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- [00:00]
A
Sam.
- [00:29]
B
Welcome to another edition of Opera for Everyone. I'm your host, Pat Wright, and I am happy to welcome back to the Opera for Everyone Studio. Grant. Grant, welcome.
- [00:39]
A
It's wonderful to be here.
- [00:40]
B
I've actually been saving this opera for when you are available to talk to me about it.
- [00:46]
A
Yeah, I'm really excited about it. Not every day you get to talk about Attila the Hun, and oftentimes if you do start talking about Attila the Hun, people want to, like, talk about sports or whatever, and they're confused.
- [00:54]
B
Or people use it not really meaning Attila. They use it as an expression. This opera, everyone is Verdi's Attila, and it is actually about Attila the Hun. Dramatically.
- [01:08]
A
Yeah. Attila is one of these people, of course, who he was a historical person. He did things, he lived, he died. And also the legends that surround him are in many ways as significant to our culture as anything. The flesh and blood person actually are dead.
- [01:26]
B
Yeah. He is so legendary. He's a name that people know, but most people, I venture to say, couldn't put him within 300 years of his time period.
- [01:36]
A
Yeah. There's something very interesting about how little anyone knows about him, and yet in terms of name recognition.
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B
Name recognition, like, of all the people
- [01:45]
A
who lived in his millennium.
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B
Right.
- [01:48]
A
Like, it's wild how well he's known. And the fascinating thing that he's always called Attila the Hun. The Hun, that is. Like, we don't talk about other people that way. We don't say Joan, the French woman.
- [02:04]
B
Well, she's of arc, but we digress. Also a Verdi opera. But this is Verdi. 1846 was the year of its premiere. So it's a kind of a busy time in Italy in the 19th century.
- [02:19]
A
Yeah. We've talked about this in some of our other episodes, but a lot of the context for any opera in the 19th century is the development of nationalism and liberalism and the ideas of. Whether it's in the republican form or the monarchic form, the idea that groups of people, united in particular by language, should have nation states, polities that represent them. And one of the key examples of this is the unification of Italy. Italy had been many different fractured little states for, at this point, millennia and more or less since the actions. And because of the actions of Attila the Hun.
- [03:03]
B
Yeah, that's a reference to the Roman Empire and the fall thereof.
- [03:06]
A
Yeah. But Italy had been divided amongst various different places. I mean, the very word Italy was used for a kingdom that only occupied the northern chunk for a Short period of time. And it starts to unify in the 19th century. And Verdi is a part of this intellectual movement. And even his very name, Verdi becomes a rallying, a calling card of this movement to unify Italy, because they used it as an acronym for Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy.
- [03:37]
B
RE yes, the Rhe d'.
- [03:39]
A
Italia. Right, Yeah. V E R D I Victor Emanuel Rei d'. Italia.
- [03:45]
B
Yeah. So this opera, which is set in the mid 5th century, that's when Attila was doing what he did in. Particularly in Italy, where this will occur. This does relate to what was going on in the middle of the 19th century. Verdi's period, as with Nabucco, that you and I talked about some time ago, episode 104. There are pieces of this opera, songs, mostly choral pieces from the opera, that people will grab onto, take out of context of the opera and use it, use it as a nationalistic expression. In song. We talked about Val Penciero from Nabucco, which was huge and probably the most famous along those lines. But it's not just Nabucco. Attila, Joan of Arc, other operas from this period, arguably, even after Italy is unified, Verdi composes these songs which the Italian people embrace as expressions of their own national feelings.
- [04:47]
A
Yeah, and in this case, it's less by analogy or metaphor and more literally a sense of Italy itself being defended. And Italy itself is at stake in this. There's very little hiding by metaphor. It's very much Italy and it's unity and its protection that is the fundamental question in this opera.
- [05:11]
B
The only thing that's very subtly hidden here is the appearance of the Pope, which we'll talk to when that appearance takes place in the opera. But it's a three act opera with a prologue, which actually, let's be real, feels like a four act opera. And we have all of it being set in Italy itself. So before we get to Italy and the opera, could you just put us out of our wondering about Attila the Hun? Where is he from? Why do we know his name? Why is his name recognition so high?
- [05:46]
A
Attila the Hun sticks in our minds as this particular example of the barbarian king, the people who brought about the fall of Rome. Well, insofar as it wasn't brought about by the Romans themselves, the barbarian kings who came in and swept away what remained of the Roman Empire, at least the Western Empire. He was one of these charismatic leaders who had a tremendous following. He united many different tribes and formed a large empire, which, as was typical of these charismatic leaders, promptly fell apart after his death. But he was a key figure in the fall of Rome. He doesn't. No spoilers in opera. He doesn't ultimately sack Rome itself, but he weakens it such that a couple of years later, and I mean a couple, Rome is sacked by the Vandals.
- [06:40]
B
Ah, okay. That was going to be my question. We hear about the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths and the Vandals. How does he relate to these people? He's incorporated them into his group or he just. They have a common enemy, some of them.
- [06:57]
A
So it's a interesting time where the Roman Empire is divided into two parts, the western and eastern part. The western is weaker than the eastern, but both of them are facing their difficulties and the only ways that they are able to protect their own borders is by enlisting some of these barbarian tribes. And so what's going on is there's this constant negotiation where all these tribes, there's so much money to be made by being allies with the Romans and there's so much money to be made by raiding the Romans because all roads
- [07:31]
B
lead to Rome and that's where the trade flows and.
- [07:35]
A
Yeah, and there's so much wealth and power and influence all the rest of it. And basically all of these tribes at various points are either federated states that are helping out the Romans or they're attacking the Romans or they're getting tribute from the Romans or some combination of all of them changing week to week. Because Rome needs military power to defend itself and so it's trying to get these militarily powerful, talented people to help them. And the problem is sometimes the money is better by helping and sometimes the money is better by just taking what you want.
- [08:08]
B
A motivator. Yeah. So one other bit of historical background and then we will get to this story. The word barbarian is typically used just as an all catch all insult of somebody with bad manners. What do we mean by barbarian in this context?
- [08:26]
A
That's a great question. So barbarian is one of the most complicated words in terms of its history and etymology. The short answer is originally it's a Greek word meaning someone who doesn't speak Greek. And later on it just gets used by the people talking about the Roman Empire to refer to these people outside of the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire, of course, is the civilized world and everything outside of it is barbarism. It is the world beyond civilization, at
- [08:54]
B
least as far as the Romans are concerned.
- [08:56]
A
And civilization has a technical meaning too, which is that it has to do with cities, it has to do with having intensive agriculture and Agricultural surplus and societies where people have specialized tasks, most people in farming, but other people in the cities, using agricultural surplus to do other things, as opposed to the way that most humans have lived for most of history and most of prehistory, which is in nomadic people groups, tribes and clans going around and herding sheep or hunting or gathering for a very long time. A big influence in the history of Europe and East Asia and everything in between is the people who come from what we call the steppe, which is to say basically everything that was kind of the Soviet Union within rounding error. And there are many different people groups and tribes, but you see a lot of commonalities throughout them, which is why sometimes people get Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan mixed up, even though they're separated by almost a millennium of time.
- [09:58]
B
I ran into that myself. That's the funniest thing, because they are so separated in time. But the. These are fundamentally nomadic. They use horses, they conquer. And they were also known for incredible cruelty towards the people that they conquered.
- [10:15]
A
Yes. And they have this interesting dual identity where the people who they attacked have these very horrifying memories of the terror tactics that were used. And the people who were ruled often have descriptions or memories of things that were very, very orderly. That there was an awful lot of interest in what we these days call the monopoly of violence by the state, but that nobody other than the rulers was out there stealing things. Honor among thieves, perhaps you could call it. But the idea that there was enormous religious tolerance, there was often a much greater level of rights for women in these less specialized societies. And there's a lot to be said for the nomads and the nomadic way of life. But it turns out that history is written by the writers.
- [11:07]
B
Yes, you have told us that in the past, history is written not by the winners, necessarily, but by the writers.
- [11:13]
A
And this is a very good example of that. The Mongols and the Huns, they just went around and they won kind of constantly, but they didn't write much. And so their historical memory is of them being the bad guys, because the people who were doing the writing were the people who they were attacking and raiding and sacking and all the rest of it.
- [11:33]
B
In this case, the Italians. Well, let's open on our very first scene of the opera in our prologue, and it's a lovely choral piece where the Huns have just been victorious in battle against a group of Italians, and they are celebrating that. And most depictions of this will be a little shocking when you see the opera. It will be a little Shocking, because they've got to demonstrate the victory by showing the fallen, showing the dead.
- [12:07]
A
Yes, and rape and pillage, in all senses is a big part of it. The idea of people being captured, sold into slavery, men massacred, and that the intense violence of this serves a political purpose, which is, if you resist us, we will do horrible things to you. Surrender or else. And also that part of the economy works on this by the taking of slaves or the seizing of loot. That is how all of this was funded and how people like Attila held onto their position. Sam, Isn't that majestic?
- [13:27]
B
That is so Verdi. We are listening to Attila by Giuseppe Verdi, and this just. We know Verdi. He does this majestic coral pieces. These guys are excited. Now, we may have dead bodies strewn all over the stage when we're seeing this, but they are celebrating their victory. What we didn't hear before this little clip, they were glorying in the destruction that they've caused among the people they vanquished. But in the bit we just heard, they're excited because the king is approaching, Attila is approaching. And there are a few things in this very limited number of words that they're singing that the king is coming, we prostrate ourselves, we are his subjects, but we're on the winning side, and Odin, or Vodin, invests him with his power. So right up front, we are understanding the godlike power that they are invoking the Huns.
- [14:27]
A
And there's something interesting there, because as a matter of history, the odds that Attila worshipped Odin or anyone in a similar pantheon is not great. We do know there was a fair bit of religious diversity among the Huns and similar people groups at the same time. Attila is much more likely to have followed one of the shamanistic religions that one finds on the steppe. Tengrism is a modern way of talking about that.
- [14:53]
B
And for those who know, for those
- [14:55]
A
of you keeping track. But this is part of the interesting thing about the Huns, is the way that dissent from them is something that gets argued over and is still argued over. You'll still find a number of different groups of people who will either claim literal descent from the Huns or who will talk about their culture as coming from it. And to an extent, there's a truth there. There's an extent to which modern Bulgaria or Hungary are what they are because of the Hunnic past and the things that were a part of the migration period, this period of time where all these migratory groups are coming in and changing up the borders and languages and peoples of Europe. With all that being said, there was in this nationalist moment in the 19th century in particular, a association of all of these groups being Germanic, and the invaders from the north are Germans or Germanic. Attila's name may in fact be a Germanic name. And in the same way that the word Hun is eventually used as a slur against the Germans in, say, World War I, it was a term that was taken on by certain people. And so this opera is originally based off of a play, a German play, Attila Konig Der Hunen, King of the Huns. And it's interesting, the German and Italian versions of the story. There's a bit of a shift in who's more or less sympathetic, you could argue, because the German one is, to a certain extent, celebrating Attila. Attila's not exactly German, but he's being celebrated as part of this tradition, and his association with Germanic gods like Wotan, Odin is a part of this. Of course, this opera is taking the point of view, to a certain extent of the Italians who are facing off against Attila.
- [16:53]
B
You know, Verdi had read the play a few years before he got excited about it and handed it off to his. Well, actually, there were two librettists involved. Solera, who did some of his earliest operas, including Nabucco, wrote the bulk of the libretto. We won't go into the complications, but he didn't write the very end. But it was tried and true. Piave, one of Verdi's other frequent librettists, who finished it up. But Verdi was very interested in it, but he's the one who discovered the source. It's not that someone brought it to him in this case, and he got very excited about it, even in its Germanic incarnation. And he wrote these very excited letters to his. Well, he thought Piave was going to do it in the. It's complicated, but he wrote these letters showing his excitement about this. But historians of opera, in hindsight, say this is so unusual for Verdi. Yes, it's nationalistic, but it's also Teutonic and, dare we say, nearly Wagnerian.
- [17:59]
A
Yes, there's a fair bit of overlap with Wagner. Attila does show up in a strange way in Nibelungenlied, which is, of course, part of the DNA of all things Wagner.
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B
The Ring in particular, may sound familiar
- [18:14]
A
to folks, so there is definitely this overlap. And yet part of the core essence of this opera is the contrast and conflict between paganism here represented particularly through Wotan as a God of war, and, on the other hand, Christianity, which is understood here as something that is trying to build up rather than destroy. And so whether or not the precise details of what gods Attila would have worshiped are correct, there is an essential thing here that there are two different schemes of morality at play, one which values culture and civilization and building things up, and one of which is oriented primarily towards destruction. And we might say that that is an unfair characterization of either paganism at large or of the Huns or nomadic peoples from the steppe in particular. But in the case here, it is serving to highlight these two different ideas of what culture, religion, and, indeed, nation states can be, whether they are primarily focused on imperial conquest. And, yes, that epic sort of triumphal music, which, of course, ultimately comes from the ugly business of conquering the world and what that looks like real world.
- [19:46]
B
It's not unusual in operas written in Europe, primarily Christian, to set these two ideas of how you're going to run your life. Whose God is it that you're recognizing? What God are you recognizing? It's not unusual for there to be a contrast between Christianity and some other religion.
- [20:06]
A
In operas written by European Christians, you see this kind of contrast quite a bit. And part of that is, what is Europe at the end of the day, other than a long argument and negotiation between a certain kind of pagan morality and culture and Christianity? With all of the debates that happen over ethics and culture, it can't all necessarily be reduced down to that duality, but an awful lot of it can. The imperial conquest impulse, on the one hand, the legacy of the Vikings and the Norsemen sailing off to different lands and conquering their peoples well, and even
- [20:47]
B
the original Roman Empire itself, there is that contrast. And the power balance will flip when the Roman Empire ultimately becomes a Christian empire. So that's. I mean, that's just part of. It's a simplifying. And I'm not sure that Verdi really did it, because Werner, our German playwright who wrote the original source material, I imagine he's also doing that. And as you say, his emphasis is a little different. But in this show, even though we have this assertion of the Italians and they will be dominant, no spoilers or no surprise, even Attila is still almost sympathetically portrayed. He's the guy that your heart throbs for a little bit. Dare I say, he's very interesting.
- [21:35]
A
And this is the same time period where we get the idea of the noble barbarian, the person in the state of nature who is living somewhere in between a human life and an animal life, chasing after things the way that a dog might. And it is sometimes a very patronizing way of looking at indigenous peoples around the world. And it is also sometimes a very wistful kind of thing, thinking, wouldn't it be nice if our lives looked more like our legendary or mythic ancestors or those simpler peoples who don't do all of the strange and sometimes horrible things that civilization and technology have led us to do?
- [22:18]
B
Yes. And even as we continue on in this scene, the chorus, it's going to be just so exquisitely Verdian and beautiful, where they are praising Attila, praising him as the prophet of this God, Wotan vodin Odin, and praising his power. Yeah.
- [23:44]
A
So this Attila guy, we keep talking about him, but is he going to show up at some point here?
- [23:49]
B
Yes. Well, we've already said that. The chorus is announcing that he is about to show up. And he shows up, the first thing he does is like, wait, I see some of our enemies are alive. Who are these women? I told you to kill everyone. But they didn't follow his orders, his command to kill everyone. They've killed all the men, but they didn't kill all the women. Not because they were saving the women, but because this woman and this tribe of women that she was leading were
- [24:22]
A
particularly spunky and were fighting alongside the men.
- [24:27]
B
Yes. In a way that was so strange in Attila's understanding here in this show. He doesn't understand how she could be that way. He's admiring her. And, I mean, let's face it, it's the opera. We need a little bit of a spark of romance. And pretty quickly, we finally get a break from all this militarism. And he's like, oh, virgin, is that fury sparkling in your eyes? More or less saying, oh, you're so beautiful when you're angry.
- [24:57]
A
Yeah. And there's something very weird to me about this, historically. The idea that Attila would come upon the Romans and be surprised by how warlike their women were, that seems completely backwards of what would be historically true. And yet I think what's going on here is, as much as anything else, the idea of the Risurgimento, the new Italian state, and that men and women alike are expected to work for it and indeed, perhaps fight for it.
- [25:28]
B
Yes. Whereas you might expect Attila to be angry that his orders were not fully carried out. He's quite happy that this lovely leader of this band of martial women was saved. And her name in the opera is Odabella. She is our prima donna, our first woman in the opera. And I think we're going to get a little taste of his passion in singing and her Passion, which, at this point, all the men in her family, including her father, who will come up later in reference, have been slain by Attila and his band. And she's going to play her hand really well in this story, but she's going to match him for passion here.
- [26:35]
A
Sa. D.
- [27:50]
B
For everyone. And that was Attila, along with Otabella in Verdi's opera Attila. Attila has stated his admiration for people who are brave. He abhors cowards. He's admiring her for her courageousness. He says, what is this feeling I'm feeling? We all know what he's feeling. A certain desire. He says, ah, I love you. I will grant you a boon. I will give you whatever you ask of me. And she's no fool.
- [28:21]
A
She asks for, of all interesting things, his sword.
- [28:25]
B
Well, she asks for her sword back. And he gives her his sword, which he sees as an even greater honor.
- [28:33]
A
And it is an honor. The sword of Attila is a legendary thing in and of itself, and it is supposedly preserved to this day. Probably not. But the sword of Attila, as a literal thing and as a metaphorical thing, has echoed through history the idea of the sword of the great conqueror in the same way that Charlemagne's sword becomes a very important thing in the myth and legendarium that grows up around him.
- [29:02]
B
Yes. And Otabella sees this not just as, oh, wow, I managed to get a sword from this guy, but she sees it as an opportunity that she will be able to seize later, divine justice. And she is praising God for this, this sword, which was given to her willingly by the conqueror, the man who had her entire family slaughtered. She's letting us know this in her singing while he's saying, oh, what is this feeling? I might have some tenderness in my heart after all.
- [29:32]
A
And there's something interesting here in the Christian pagan contrast, that. Speaking of that, that negotiation between European paganism and Christian morality, the most famous example of this is the code of chivalry, this negotiation between the warrior culture and the idea that maybe we shouldn't kill people. And they come to this sort of not terribly well observed, but at least theoretical thing that becomes the basis of an awful lot of the modern laws of war. And part of this is that non combatants are not to be harmed, in particular women and children. And this is sort of the opposite of that. It's precisely because she was fighting and resisting that she is spared, rather than because she is vulnerable or helpless.
- [30:17]
B
Right. And she makes the contrast. She's the one who articulates the fact that, well, the Women of your culture, Mr. Hun, they may just cower and wait and hope that their men come back, but we Italian women, we take action. And he thinks that's pretty hot. Well, what can you tell us about this Oda Bella person? Is this just an invention for the play, for the opera?
- [30:42]
A
Sort of. So there is a whole elaborate set of stories that get told about Attila's love interests. And there's one bit that we know, sort of know historically, which is that part of his theoretical reason to invade Italy is that the daughter of the emperor, who was prominent in her own way and had been socially ostracized as a result of an affair, that she supposedly wrote a note to Attila saying, if you invade, you can be my king. I'll marry you.
- [31:17]
B
Oh.
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A
Now, everybody has their own interpretation of exactly what was said and what was done.
- [31:22]
B
We don't have the letters, do we?
- [31:24]
A
We do not. And blaming awful things that men do on women who are, you know.
- [31:30]
B
Oh, it has a long history.
- [31:31]
A
It has a very long history. About as long as anything's history goes, actually. Yeah. So this woman, Honoria is.
- [31:38]
B
Wait, Honoria, that's the.
- [31:40]
A
That's the real life princess of Rome who supposedly invites Attila to come in and take the place over. And she kind of is in the historical record sort of for this, and then kind of disappears. And exactly what happens to her is unclear. However, there's also all these other stories that are built up. In particular, the way that Attila actually dies, not the way he dies in the opera, but actually dies supposedly, is.
- [32:11]
B
Wait, Attila dies in this opera?
- [32:13]
A
Spoiler. No spoilers in opera. But the way that Attila actually died, supposedly. And again, we have multiple accounts for multiple people on this, but the oldest version of this is that he dies of some kind of illness that manifests as an uncontrollable nosebleed on his wedding night to this one particular princess that he's married.
- [32:36]
B
I can't imagine that's actually the truth, but it doesn't matter.
- [32:40]
A
And so there's a lot of stories about, like, did his new wife kill him or was there some other foul play happening? Versions of this story go through the meat chopper that is, you know, human history and drama telling stories. Yeah. And so this is part of how Attila shows up, or at least just referenced in the Nibelung Allied. And this is also the origin of the many different names for this figure. Hildko, Hildaz, Gudrun. And ultimately, I think that a lot of what's going on with this character, Otabella owes its DNA to this idea of the woman that Attila falls in love with and lets down his guard for.
- [33:30]
B
Okay, well, that's yet to come. Next, we're going to have appear on the scene after she goes off with her women and the new sword she's been gifted the envoy from Rome, the Italian envoy negotiator, is going to be announced. This is Ezio. And he also, I understand, is based on a historical figure.
- [33:51]
A
Yeah. He reflects a real life person named Aetius, who is a Roman general who fights against Attila, is often thought of as being Attila's great rival. Sometimes gets that epithet of being the last of the Romans, which is assigned to all sorts of different people.
- [34:08]
B
Yeah. And here Attila says, a worthy adversary.
- [34:12]
A
And that's part of what we're getting here, right, Is that Attila respects strength. He respects power, whether it's the women who fight against him or whether it's this Roman general. And that's why what happens in this meeting is very interesting and kind of expected, kind of disappointing for our poor friend Attila.
- [34:32]
B
Well, the first thing he said is, give me your hand. I hope your words are not of peace, because he doesn't respect anyone who's going after peace. And then Ezio says to him, I've got a thought. Big Attila, big guy, big friend. We're two strong, powerful men.
- [34:50]
A
Yeah. So he says this disappointing thing to Attila, which is not that he wants to fight, but rather that he wants to make peace and specifically to divide the world between them.
- [35:00]
B
Yes. An uneven division. He says, I've got a great deal to offer you. You may have the universe, but let Italy remain mine. We're going to divide the world, and my portion is Italy. And Attila's not respectful of such an offer.
- [35:19]
A
And this line becomes important in their sargimento. This becomes a rallying cry. You may have the universe, but let Italy be mine. That Italy is as important as all the rest of the universe combined. And it's a line to get the crowd pumped up. It's a line to get people cheering, because people love their Italy, and Ezio wants to defend it, even if he has to give away the whole world.
- [35:45]
B
Yes. But I think Attila actually makes a legitimate point here. He says, wait, you are a brave hero on the battlefield, but you're a traitor to your people. You want to bargain them away. You want to make a deal, deal with your enemy, me. So you've lost the support. You've lost the respect or any right to respect from your people. And you know what that means. That means your God is powerless. Your God is impotent.
- [36:13]
A
Yes. And there's something very interesting here about the way that the power of gods is talked about. Now, on the one level, there's simply the. Your God is stronger than my God if we win in battle. And Attila, and this may have some historical truth to it, identifies himself as being an instrument of the divine and perhaps even of the Christian God, that he is there to punish their sins. He is God's scourge or whip. He is the.
- [36:41]
B
Yeah, he was known as the scourge of God.
- [36:43]
A
And there's an echo here of that quote attributed to Genghis Khan, that I am God's punishment on your sins. If your sins were not so great, God would not have sent a punishment as terrible as me upon you. That's how Attila sees himself. And he talks about himself here as the one who carries the faith of Odin and is the scourge, the whip that is going to punish these people. And he sees this, that the most powerful person, the most worthy adversary he could possibly face is ready to betray his king. To say that the emperor is weak and perhaps he should be emperor and things would be better, and he's going to make a deal with the devil.
- [37:23]
B
And Verdi turns it into a fabulous duetal. Believe it or not, we're still in the prelude. We're in the second scene of the prelude of Verdi's Attila. This is what is known as a Rio Alto scene. And many of the stagings are famously elaborate and exquisitely beautiful with this scene, because we've moved from centering on Attila and the Huns and the conquering army to the surviving Italians. We hear a chorus of hermits in prayer. We hear the people being grateful that they are alive and looking to see what they can pull back together of their lives.
- [40:19]
A
They have lost everything. Their city, Aquileia, has been destroyed. They have to try and figure out what they're gonna do next. And this is a scene that is. Perhaps we don't know what's going on here, but to the audience, when this was originally produced would have been very familiar. Yeah, this is the scene that is the legendary founding of the city of Venice, that these people escape the destruction of their city by the Huns. They go to the lagoon of Venice, and to be safe from these marauding horse warriors, they start setting up a city on the lagoon, building houses on piles, erecting huts over the water. Of course, we know where this will head to. The. The wealth and the power of Venice. But in the beginning, they're just a bunch of refugees trying to escape the violence that's tearing apart the world around them.
- [41:13]
B
Yes, and I should have mentioned before, but this is an appropriate time to say that the premiere of this opera, it's written for, and it premieres in Venice. Finice Theater. The Phoenix. This concept of rising from the ashes. And the phoenix gets referenced in here as well, which, again, would be. I don't want to call it an inside joke, but it would be inside knowledge. In those people who are seeing this here and, and this, this opera, we don't hear it so much these days. We don't see it produced as much these days, but it was very, very popular in the first. Certainly the first decade after its creation, and it does spread all over Italy very quickly. At one point, Verdi even says, this is my greatest opera. Now, this is relatively early in his career, but it is after Nabucco and Ernani and Joan of Arc, he's. He's has some real strong operas behind him at this point, given his whole career. It's relatively early in his career. But Venice, the founding of Venice, is so powerful here, and so it resonates with the pride in Italy, but also very locally being produced in Venice.
- [42:27]
A
Yeah. And it reminds us that history moves unpredictably, that the great empires who displace people, well, you never know. Those refugees who are building huts on the lagoon, maybe they'll end up being some of the most powerful people in the world. The wheel keeps turning.
- [42:45]
B
Yes. Yes. Well, it's time to introduce our tenor finally, because this is. This is such an interesting opera in that this main character, this Attila, is a bass. And arguably that's why it gets revived when. It gets revived, when you have a base who can carry this lead title, role of Attila. But of course, we need our love interest who's going to be a tenor. He is an Italian. He's leading this band of refugees and his name is Foresto. He will sing to his homeland and his love of his homeland. And he's the one who invokes the idea of the phoenix rising again. Like a new phoenix, you will live again, more proud and more lovely.
- [43:58]
A
Sa. Jam.
- [45:03]
B
That was Foresto in Verdi's Attila. And now we're moving into, finally, act one, Scene one. We're in Attila's camp where we find Odabella alone, and she has a quiet, quiet moment where she doesn't have to be confrontational with Attila, where she can simply grieve. This is a woman who's lost her family, most of the people she knows. And she is particularly grieving over her lost her slaughtered father. Father is your image not imprinted on the clouds. And then she will be surprised that her thoughts turn to Foresto. This is the man who is in love with her, whom she loves.
- [46:08]
A
Sa.
- [47:32]
B
Odabella's grief is profound. She's thinking about Foresto, and wouldn't you know it, he shows up.
- [47:40]
A
And yet it doesn't make everything all happy, hunky dory.
- [47:43]
B
No, it sure doesn't.
- [47:44]
A
Because there she is in Attila's camp, in Attila's camp, strapped with Attila's sword, wearing Hunnic armor like a shield maiden now of the Hunnic army. This is as far as he's concerned about the worst case scenario, right?
- [48:00]
B
Because he was actually singing earlier. It would be so much better if she were dead. I don't know if she's alive or dead, but I hope she's dead, because then she wouldn't be suffering the indignities that a woman in Attila's camp would be suffering. And that's not what he comes across. And he does not ask her to say what's happened. He does. He jumps to his conclusions, which, you
- [48:22]
A
know, I mean, in fairness.
- [48:24]
B
In fairness, you're a man, so of course that's what you think. I'm not kidding. I mean, we have a long history in opera of these men not giving the women a chance to explain, not understanding what it is to be under the power of strong men. I'm thinking Lucia de Lama. More. I'm thinking Rhoda Linda. I could go on. But he doesn't give her a chance to explain. And she is amazed and aghast. And again, she's a pretty strong woman, and so she's angry.
- [48:58]
A
Well, she's a lot smarter than he is, as is usually the case in these things. She's got a whole plan. And he just sees her dressed as a Hunnic warrior and thinks like, oh, boy, this is worse than what I could have imagined would happen.
- [49:12]
B
Right?
- [49:13]
A
And yet there she is, trying to explain herself bit by bit while he's angry with her. And it's opera. So how do we do this? By singing at each other, quite loudly, in fact. Sam, Satan, ram.
- [50:52]
B
Hanging. We have this exchange between Otabella and Foresto. He is utterly misunderstanding the situation, and she is growing increasingly frustrated with him. And she says, fine, hear me or kill me. Let me explain, or let's Be done with it. I'm tired of arguing. And he's willing to listen.
- [51:39]
A
Finally. Finally, she has her whole plan. And her plan is based off of a story from the Bible, sort of Judith.
- [51:48]
B
She says she invokes Judith, who saved Israel.
- [51:51]
A
Now, some of you who may know your Bible may not be familiar with this. This is from the section sometimes called the Apocrypha. Different Christian denominations will treat this with different levels of seriousness. They will regard it differently. But it is a story that is written, that takes place in the time when there still is a Jerusalem and there are people who are attacking it, and there's a general who's going to come and take it over. And a Hebrew woman goes and kind of ingratiates herself and makes herself useful, and then, you know, chops off his head.
- [52:30]
B
That was put delicately.
- [52:31]
A
Yeah. And it echoes the story in the Book of Judges, one of the very oldest texts we have in the Hebrew Bible that talks about this woman, Yael, who kills a enemy general, in this case, much more graphically, with a tent peg. Oh. And it is this idea of the. The woman warrior, the woman who uses feminine wiles to get close in a way that a man could not, and then deliver.
- [52:58]
B
Take advantage of the situation. Yeah.
- [53:00]
A
A what we may call a decapitating strike.
- [53:03]
B
Indeed, indeed. And she even brandishes this sword and says, I have taken possession of this so that I can accomplish my goal. Well, that leads us to another duet, of course, where we get to be happy about being together,
- [53:35]
A
Even.
- [54:22]
B
Well, now that our soprano and our tenor, our two happy lovers, are reunited and they are understanding each other, we move to the second scene of Act 1, and we're at Attila's tent again. We've got a character who we've seen in a grand staging previously, and we're seeing him now in an intimate setting. He's in his tent and he's, in fact, asleep, having a dream.
- [54:48]
A
It's not a good dream. No, scary dream.
- [54:50]
B
Yeah.
- [54:51]
A
And he goes to Uldino, this deputy. He has this person who was taken captive. He's a slave. He's a Breton. He's from an area in modern France. He is a slave, but a slave who has become trusted. He's faithful, Ul. Dino.
- [55:07]
B
Right. And he's been honored. As far as Attila is concerned, he's the right hand man to Attila, the body man to him.
