e chirurgo. - Ch'e dunque? - Una parola.

che c'6 in questa parola? - C'6 dell'aria che vola.

Be1 construtto! - L'onore lo pub sentir chi 6 morto?

No. -Vive sol coi vivi? . . . Neppure: perch6 a torto

Lo gonfian le lusinghe, lo corrompe l'orgoglio,

L'ammorhan le cdumnie; e per me non ne voglio!

Non ne voglio, no, no, no!17

17"Honor! You thieves! You, sworn to your honor? You? You sewers of ignominy,
when not even we can always live by ours? Even I o n occasion must put aside the
fear of God, and must t u r n honor into byways and live with half-truths, stratagems,
deceit, o r falsehood. And you i n your rags with the crooked glance of the hyena and

604

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T h e source in Shakespeare reads:

Honor pricks me on. Yea, but how if honor prick me off when I come on? How
then? Can honor set a leg? No. O r an arm? No. O r take away the grief of a
wound? No. Honor hath no skill in surgery, then? No. What is honor? A word.
What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air. A trim reckoning. Who
hath it? H e that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No.
'Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No.
Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore 1'11 none of it. Honor is a mere
scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.
( I Henry IV, V, ii, 131-43)

A comparison of Boito's version with its counterpart in Henry I V ,

Part I, will corroborate Verdi's estimate of his librettist. Also, a
comparison of this rendering with a passage from the Piave-Maffei
libretto for Macbeth will indicate Boito's superiority as an adaptor
of Shakespeare.
Boito's plot - the duping of Falstaff - runs swiftly, too swiftly
for many listeners. T h e last scene, one of the glories of opera, is an
elaborate fugue. Structurally, it is based on its source, the end of
T h e Merry Wives of Windsor. But in its mysterious and fairylike
atmosphere it owes something to A Midsummer Night's Dream;
and Ford's consent to the marriage of his daughter Anne to Fenton
is an immediate reminder of Prospero's blessing on Miranda and
Ferdinand at the end of T h e Tempest.
T h e premiere of Falstafl on February 9, 1893, was, like the
earlier premiere of Otello, one which reflected glory on Boito, on
Verdi (now eighty years old), and - this time without question on Shakespeare. Thus Giuseppe Verdi, during the last years of his
life, in setting Otello and Falstafl to music, fulfilled a lifelong ambition: to compose a fitting musical homage to his beloved Shakespeare. T h e short, pointed letter he wrote to his esteemed librettist
after finishing Otello expresses his sentiments about himself, Boito,
and Shakespeare.
Dear Boito:
I have finished!
All hail to us . . . (and to Him!)
your filthy, sneering laughter. Your honor! What honor? What honor? What honor!
What nonsense! Can honor fill your belly? No! Can honor cure a broken shin? It
cannot. A foot? No. Or a finger? No. Or a hair? No. Hodor is no surgeon. What is it?
Only a word. What's in this word? Just air that floats away. A fiction. Can the dead
feel honor? No. Do only the living feel honor? No. Flattery puffs it up. Vanity corrupts it. Calumny sickens it. I'll have none of it. I do not want it. No, no, no."