Overview
Introduction
I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (The Lombards on the First Crusade) is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on an epic poem by Tommaso Grossi, which was "very much a child of its age; a grand historical novel with a patriotic slant". Its first performance was given at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 11 February 1843. Verdi dedicated the score to Maria Luigia, the Habsburg Duchess of Parma, who died a few weeks after the premiere.
In 1847, the opera was significantly revised to become Verdi's first grand opera for performances in French at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opera under the title of Jérusalem.
Composition history
The plot complications of Tasso's original drama required the librettist to make significant changes; the historical characters portrayed in the original do not appear and the story becomes that of a fictional family and its involvement in the Crusades. Julian Budden's analysis of the opera's origins notes: "In 1843 any subject where Italian were shown united against a common enemy was dangerous, especially in Austrian Milan. Yet strangely enough it was not the police but the church that took exception to I Lombardi", since the Archbishop of Milan had heard rumours that the work contained specific elements of Catholic ritual. However, given Verdi's refusal to make any changes to the music, it is fortunate that the result of the police chief's investigations of the archbishops complaints required only very minor alterations.
Performance history
19th century
While the premiere performance was a popular success, critical reactions were less enthusiastic and inevitable comparisons being made with Nabucco. However, one writer noted: "If [Nabucco] created this young man's reputation, I Lombardi served to confirm it.". Budden himself disagrees with this contemporary view, noting that "Nabucco is all of a piece, a unity, however crude; I Lombardi is an agglomeration of heterogeneous ideas, some remarkable, some unbelievably banal."
Budden notes that "for many years I Lombardi enjoyed the same kind of popularity as Nabucco,but he states that it did not fare well in Venice the following year and that it received few performances outside of Italy. However, within Italy, the opera was presented in Lucca in the summer of 1843, in Florence and Lucca in the autumn, and during the 1843/44 carnival season it was given in Trieste and Turin, while performances in 1845 were presented in Bologna and later, in the 1845/46 season, in Palermo and Mantua, in Macerata in the summer of 1846 and various other cities well in to the 1850s. Even in the late 1880s, well after Jérusalem had been given, it was presented in Florence.
This "was the first of Verdi's operas to be heard in the United States, at Palmo's Opera House", on 3 March 1847 in New York. In the prior year the opera's British premiere had taken place on 12 May 1846 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, Verdi having been invited there by the theatre's impresario, Benjamin Lumley: ".....I will go to London to write an opera" he had written, but in the end, illness prevented him from doing so.
However, with Italy approaching unification in the 1850s and in the decade following it in 1861, I Lombardi 's call to peoples' patriotic instincts seemed to keep it alive, albeit that, by 1865 when Arrigo Boito saw a performance, he remarked that the opera was beginning to show its age.
20th century and beyond
I Lombardi was presented on 1930 at La Scala in Milan as the season's opening production.
In modern times it has received few performances, although there was a run at both the Royal Opera House in 1976 with José Carreras, Sylvia Sass and Nicola Ghiuselev as well as stagings the same year by the Bilbao-based ABAO company, one which plans to present all of Verdi's operas. The cast included Matteo Manuguerra, Cristina Deutekom, Juan Pons, as well as Carreras.
Carlo Bergonzi and Paul Plishka, along with Cristina Deutekom appeared in the San Diego Opera's short-lived (1979 to 1984) summer "Verdi Festival" in June 1979 and it is claimed that this was a West Coast premiere Over the years, New York audiences have seen the opera presented first by New York City Opera in 1982. Six years later, I Lombardi was given by the Opera Orchestra of New York in a concert version with Aprile Millo in April 1986 and this was followed by the first performances at the Metropolitan Opera as part of its 1993/94 season with Luciano Pavarotti, Aprile Millo, and Samuel Ramey in some of the major roles.
I Lombardi was presented at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo in late 2001 with Dimitra Theodossiou in the cast. The Teatro Regio di Parma produced it in January 2009, also as part of a complete Verdi cycle. The Parma performance is preserved on a DVD. Sarasota Opera's "Verdi Cycle" featured the opera during its 2011 season. In March 2013 the UCOpera company gave four performances of I Lombardi in the Bloomsbury Theatre in London. and on 7 April a concert performance was given by the Opera Orchestra of New York with Angela Meade. Hamburg State Opera presented a production by David Alden as part of a mini-festival of three Verdi operas in October/November 2013.
