Verdi was not a religious man, though he said of Nabucco, the opera that began his musical odyssey, that his love for the Bible influenced his decision to attempt a work based on the story of Nebuchadnezzar. After his early years as a liturgical musician in Busseto and the tragic deaths of his wife and children Verdi would not enter a church. That it may have been the clergy rather than God with whom Verdi was most displeased is evidenced in one of his most famous remarks, "Cauto i preti": Beware of priests. In his operatic works sacerdotal authority figures are often malevolent. The war mongering priests of Aïda and the Grand Inquisitor of Don Carlo come immediately to mind. Power-mongering and vindictive clerics are so conspicuous in Verdi's operas that they have to be included in any list of recurring themes in the librettos he set to music.

One exceptional man of faith had Verdi's admiration, the poet Manzoni. Manzoni's death occasioned Verdi's revisiting the Requiem Mass he had begun at Rossini's death, which was finally performed in 1875 at the Basilica San Marco and Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Verdi and Manzoni met only once, in 1868, when Clarina Maffei took Verdi to meet the writer at his home in Milan. Awestruck, Verdi wrote to her afterwards: "What can I say to you about Manzoni? How can I describe the extraordinary, indefinable sensation the presence of that Saint, as you call him, produced in me? I would have knelt in front of him, if one could adore a man. They say that we must not do that, although on the altar we worship many saints who have neither Manzoni's gifts nor his virtues... When you see him, kiss his hand for me and tell him about all my reverence."

Besides the villainous clerics, other themes that recur in Verdi’s dramas include: the fate motif of La Forza del Destino, which proves invincible despite much intercessory prayer; the theme of imperial conflict violating innocent love; the theme of tragic jealousy or a backfiring vendetta; that of ambition as a force of destruction; the family feud; and numerous individual acts that affect empires. Verdi took great care in the selection of topics and the details of his librettos. He studied the dramas of Shakespeare and composed three operas based on them. The climactic theme of all Verdi's work, which merges the others in one horrible crescendo, is that found in Otello, wherein Iago, whose creed proclaims a God of cruelty, abets the passion of jealousy in a man of reason and civilization, who, on the basis of trivial circumstantial evidence, finally succumbs and murders his innocent Christian wife. In Shakespeare, Desdemona's plea is for time to say a single prayer before she dies. Verdi's opera interpolates an aria, the famous musical anomaly of her Ave Maria, which is the pivotal event in the final act.

Nabucco
Verdi's first big success, Nabucco, embodies most of the dramatic themes that have been mentioned. The opera is set in the period of the Assyrian conquest in the Hebrew Bible and conflates the story of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco) from 2nd Kings. Fenena, whom the Jews hold hostage, is the daughter of Nebuchadnezzar. She is in love with Ismael, nephew of the king of Jerusalem and leader of the military. As in Aïda, I Lombardi, and other works, the lovers are citizens of opposing powers in a conflict of empires. Fenena's imposter sister Abigaille is ambitious. Her ill intent is complicated by the fact that she also loves Ismael. When Nebuchadnezzar announces that he is not only king but God, having overthrown both Baal and Jehovah, he is literally thunderstruck and descends into madness. Nabucco thus incapacitated, Abigaille is nearly able to succeed in a plot by which she usurps the throne and attempts to rule in his stead.

Zaccaria, the spiritual leader of the Israelites, prays for the ability to persuade the Assyrians to put aside their false idols and turn to the God of Israel. He assists toward this end by converting Fenena who frees Hebrew prisoners and as a result comes perilously close to being executed for treason. In this opera by a composer known for anti-clericalism there is a surprising amount of nobility in characters who espouse the Hebrew religion. While the fate of the Jewish slaves is still in jeopardy, they sing the famous chorus Va' Pensiero, echoing the words of Zaccaria who predicts they will overcome captivity with the Lord's help. Their thoughts ascend "on golden wings" to their lost homeland in an anthem that became the patriotic theme of the Italian fight for unity and independence, the Risorgimento. At the time of its first performances this chorus was given an encore despite prohibitions by Austrian authorities of all such displays of solidarity.

