10.06.1918 - Todestag von Arrigo Boito
Aus dem sehr umfangreichen (acht DIN-A-4 Seiten!) Lexikonartikel, den Giannandrea Mazzucato (Sohn des Komponisten Alberto M.; seit 1880 in London lebend und dort als Musikkritiker und Übersetzer tätig) für das von 1878 bis 1900 in vier Bänden herausgegebene Dictionary of Music and Musicians verfasst hat, kann hier nur quasi "bruchstückhaft" zitiert werden! Es fehlen der Hinweis auf die Zweitversion des "Mefistofele" (UA 1875 in Bologna), auf Boitos Opern 'Nerone' (unvollendet) und 'Ero e Leandro' (nur fragmentarisch erhalten) - sowie auf dessen Wirken als Lyriker...
Der Artikel ist ganz offensichtlich vor der UA von Verdis 'Fallstaff' (Febr. 1893) verfasst und später weder von Mazzucato noch vom Herausgeber Sir George Grove (1820-1900; u.a. 1882-94 "first Director of the Royal College of Music") entsprechend berichtigt worden....
… From an elder brother, Camillo, an eminent architect, critic and novellist, Arrigo acquired from his early years a taste of poetry. It may be said here that it was Camillo Boito who directed his brother's attention to Goethe's Faust as the proper subject for a grand opera and years before Gounod's masterpiece was written. In 1856 Boito's mother left Padua and settled in Milan so that he might study at the Conservatorio there… Before he had reached his eighteenth year, he was familiar with the Greek and Latin classics, had aquired a perfect mastery of the Italian and French languages, and his first essays in the Italian and French press at once attracted the attention of scholars in both countries to him. Some articles on a French review were the cause of Victor Hugo's writing a most flattering letter to the unknown author, while in Italy Andrea Maffei and others publicly complimented him on his early poems...
Englishmen...will hardly realise what the condition of Milan - by far the most advenced musical town in Italy - was twenty-five years ago. Music and opera were synonymous words… Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, Schumann, were as much unknown as if they had never been born. Even as late as ten years ago, the only copy of Beethoven's Symphonies to be had at the library of the Conservatorio, was...so full of mistakes as to be in some parts unintelligible… Several more enlightened persons, amongst them the Publisher Ricordi, Mazzucato, Boito, Filippi, etc., decided to start a Society of Concerts and a newspaper in order to improve the public taste...
In 1866 the war with Austria put a stop to all musical business... Boito felt tired of the comparative idleness of artistic life in Milan and decided to...take up his residence in Paris: Victor Hugo encouraged him to do so... Boito spent most of his time (there), and a considerable part of the rest in Germany. Strange as it may seem, Wagner's opera...did not alter in the least his musical...feelings: a change came over his mind many years after, when he began the critical study of the works of Sebastian Bach. He left Milan holding Marcello, Beethoven, Verdi and Meyerbeer as the greatest composers in their respective fields, and when he came back he was even strengthened in his belief... Yet - perhaps unconsciously - he did not feel at one, on musical subjects with the majority of his coutrymen. His genius...had enlarged his ideas beyond the limits that were imposed upon an operatic composer, and whilst leisurely working at his 'Faust' he could not bring himself to give it the...only accepted form of the Italian opera. He was too modest to preach a new faith, too honest to demolish before knowing how and what to build, and too noble to write with the sole end of amusing his fellow creatures...
After some time..., Boito went to visit a sister in Poland. The monotonous, tranquil, humdrum coutry life, and the many forced leisure hours he had there, put him again in mind of 'Faust', and just to please his own fancy he sketched a musical setting of an arrangement of the entire poem…, and also completed some of the principal scenes… The memorable first performance of the original 'Mefistofele'()took place at La Scala (in 1868)… The public was not ready to understand the new language he intended to speak, nor did the poet and composer know clearly what he was gong to say to them. There is no denying that the original 'Mefistofele', though poetically and philosophically admirable, was, taken as an opera, both incongruous and amorphous… ….
In later years Boito became a fervent admirer...particularly of 'Lohengrin' and the 'Meistersinger', but he was not in the least influenced by the German master's work: he admired, but did not follow him...
Boito is the author of several librettos or, better, of dramas for music, as it would be unfair to rank these literary gems on a line with the old-fashioned librettos of Italian operas… Of these, only 'Medistofele', 'Gioconda' (Ponchielli), 'Amleto' (Faccio), 'Otello' (Verdi) and 'Ero e Leandro' (Bottesini) have as yet been published, and each of them constitutes a perfect work of art by itself, independently of the musical setting. He is likewise the author of several translations, which include Wagner's 'Tristano et Isolta', 'Rienzi'..., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, and some smaller works by Schumann and Rubinstein.
Arrigo Boito has, since 1867, resided in Milan, where he lives with his brother Camillo. He does not occupy any official position, and leads a quite and retired life. Though he is good-humoured (and) a pleasant companion…, he carefully shuns fashionable society. The Italian government has conferred upon him first the title of 'Cavaliere'...and lately of 'Commendatore'; but...he does not like to be adressed otherwise than by his simple name...
v. wikisource.org