- [55:13]
A
And so he's the one who Attila tells his dream to. And his dream is terrifying. His dream is that there is a gargantuan old man who appears and seizes him by the hair. And Attila doesn't know what to do, and he can't even draw his sword. And the man smiles at him and tells him that, Attila, you were appointed to be a scourge against mankind, but only mankind, but only mankind. And now, now you have entered the land of the gods and you can go no further. It's a remarkable thing. And perhaps we might think that this would dissuade him, but it doesn't. Not here, not right now.
- [56:00]
B
It rattles him, though.
- [56:01]
A
It rattles him. He's nervous. And then he recovers and says, call everybody. Get everybody ready. Now we are going to go destroy Rome.
- [56:14]
B
And it's an opportunity for a fabulous piece by this fabulous bass voice. I imagine if you're a bass, you're used to playing occasionally a religious figure, occasionally a grandfather. It is very unusual to have such a powerful leading role. And this piece is an example of what Verdi gave a bass to sing.
- [56:42]
A
It.
- [57:28]
B
That was Attila telling us that the world will know him as the avenger. And after he has totally gotten himself together, we've got everybody flooding onto the stage. The druids, Uldino is already there, the captains, the king, everybody.
- [57:44]
A
Just the avengers are assembling.
- [57:47]
B
That's right. And the chorus says, command us. And Attila is ready to give his commands and says, odin, here we are. We don't forget about Wotan Vodin Odin for very long here. He says, odin calls you to glory. You need to follow me. And the chorus is totally excited about it. And then we hear voices that sound different from all of these excited followers of Attila.
- [58:15]
A
Women and children singing a very different kind of song.
- [58:19]
B
Yes, it's a procession.
- [58:21]
A
It's a religious procession, and Attila has to pay attention.
- [58:27]
B
Spirit, You're listening to Opera for Everyone, a radio show and podcast that makes opera understandable, accessible, and enjoyable for everyone.
- [60:01]
A
It airs Sundays from 9 to 11am Mountain Time on 89.1 KHUL in beautiful Jackson, Wyoming. Please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast. Make sure to smash that like button and rate. Comment and subscribe.
- [60:16]
B
Please stay with us. The second half of today's show is coming right up.
- [60:37]
A
Sam.
- [61:17]
B
Welcome back to the second half of Opera for Everyone. I am here with Grant.
- [61:21]
A
Howdy.
- [61:23]
B
Hey, Grant. We are discussing Giuseppe Verdi's opera Attila. It premiered in Venice in 1846. It was based on a German play, and two of his trusted librettists were involved in the creation of the libretto. I'd like to Take a moment now and say thank you to the people involved in creating this CD that we're listening to. These clips that we have are just exquisite. It was recorded in 2019 with the Munich Radio Orchestra under the conductor Ivan Ray Pusic, the chorus master. And there are a lot of choral works. In this piece is Stellario Fagone, and he leads the Bavarian Broadcasting Choir. The role of Attila is sung by Il de Brando d'. Arcangelo. He's a bass. In the role of Odabella is the soprano Ludmila Monastriaxa. In the role of Ezio, he's a baritone is Georges Petain, the tenor singing Foresto is Stefano La Cola, the tenor. Singing Uldino, the Breton is Stefan Sponik. And in the role of Leo, who we just heard but haven't discussed yet, he's a bass. And it's not a big role, but it's a very important role. And that is sung by Gabrielle Rowlandson. Apologies, profuse apologies for the mispronunciations which I have doubtless made many of. But I am so grateful to the beautiful work that all of these artists have done. So, Grant, you know what time it is now?
- [63:00]
A
Lunchtime.
- [63:02]
B
It's time for the Opera Helmet quiz. You need to. Oh, that. Yeah, you need to give us just a quick summation. Oh, he's actually putting on an opera helmet. Folks, I wish. I wish you could see this. It doesn't fit too well over the headphones, but. Grant, it's time.
- [63:23]
A
All right, here we go. The Western Roman Empire is falling apart. And this guy Attila rallies up a bunch of his buddies and his buddies, buddies and his buddies, buddies, buddies. And they go to sack Rome, as one does. They hear there's lots of good stuff there. So they head on out to SAC Rome. They are destroying stuff along the way. They're fighting some battles. They raze this one city. The people from the city run away. They're like, what are we going to do? How do we get away from these guys? With horses. I know. Let's build a city in the water. And therefore, Venice.
- [63:57]
B
Yes, Venice.
- [63:58]
A
And meanwhile, this lady Otabella has been fighting against the Huns and she's captured. And they're like, wow, you're pretty cool. And Attila says, hey, you want to be my friend? I could give you a sword and you can hang out with me. And she says, yeah, sounds great. And then her boyfriend runs into her
- [64:17]
B
and is like, what, you faithless woman?
- [64:22]
A
And she says, no, no, no, no, Trust me. There's a whole plan here. We're going to Judith this guy, we're going to chop off his head. And he somehow decides, this is a great idea. Let's do this thing.
- [64:34]
B
He really isn't the brightest bulb.
- [64:37]
A
And then Attila has a really bad dream that somebody, scary tells him that he's not allowed to go attack Rome because that's where the gods live.
- [64:47]
B
Yeah.
- [64:48]
A
And he says, I'm going anyway.
- [64:50]
B
After he wakes up and shakes off the fear of a very, very compelling dream.
- [64:57]
A
Yeah. But I'm sure it's going to be fine.
- [64:59]
B
It's going to be fine. Just a comment about Foresto. This the tenor who's the love interest for Otabella. It's very funny to me in some of the letters that Verdi writes, one of them that he writes to his librettist by omission. It's funny about Foresto because he writes, having read this play, there are three stupendous characters. Attila, he defies the mutability of fortune. Ilagonda, that's Odabella's name in the play. She's lovely and proud and she's a great fighter. And she broods over getting vengeance for the family members who've been killed. And Asio, or Ezio in the opera version, he's a fine character, too. Oh, I love it when he does the duet with Attila proposing dividing the world. We listened to that in the first half, but no mention of Foresto.
- [65:53]
A
You've got.
- [65:54]
B
Usually the tenor is the lead character, this heroic character, and here he's the dim boyfriend, honestly.
- [66:01]
A
Yeah. There is something here about the centering of the person who in every meaningful way, is the villain of the piece, Attila. And there's echoes. For those of you who listen to what we did about Tamerlano.
- [66:15]
B
Tamerlano, episode 30, Tamerlane, echoes a lot
- [66:20]
A
of the same things that you get with Attila, although the story resolves in a fairly different way.
- [66:25]
B
Yes. Yes, it does. Well, thank you very much for that summation, Grant. Back with our story. We've just heard this lovely choral piece with the women and the children and this procession. But Attila is observing this and he's rattled again because he's concerned that he's seeing something that seems a lot like that scary dream he had. And the piece ends with Leo. He's not named in the show, but he's named in the libretto, the second base I was talking about. And he says the very same words that Attila recounted from his dream when he was telling it to Eldino you are appointed the scourge, but only against mankind. Withdraw from this land because it is the territory of God.
- [67:21]
A
He is Leo, which is to say he is based off of a particular pope, Leo the Great. And at the same time, he is legally distinct Leo. He is not Leo. He is Leo, but not Leo, because the censors would not permit the pope to be depicted in this way, even though it's a uniformly positive depiction of the pope, right?
- [67:41]
B
From over a thousand years prior, that he's a pope, and so he cannot be the pope in a dramatic presentation. It's considered in poor taste, and it's also against the law.
- [67:54]
A
And so they make him the pope. I mean, this is a known story, this encounter between Pope Leo I and Attila, right?
