Jonathan Lewsey

Apropos Verdi

Who’s Who in Verdi is the second volume in a projected twelve volume encyclopaedia of opera, the first volume of which, Who’s Who and What’s What in Wagner, is already published (Ashgate). Who’s Who in Verdi is due for publication next year and I am currently working on volumes three and four, devoted to the works of Puccini and Strauss respectively. A friend of mine likens my endeavour to that of Mr Casaubon in George Eliots’ Middlemarch¸ labouring away at an encyclopaedic book (The Key to all Mythologies) which will clearly never be finished and may hardly be read. However that be - a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do…!

I was delighted when Colin Wilson agreed to write the introduction to the Verdi volume, which will be published in 2001 to coincide with the centenary of Verdi’s death. In common, I suspect, with most readers of Abraxas, Colin’s work has been a seminal influence on my life and thinking. I first came across his name as a teenager in the 70s when I subscribed to a magazine called Audio to which Colin contributed a series of fascinating articles on matters musical, I remember two article in particular; one was entitled ‘Who poisoned Mozart?’ (a subject which later took on a first hand relevance for me when I sang the role of Salieri in Rimsky Korsakov’s one act opera based on Pushkin’s play. The other article described how, armed with Earnest Newman’s Wagner Nights Colin first made acquaintance with Wagner’s Ring drama through a series of Radio 3 broadcasts. Since at that time my entire universe revolved around Radio 3 broadcasts - and especially broadcasts of Wagner’s works - it was reassuring to know that there were similar-minded maniacs in the world. What appealed to me then, and still appeals to me, most about Colin’s writing is that he never raises a smokescreen between himself and the reader. Whatever he is writing about he always places it in the context of his own continuing experience of the subject.

It was several years later that I discovered a book entitled The Outsider in a bookshop in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. The title meant nothing to me but I was fairly certain the author was the same music critic whose articles had so stimulated me years previously. As I read the autobiographical introduction to The Outsider, I quickly realised that I had some catching up to do. Twenty years on I’m still trying to catch up, let alone keep up: Colin seems to write quicker than most people manage to read.

It should be clear from the above why I was especially delighted when Colin agreed to write the introduction to the second volume of my encyclopaedia. I suspect that he considers my project mildly insane. He quite rightly points out that it would have been impossible for Bernard Shaw to write The Perfect Verdi-ite. Where there is much that can be said about Wagner, it is much more difficult to speak meaningfully about operas that were often cobbled together, sometimes only at a few weeks notice, to fulfil specifically commercial contracts. My overall intention remains the same in the Verdi as in the Wagner - to apply the principles of existential criticism as best I can, to that most despised of literary mediums - the libretto. As an erstwhile opera singer and director myself I am keenly aware that even if there is not much substance in a work in the first place, somehow it has to be put there by directors and performers. The guiding light for me in this approach has always been the art of the great singing actors, viz. Chaliapin, Maria Callas, Boris Christoff, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi et al, who succeeded in breathing life into the slenderest and most insubstantial of characters and operas. My fervent belief is that where there is a will to express something a means can be found.

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