Non t’accostare all’urna (1838)

Deh pietoso (1838)

Brindisi – second version (1835–45)

In solitaria stanza (1838)

Stornello (1869)

Verdi’s first published work was a volume of Sei Romanze which appeared in Milan in 1838, when he was still occupied the humble post of maestro di musica in Busseto. He had not yet written his first opera – Oberto was to be performed at La Scala the following year – but it is clear from these six early songs what his ambitions were. Even allowing for the 18 years between the two, a comparison of Non t’accostare all’urna with Schubert’s elegant setting of the same words throws into relief the fundamentally dramatic approach adopted by Verdi. The dramatic introduction, the heroic posture of the vocal line, the intervention of reproachful recitative with its change of pace in the third stanza, the plaintive ending: these were all to be characteristic features of Verdi’s early operatic arias. From the same collection, Deh pietoso is an accomplished forerunner of his preghierae or prayer arias, even though Goethe’s text (translated into Italian from Faust Part II) requires more varied expression than most of its kind. The brindisi or drinking song being another operatic staple, Verdi produced an entertainingly colourful example as early as 1835 but refined its excesses before publishing it in his second collection of Romanze ten years later.

The most prophetic item in the 1838 Romanze is In solitaria stanza, which begins modestly enough in song mode and then on “Salvate, o Dei pietosi” launches into an operatic flight of passion, on a rising chromatic line, which would be echoed 15 years later in Leonora’s Tacea la notte in Il Trovatore. There is no operatic echo, on the other hand, of Stornello which, a brilliantly witty setting of a folk-song text with the most effective piano part in all Verdi’s songs, is like nothing else he wrote.