- [68:02]
B
He's the pope at the time that Attila is marching on Rome, and he
- [68:07]
A
has some conversation with Attila, and Attila turns around. You can come up with whatever historical reason why Attila might have turned around, why he might have decided not to sack Rome. Perhaps the pope was really persuasive. Perhaps Attila's guys were starving, running out of food, or they were ill. Perhaps the pope offered him some sort of compensation or ransom. Whatever happened, this meeting where the pope goes and talks one on one with this guy leading a powerful army and turns him away, that becomes a part of legend. And there's artistic depictions, this great work by Raphael that shows these two figures in the sky. Peter and Paul are there with their swords, and they are angelic figures backing up the pope. And Attila is falling away. He's terrified, and his horse is not sure what to do, and everybody's bucking, and it's a whole thing. And it makes a dramatic impression, this idea of the peaceful turning away of a war, that the warrior is turned away by words. And perhaps there is some sort of heavenly intimidation. And perhaps there is this moment where this earthly king realizes that whatever his power is, it pales in comparison to the smallest power of the divine right.
- [69:28]
B
And you can see how this would inspire a lot of art, this representative of God on earth who is wielding, well, what we call now soft power. He doesn't do it with an army. Not. Not that popes didn't sometimes employ armies. They did, but not in this case.
- [69:45]
A
And so Attila prostrates himself before the gods. I mean, Attila himself is probably a polytheist. He was widely accused in ancient texts of being an atheist. But he believes in some sort of divine powers. And here it the Christian God who is confronting him. And Forcing him to yield. And yield he does. He prostrates himself and all the Huns are dismayed and the Christians are rejoicing and they're singing, behold the might of God by a shepherd. Goliath was defeated by a virgin. Mankind was saved by unknown folk, the faith was spread. These humble and unremarkable people are the ones who were able to turn things around. And in the same way, the violent are turned around by this show of non violence.
- [70:33]
B
It's remarkable. And it also gives us a big finish to the first act. Spirit.
- [71:43]
A
Cross.
- [72:59]
B
Ra. That was a big finish to Act 1 of Verdi's Attila. We open Act 2 with another one of these scenes where we have one of our characters alone on set stage, reflecting on what's been going on around him. And this is Ezio, he's a baritone. This is this envoy we saw earlier from the Romans, coming to see if he could negotiate with Attila. But then he tries to say, hey, let's team up. Attila, you take the rest of the world. Leave Italy for me. Attila's disgusted by it, but here he has a moment to reflect on what's going on and take another stab, or at least work it through on his own. And he references the emperor.
- [74:29]
A
Yeah, the Emperor Valentinian has ordered him to return. And Ezio derisively refers to the emperor as being a child. And that's not chronologically true at this point, but Valentinian was regarded as being foppish and childlike and not taking the duties of rule seriously. And so there's a kind of complicated thing that we may feel here, where at the same time we may feel that what's going on is that Ezio is being a traitor to some extent. He is considering overthrowing the emperor. He is thinking that if only he was in charge, he could make everything right. And we may reasonably regard this as all sorts of bad news.
- [75:12]
B
Yes.
- [75:13]
A
At the same time, in the context of Resurgimento, the whole idea is that you were going to go and overthrow these corrupt rulers who were standing in the way, legitimate in the sense of the world as they might be. They were standing in the way of greatness, they were standing in the way of things being made right. And so Ezio does have a little bit of Garibaldi to him.
- [75:36]
B
He does, because he says in this aria that we're going to hear a bit of in a moment. He's. He's lamenting, just lamenting how low Italy has been placed under these invading troops. It's an insult to our ancestors. What has happened.
- [75:55]
A
And there is something of that aspiration to make things great. And perhaps there's something very appealing about that idea, and also very dangerous. Ezio is ultimately not a good guy. He is someone who has big dreams, but he is willing to do unethical things to see them accomplished. And, well, sometimes those means get in the way of good ends.
- [76:59]
B
Alone. Sam.
- [78:17]
A
Ra,
- [78:56]
B
You can really feel his pain there. As much as we have criticized him, this comes across as true deep feeling for his homeland.
- [79:05]
A
Yes. And Rome has indeed fallen from its great heights. The city of Rome itself is no longer where the Roman Empire, even the western half, is headquartered. The western half is a pale shadow compared to the eastern half. And both are struggling, both are falling apart. And the barbarians are quite literally at the gates.
- [79:26]
B
Yes. Yes, they are. Well, we have a group of Attila's messengers come in and say, hey, Attila wants to talk to you. But before he has a chance to follow them, Foresto appears.
- [79:41]
A
And Foresto has a plan. He is certain that there is going to be some way that the King of the Huns is going to die. I wonder what he's got in mind.
- [79:54]
B
Oh, he's got a plan. He says, you play your role, I'll play my role. And let your troops be ready when I give you the signal.
- [80:03]
A
They're going to kill off the figurehead, and then they're going to try and deal with the rest of the body of the snake.
- [80:09]
B
Right, Right. And this scene in the beginning of Act 2, in my mind, this first scene in the beginning of Act 2, it belongs to Ezio. He has so much beautiful music to sing here. And as a contrast to that piece that we just heard, I'd like to play some of the. This next piece that he sings right at the end of this first scene. He is determined. He has a plan now that he's got a compatriot that he's going to be working with, and he no longer feels that Rome is doomed. Sam. Satan. So, Grant, was I right? Quite a contrast to his prior song.
- [82:05]
A
Yes, very much so.
- [82:08]
B
You know what time it is?
- [82:09]
A
What time is it?
- [82:10]
B
Well, it's not opera helmet quiz time. It's time for a drinking song.
- [82:15]
A
Oh, we love our drinking songs.
- [82:16]
B
Yeah. This is a choral drinking song, which is the next thing we see when we open on the second Scene of Act 2.
- [82:35]
A
Sam.
- [83:25]
B
Well, that was our dream drinking song, that chorus. They're having a good time. Why are they drinking and celebrating?
- [83:31]
A
They are celebrating because the war is over and they've won and there's A truce. The Romans are coming to dinner and the Huns are celebrating. And, you know, it's just a good time.
- [83:45]
B
It's a good time. And there are hundreds of flames all around the encampment, making again a beautiful scene for an opera stage. And this celebration that's going on. And Attila's in high spirits when he welcomes Ezio. Remember, he summoned him. Ezio shows up, he says, ah, let us seal this truce through this banquet that we're going to have together. And Ezio plays his part.
- [84:12]
A
Yeah. Ezio's like, hey, you're great, Attila. Like, what a wonderful party. You know, Love the food.
- [84:18]
B
Yeah. And the druids, not representing Christianity here, they warn the king that it is fatal to sit with the foreigner.
- [84:28]
A
Yes. So there are clouds augering, treachery.
- [84:31]
B
There is blood red clouds.
- [84:33]
A
Yeah. Bad things are going to happen. And Attila, as seems to be his way when he gets a prophecy of disaster, is just like, no, no, we're good. And sends him away. And the druids are like, he's a beautiful man.
- [84:43]
B
He doesn't worry about that kind of stuff.
- [84:45]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the druids say, may Odin protect you. Good luck, buddy.
- [84:51]
B
That's right. And here, if you like to put a ballet in your opera, and generally they don't, but a small dancing piece, you have a chance with these priestesses singing and celebrating. And as the dancing is winding up here, there's a strong gust of wind and all those flames that were lit, they are extinguished. Now, that's a bad omen that everyone can see.
- [85:14]
A
And apparently the first time this opera was produced, the candles were of such a composition that when they were blown out, they made a horrible scent. And some of the critics complained that you are supposed to be able to hear opera, not smell it.
- [85:26]
B
Yes, I know, it's kind of sad. I have no idea what caused that, but I think they fixed that in future productions, which is good, because you'd
- [85:35]
A
think it was a bad omen. As it is in this story, it is a very strange thing, this gust of wind. Darkness is all around, and suddenly they're all wondering what's going on. They are gripped with terror and mystery. And we see that Ezio and Foresto are talking in his sides. They're plotting and they're planning. And Foresto points out that there is a cup, a cup that is there to be the agent of fury. And it is a poisoned cup that they are giving to Attila. And that's their plan, to kill him. And by the way, not necessarily a great Idea to kill the enemy king right after you've signed a truce with them.
