Nabucco in Philadelphia

The Academy of Music Chandelier

Opera Philadelphia usually surprises me with some kind of operatic innovation, and the current production of Nabucco is no exception. First of all, I was surprised by a phone call and email reminding me that "my performance" was on Sunday at 2:30, and if I was interested, there would be a pre-opera talk by Michael Bolton at 1:30. (This would be the Vice President of Community Programs for Opera Philadelphia, not Michael Bolton the song stylist. I just want to make that clear.) I like those, so I made sure to attend, and I learned about Nabucco and this production in particular. As informative and delightful as the talk was, it was not the innovation to which I was referring.

The post by my seat.

You have to understand a little about the history of Giuseppe Verdi and his opera Nabucco to understand how Opera Philadelphia made this production a story within a story. (That's the innovative part.) At the time that this opera premiered at La Scala in Milan, that city was being occupied by the Austrians. The Italians created some great art that represented how they felt, just not obviously. The Assyrians in this opera represented the Austrians (they sound similar), and the Jewish people represented the repressed Italians. Verdi himself came to be a symbol of the Risorgimento, the Italian movement to unify Italian cities into one country with Victor Emanuel as king. Word has it ('word' in my music history books) that Verdi and his collaborators did not necessarily want to be a symbol, but since he wanted a unified Italy, too, he didn't fight it. The battle cry of the movement became Viva VERDI! The letters of Verdi's name stood for Vittorio Emanuele, Re D’Italia (Victor Emanuel, King of Italy).

So Nabucco was performed in Milan during this Austrian occupation, and an emotional time was had by all. One of the choral numbers in the opera even became the unofficial Italian national anthem. This Philadelphia performance capitalized on this by staging a large (meaning lots of singers and other costumed people on the stage) production of this soon-to-be anthem. This included 19th-century costumed stage hands and opera house personnel singing along with the singers, and large pieces of patched-together (as oppressed people would do) pieces of red, white, and green fabric held to form the Italian flag. We in the audience had already made the transformation to 1842 occupied Milan because of the presence of stern Austrian guards at the beginning, during intermissions, and eventually at the end. We also saw some fancy high-class Austrians in costume enjoying the festivities on stage and some 19th-century stagehands. (I can't tell you everything in case you go to see this production in Philadelphia, Washington, or Minnesota.)

The Academy of Music in Philadelphia, opened in 1857 (fifteen years after Nabucco's Milan premiere)

So that's a lot of story and I haven't even summarized the plot of the opera yet. Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar in English) is the king of the Babylonians (also referred to as Assyrians in the opera), and he is driving the Jews from their homeland, but not without torturing and killing men, women, and children. The story is from the Bible, but of course on the opera stage Nabucco goes mad and suffers a dramatic collapse. One of his daughters grabs the throne while it is still warm and in order to stay seated there hides evidence recently discovered that proves she may not be who she thinks she is . Nabucco's other daughter gets reunited with that special soldier. One of the highlights of any Nabucco production is the performance of "Va pensiero" ("Fly, thought, on wings of gold") which is also known as the "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves." It has come to be the unofficial national anthem of Italy. Here's Riccardo Muti conducting this chorus in Rome, 2011: