Attila (opera)
| Attila | |
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| Opera by Giuseppe Verdi | |
Last scene, as performed in London in 1848
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| Language | Italian |
| Based on | Zacharias Werner's 1809 play Attila, König der Hunnen (Attila, King of the Huns) |
| Premiere | 17 March 1846 Teatro La Fenice, Venice |
Attila is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by , based on the 1809 play Attila, König der Hunnen (Attila, King of the Huns) by Zacharias Werner. The opera received its first performance at La Fenice in Venice on 17 March 1846.
Ezio's act 2 aria of heroic resolution È gettata la mia sorte ("My lot is cast, I am prepared for any warfare") is a fine example of a characteristic Verdian genre, and it achieved fame in its own time with audiences in the context of the adoption of a liberal constitution by Ferdinand II. Other contemporary comment praised the work as suitable for the "political education of the people", while, in contrast, others criticised the opera as "Teutonic" in nature.
Verdi had read the ultra-Romantic play in April 1844, probably introduced to it by his friend Andrea Maffei who had written a synopsis. A letter to Francesco Maria Piave (with whom he had worked on both Ernani and I due Foscari) had included the subject of Attila as opera number 10 on a list of nine other possible projects, and in that same letter, he encouraged Piave to read the play, which musicologist Julian Budden describes as having "sprung from the wilder shores of German literary romanticism [and which contains] all the Wagnerian apparatus - the Norns, Valhalla, the sword of Wodan [sic], the gods of light and the gods of darkness." He continues: "It is an extraordinary Teutonic farrago to have appealed to Verdi".
Verdi works with Solera
But, as Attila was to be the second opera Verdi would be writing for Venice, he appears to have changed his mind about working with Piave as the librettist and then convinced him to relinquish the project, seemingly preferring to work with Solera, who had been his librettist for both Nabucco and I Lombardi, two operas which employed the format of large choral tableaux and something which the librettist was prepared to re-use for the new opera. No clear reason for this change seems to have emerged, except that Baldini speculates that, in returning to Solera, he was more comfortable working with a librettist who was more suited to "sketching epic sagas and historical-religious frescoes.
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