- [86:24]
B
They don't think he's going to stay peaceful. And besides, they all hate him.
- [86:29]
A
Yes, it's vengeance. There's no sensible political will. By the way, these scenes are reversed in order from what they were in the original play, where it happens such that the attempt is made on Attila's life, the poison chalice, and then Leo comes and saves Rome. And so that gives a very different sense. Right. In one case, it's a practical, political move, try to off the king of the enemy army. And here it's just vengeance, pure and simple.
- [86:57]
B
Yeah. And here's where they've roped in Uldino, who serves Attila. They've made him complicit here with making sure this poisoned wine gets to Attila. And it was Ezio originally conspiring with Foresto. But they bring Odabella on board. They let her know what's going on. And we have one of these great things that you can do in opera, where you have all these people singing from their various points of view at the same time. And one of Odabella's sentiments is that, wait, I have this sword. It's my job to kill Attila, not someone from his own camp killing him, meaning old Dino, I have sworn to God that I will avenge my father's death.
- [87:48]
A
Which she has not pointed out to Foresto. It's strange that Foresto's like, hey, we got this plan to kill him, even though she already had a plan to kill him.
- [87:56]
B
Oh. She's like, step aside, honey, I'm not listening. We men are making a plan is what's going on here.
- [88:01]
A
And I'm sure that's going to work out great.
- [88:04]
B
Well, you know, it depends what great is. Well, let's hear a little bit of this. This. This is an intense scene, a very intense scene. And it will conclude with a certain calm. In fact, it'll say calm anew when everyone sings that the. The storm has passed.
- [90:38]
A
Sa.
- [91:19]
B
Well, everyone thinks the storm has passed, and maybe it's not raining and the wind's not howling anymore, but the storm remains metaphorically. However, Attila grabs his cup and he's getting ready to toast to Odin. Well, we know what's in that cup.
- [91:38]
A
Poison.
- [91:39]
B
Does he drink it?
- [91:40]
A
No, he's restrained. He's saved by the woman with the sword. Yeah. She's like, okay, honey, I know you want to kill him with the cup, but, like, I got a sword. I'm going to kill him. It's one of these who gets to drive the car situations, right? Who gets to murder the guy. And so she tells Attila that, like, hey, by the way, they were trying to poison you. And Attila's like, what? And everybody else is like, what? It seems like she's sided with Attila,
- [92:09]
B
but of course, very much so. In fact, Forresto is spotted by Attila in the crowd, and he says, you and Forresto, bright bulb that he is, says, yes, it was me. I was going to kill you.
- [92:23]
A
Yeah, and that's an interesting move there. And so Attila's about to do horrible, horrible things to Foresto, and Otabella jumps in and says, hey, actually, I saved your life. Therefore I should get to punish the guy, right?
- [92:37]
B
Right. Here she is claiming all the vengeance for herself, whether it's real or pretend. And she takes charge of Foresto, the man who tried to murder Attila.
- [92:48]
A
Some people collect stamps. Some people hoard dolls. Some people want all the vengeance, you know?
- [92:52]
B
So she's a tough lady. And Attila is so besotted with Otabella. She's not only a beautiful warrior, a spunky woman, she saved his life. And he says, I'm going to give you a bigger reward than getting to carry out the vengeance yourself.
- [93:09]
A
Even better. He proposes all. Or, you know, doesn't really propose. He doesn't ask for her permission. He says, this is what's gonna happen now.
- [93:17]
B
You will be my wife. Lucky lady. Yeah, of course. And we get another big finish with all of our named characters singing at once. We have Odabella talking to Foresto, saying, we're not just all talking at once. We're all talking to different people. She's saying, restrain your anger. I'm gonna take care of this. You know I will. He's gonna have to go along with it because what else can he do? She's obviously gonna let him escape. Ezio's just confused. How did she find out about our secret plan? This woman in league with Attila. So he's like, what? And Oldino is sort of wondering about his whole role in this thing. And the chorus is in there, too, supporting Attila in this scene. And Attila, of course, is feeling super safe and super victorious at this point.
- [94:33]
A
Sam ra. Sa,
- [96:49]
B
This is opera for everyone. I'm here with Grant talking About Attila, the mid 19th century opera by Giuseppe Verdi. We have just finished Act 2, and we're ready to start on our final act, act three, which is shorter than the other acts. And things are falling into place for some folks. Plans have been thwarted. People aren't necessarily truly aware of what's going on. For instance, Attila thinks he's won the heart of the lovely Odabella, the fearsome warrior, that she is the kind of woman he can really respect.
- [97:27]
A
And yet she has other ideas. You know, sometimes she's just not that into you.
- [97:33]
B
She really isn't. Well, again, we open this first scene in a simple way after having this big everyone on the stage, lots of singing. We have Foresto, Oldino and Ezio on stage, and they're going to have to figure out what to do. At this point, Foresto is trying to find out from Aldino what's been going on. As far as Foresto knows, his beloved has just married Attila, the King of the Huns.
- [98:06]
A
And so the three of them are there trying to figure out what in the world is going on, what it is they're going to do next. And you may remember his warriors have been waiting for the signal to attack for quite some time now.
- [98:21]
B
Yeah.
- [98:21]
A
And there they are in position, hoping that, you know, there's a moment where they can go for it.
- [98:27]
B
And he's got matters of the heart to tend to here.
- [98:29]
A
Yeah. So they're trying to wait until they've got everybody ready to go to jump in.
- [98:35]
B
And there's this wonderful tune that they sing together, a martial tune. Again, one of these things that Verdi is so wonderful at where Ezio will tell us, my warriors are awaiting the signal. They are ready to jump and to strike. J.
- [99:22]
A
Sa.
- [100:27]
B
And as Ezio and Foresto are psyching themselves up for battle, for taking their mends to finish off Attila once and for all, and all of his followers offstage, we hear the choral preparations for this wedding, which is meant to take place between Attila and Otabella. Does she marry Attila?
- [100:48]
A
Yes.
- [100:49]
B
No, she does not. Not that Attila really needs marriage, let's be honest. But she does not. She runs away and she finds her compatriots, she runs away.
- [101:03]
A
And it's sort of an odd thing because we kind of expect, based on what we may know, that she's planning on waiting until she gets him alone and knifing him to death. And yet she herself is compelled by a spirit, a ghost, the ghost of her father is haunting her. And she runs, saying, leave me, leave me alone. I'm running away. I'm not going to marry Attila. I flee the marriage bed. And she is saying all this out loud, and Foresto and Ezio here, and they're like, too late. You are too Late to apologize, right?
- [101:41]
B
I mean, here we are, Foresto again, not giving her a chance to explain what's going on, not giving her a chance to. And he's all macho like, oh, woman, you've betrayed me. You've married that barbarian. And she is. He's the only one who can really make her upset, really make her seem less, in a way, in a subservient position. But Foresto has to do the whole macho thing and not listen to her and say, you've betrayed me, woman.
- [102:11]
A
Yeah. And to all appearances, she has. Right. And here she is running away and everything seems like it's gone pretty awfully. And what do we do now? Well, it's opera. We sing a song. That's what we do.
- [102:25]
B
We do. And I. I have to say this is a very beautiful piece of music. It's a trio with Odabello, Foresto and the third wheel, Ezio, who just wants
- [102:35]
A
them to get on with the whole killing off Attila thing.
- [102:38]
B
Well, she does beg for him to be listening. And here she's pleading with him, I love you alone. And he's mad. You've deceived me. So they're having this lovers quarrel and Ezio is essentially saying, well, we've got more important matters here. You two, knock it off. It's just. I love this piece. Ram.
- [104:36]
A
Sa.
- [105:01]
B
J. Well, no time for a joyous reunion and understanding between Foresto and Otabella. He's still mad at her. And when a bride runs away, who's likely to follow the groom? And so he does. Attila enters the scene, and for some
- [105:47]
A
bizarre reason, not bringing any bodyguards in tow. No, no, he's just. He's run off and he's like, hey, what's going on here? What are you all. Oh. And he looks around, he sees that all of these conspirators are there all at the same time. His to be wife and her beau who was trying to kill him and the Roman general. And he's like, okay, what have I walked into here?
