Nightmare Stuff

You aren’t going to see Verdi’s I Masnadieri (“Robbers”) any time soon at the family opera house in your town, and here’s why: it is terrifying.

Verdi, poor guy, had a rough life in several ways, and he seems to have got his revenge on the fates by writing some uncomfortably painful operas.

Working with his man Andrea Maffei, he whips up an old Friedrich Schiller story about a truly hellish young fellow named Francesco, who tricks his brother, father, and lovely innocent cousin into thinking everything they value is gone forever. 

Extreme, but he was determined to become the rich Count and gain a clear path to marrying the cousin.  (I guess that kind of family marriage was OK in 1847.)  So, just screw up the entire life of everyone in the family.

His plan doesn’t work very well, and absolutely everyone on stage suffers horribly, especially when the plot brings in God, who declares that the trickster guy is not someone who Jesus died for on the cross.  Nope. You’re on your own, fella.

We’re With the Bad Guys

And he’s not really on his own – he has to face down the approach of the most vicious and frightening band of hardened criminals we’ve ever seen – they are way worse than Macbeth’s Singing Assassins.  The kidnapper gang in Rigoletto, by comparison, looks like a knitting club.

The 2019 La Scala production had the whole crew done up in ripped clothing, scarred faces, bloody wounds, and dreadful masks.  They spend all their time leaping like demons, and swinging around every type of huge deadly weapon in the stockroom. 

All having a delightful time – they even sing a lively song about how they are really good robbers, rapists, and murderers, and will stick together and do their stuff until they’re all dangling from the gallows.  Ha ha!

Brother Carlo Can’t Decide

Who’s their leader?  Francesco’s brother Carlo, who signed up in despair because little Francesco told him their dad was done with him.   He stepped in as the manager of the robber gang, but he still had the lovely innocent cousin pining for him.   (Lisette Oropesa, first time out in Milan.)

So what are you going to do? You’re committed to both the killer robbers and to beautiful Lisette, and you can tell there is no good ending here.  Idea: after you send little brother Francesco off to hell, you instruct your loyal band of hoodlums to slice up everyone in sight, including yourself.  Bad scene.

Sorry about the tough times, there, Giuseppi Verdi.  Perhaps some better pharmaceuticals, or Reiki, and you could have had a funny Italiana in Algiers on your hands.  Didn’t work out.

More Great Verdi

The rarity of I Masnadieri is too bad, because it’s Verdi, so it’s packed with striking music, designed to drive the increasingly crushing sense of terror and doom. 

He’s also set up quite a showpiece for a soprano like Lisette, and she comes through.  (Part of the original deal, when Verdi wrote this for London, was that he’d for sure get the leading soprano and tenor to show up for the opening.  He did get Jenny Lind, the soprano, but not the tenor he wanted.  The sub was fine.)

For me, the high points were the manic ravings of the band of robbers – at least three terrific chorus pieces are in there, so they can wave their machetes at each other, bleed onto the furniture, and sing about how bad they are.  Much more energetic than the famous Nabucco chorus, but somehow not as catchy to general public.  Go figure.