- [106:13]
B
Well, Attila is not a dope, other than love blinding him for a few minutes. Well, several minutes. But he sees them all and he realizes what's happening. The fact that he gave Otabella the option to punish the man who tried to murder him. He realizes, oh, she has not changed her allegiance. She has not come on over to my side as I thought she had.
- [106:38]
A
And then she explains this vision of the ghost of her father, who reminded her that she was not wanting to go through with this thing, which is sort of an interesting thing. Right. We've left the realistic world and entered kind of a dream world here.
- [106:54]
B
Yeah.
- [106:55]
A
It doesn't make sense for him to run off without his soldiers. It doesn't really make sense for them all to find themselves in this location. Doesn't make sense for the Roman general not to be with his army. This entire scene takes place almost in an ethereal realm where you have all these people who are in one place because they are occupying the same psychological
- [107:18]
B
space, and it's dramatically powerful to do so.
- [107:21]
A
And. Yeah, and they get a good chance to sing the songs, and. And we get the sense of these absolute, almost spiritual forces conflicting with one another.
- [107:30]
B
Right.
- [107:31]
A
And Attila is realizing what's going on at this moment. Otabella is explaining what her true feelings and allegiance are, and Foresto gets to say his piece. He basically says, some version of Attila, you're a jerk.
- [107:45]
B
Well. And he still says, you've taken away my beloved. I mean, he's still furious at Otabella and furious at Attila for the betrayal, of his loss of what he thought his life was going to be and the person who loved him.
- [107:57]
A
Yeah.
- [107:58]
B
And Ezio, that man of changing alliances and points of view.
- [108:05]
A
And Ezio does an interesting thing, right? He says that Attila's in trouble because of all of the blood that he has shed, that he's been so violent. And that's a reasonable thing to say. It just seems a little odd coming from Ezio, of all people.
- [108:22]
B
It is. But he starts off by commenting that you spared Rome. However, the world's fury still needs to vent itself on you. So tremble, O king. There is unappeased blood.
- [108:34]
A
Yeah. And again, that idea of Italy versus the world, Rome versus the world, and heaven's wrath. Yeah.
- [108:40]
B
If he's the scourge of God. Well, who's going to have the last word here? It's going to be God.
- [108:46]
A
Yes.
- [108:47]
B
And the chorus is going to chime in with death, death and revenge.
- [108:53]
A
And that is the signal for his death. And what happens is, apparently, without the general or without any particular obvious signal, the armies descend upon Attila's camp. And the Romans, in spite of the fact that they've to this point, been shown to not necessarily be able to militarily resist the Huns. Something about the wedding feast. Maybe the Huns all got drunk, and the Romans fall upon them, and the Huns are being defeated. And Attila is out there unable to lead his men because here he is confronting the conspirators.
- [109:32]
B
Yes. And I like this one line right near the end. Ezio and Foresto together say the lot is cast. It's reminiscent of the die is cast, isn't it?
- [109:45]
A
Yes. Yeah, it's definitely. It evokes that idea of Julius Caesar. The die is cast. We've gone and passed the point of no return. And what is going to happen now?
- [109:56]
B
Well, yeah, well, another famous Roman.
- [109:59]
A
Yes, yes. The most famous Roman, perhaps.
- [110:01]
B
Yeah.
- [110:02]
A
And so Foresto's like, okay, it's my turn to kill you now. I'm gonna kill you.
- [110:07]
B
Oh, no.
- [110:08]
A
And apparently he hasn't been paying all that much attention.
- [110:11]
B
No, no, no, no, no.
- [110:13]
A
And so Otabella's like, hey, hey, Foresto, why don't you give me a hug? And Forresto's like, oh, that sounds nice. And she uses this to, like, make sure that she's the one who gets to go kill Attila.
- [110:24]
B
Yes.
- [110:25]
A
With his own sword.
- [110:26]
B
With the sword, of course. I mean, it's like Chekhov's gun. And it's gonna go off.
- [110:31]
A
You get handed a sword in the prologue, it's going to show up in the final scene.
- [110:34]
B
Yep, that's right. That's right. And this is. I've read this countless times. The quickest death in opera. I've even heard it called un operatic. How quickly Attila dies. Because in most of our operas, we're so accustomed to the dying character who's had such a dominant role throughout the entire show. He's stabbed and he dies.
- [111:01]
A
Yeah. And it's in his dreamlike sequence.
- [111:03]
B
Here's something more realistic than it usually is depicted.
- [111:07]
A
Right. And there's something about the sort of almost silly ways that you read about these great conquerors dying, Right. They just. They're doing all their things and then they die of a nosebleed. Right? It just. They die and they're done. And look on these works in despair. It's all just over in a heartbeat. And there's something remarkable about the suddenness of it. And perhaps it's just that he's said everything there is to say, but also there is a sense of all of this being cut short.
- [111:40]
B
Right.
- [111:41]
A
And so Attila's last words are, and you, too, Otabella.
- [111:47]
B
Another Shakespeare, Julius Caesar quote, more or less.
- [111:52]
A
Yeah. You, Otabella, you know, child. Right. Like, it's a direct echo of that.
- [111:57]
B
And you, too, Brutus.
- [111:59]
A
Yeah, yeah. Etou Brute is the Shakespeare version. And you, my child, here we get an echo of both. And in any event, the idea is that she is the last one he expected to betray him.
- [112:14]
B
Talk about another man who wasn't truly paying attention to her.
- [112:18]
A
And there's something here about the vulnerability and weakness of love. Right? Otabella seems in love control, except when she is in love and trying to explain herself. Right? Her beau is in love the whole time and therefore clueless the entire time. Ezio's trying to get everybody on the right page, but like, he's not bothered
- [112:39]
B
by the love thing.
- [112:39]
A
He's not bothered by the love thing. And here is Attila in command of the entire universe. And then there's this one woman, and before her he's helpless.
- [112:49]
B
You can see why the drama of this appealed to Verdi. There's so much to work with here. He does it so beautifully. Well, the last line of this show goes to the people, to the chorus, and they will tell us, God, the people and the king are now fully avenged. Vengeance, revenge. Which also in this case means setting things right.
- [113:15]
A
Yeah, it's vindication, right? That the world is as it should be. And maybe not for long, historically speaking. Two years later, the vandals show up and sack Rome anyway.
- [113:28]
B
Not part of this opera.
- [113:29]
A
But not in this opera. In this opera, there's that moment of hope. And it's a moment of hope that ties into the risorgimento, the idea that Italy is finally going to be a thing, a thing with self determination, a thing that is ruled fairly and justly. And that promise is real in this moment. And that is a thing that they are holding onto. The idea that maybe it'll all come together, maybe it'll all work out.
- [113:57]
B
Grant, thank you so much for joining me to talk about this amazing opera. I'm so grateful for your knowledge and your wisdom and what a fun time we had together.
- [114:08]
A
Well, it's always a pleasure. Thanks so much for having me and
- [114:12]
B
thanks everyone for listening. Enjoy this last piece from Verdi's Attila.
- [114:37]
A
There is none more. Sa.
- [117:59]
B
What a grace. Don't get stuck.
- [118:01]
A
SA.
- [118:42]
B
Thanks for listening to another episode of Opera for Everyone.
- [118:46]
A
If you enjoyed our show and would like to hear more, please subscribe to the Opera for Everyone podcast. Make sure to smash that like button and rate comment and subscribe.
- [118:56]
B
And of course, join us any Sunday morning from 9 to 11am Mountain Time on 89.1 Khol Jackson, Wyoming to hear us on the radio. Opera can be challenging, but everyone loves a good story and a story set to music is even better. Our mission is to make opera understandable,
- [119:19]
A
accessible and enjoyable because we believe opera is for everyone.