In this conflict of warring kingdoms and the threat posed by Abigaille's evil ambition, God intervenes. Nabucco, in desperation, humbles himself before the God of Israel, and his madness abates. Executioners stand ready to do away with Zaccaria and his flock. The old man hails Fenena as a martyr, and she asks the Lord to receive her into heaven. But Nabucco arrives and orders the statue of Baal destroyed. By supernatural power, it falls. Abigaille takes poison and confesses her crimes, urging that Ismaele and Fenena be reunited. Dying, she prays to the God of Israel for pardon. Nabucco tells the Israelites they may return to their native land and rebuild their temple. He himself now serves Jehovah. The crowd acknowledges a miracle and renders praises to God.

This plot is something of an early exception in the long progression of Verdi’s tragedies. The chorus Va' Pensiero with its strains of transcendent hope in time of oppression, both the oppression of the Hebrews in Assyrian captivity and that of Italians under the domination of Austrian troupes, became part of Italian history and ethos. It stands in a tradition of abhorrence for domination of the powerless that goes back to the Hebrew prophets who implanted it in Western civilization forever. A passage from Amos is of the essence: “Thus says the Lord: ‘For three transgressions of Israel, and for four, I will not revoke the punishment; because they sell the righteous for silver, and the needy for a pair of shoes. They trample the head of the poor into the dust of the earth, and turn aside the way of the afflicted.’” It has taken many centuries for some of the most obvious implications of these ideals to be realized in Western culture.

Of course the Austrians understood that operatic encores of choruses like Va’ Pensiero encouraged the ideals of freedom and human dignity under an unjust administration. People fired by the prophetic illumination of great art are not willing to submit to power for very long. The Italian Resorgimento succeeded, and Verdi was one of its heros. When Leontyne Price sang her last performance of Aïda at the Metropolitan Opera in New York there was a thirty minute ovation after O Patria Mia. The universal expression of patriotic devotion in this aria is particularly moving when sung by a great grand daughter of slaves in a country that is exceptional for having ended slavery. Slavery, of course, existed in many cultures, but the logic of Western civilization made it possible to end the horrible institution on the basis of a religiously grounded abolitionist movement.

Like the Austrians who censored Va Pensiero, directors making a travesty of Verdi’s works today understand very well that postmodern interpretations of Verdi will help quell any stirrings of life among the populace. Meaning in art has become the enemy of a coterie of managers, directors, and musicians supported by big arts money. Fashionable Euro-trash helps maintain the status quo. When O Patria Mia is sung, a progressive director might project Mickey Mouse cartoons on the backdrop behind the stage. What are you going to do with a crackpot like that? Well, until recently she was artistic director at the San Francisco Opera. In the politically correct ideology, we are to understand Western culture as the oppressive strictures of an unjust hegemony. Of course, if Western Civilization can be deconstructed, the intelligentsia will step in to fill the void. Justifications of oligarchy can arise from two separate and antithetical premises: one of them, religious dogma, is being derogated in order to prepare the way for another, nihilism.

The freedom to think independently or even intelligently can be managed among aesthetes as well as among rock-culture enthusiasts. Just maintain the freak show at both ends of the arts continuum—sentimentality and shock for the masses and schlock for the aesthetes who go to the opera. The stated and extensively documented intent of the mafia that dictates fashion in most contemporary art is to humiliate and belittle anybody who still holds certain truths to be self evident, while the liberating truths themselves are castigated as oppressive. Along this trajectory are the outrageous statements of Karl Stockhausen after the atrocities at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. He called the attack the greatest work of art in the history of the cosmos. In a world with one remaining superpower there are yet many real issues to be confronted beyond the politically correct nostrums about the imperfections of the West. If these injustices are to be eliminated, it will be on the basis of truths in the Western canon, not the execrable nihilism of the intelligentsia.

I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata
After the success of Nabucco, Verdi received a commission to write I Lombardi for La Scala. The libretto is again full of religious themes, some of which drew the attention of the Archbishop of Milan who brought down the Chief of Police on the production as soon as the opera was announced. The treatment of the Crusade in I Lombardi casts the matter of a holy war against Muslims in a very bad light. Innocent lovers are again on opposing sides of the conflict. Oronte, a Muslim, is on the verge of adopting Giselda's Christian faith, but he is mortally wounded in the assault of the Crusaders. In one of the Verdi's most famous death scenes he is baptized and dies in Giselda's arms. The Hermit who performs the unction is himself a penitent embroiled in a family feud in which he has mistakenly killed his father in an attempt on his brother's life. That Christians are not regarded as morally superior to Muslims is clear in the parallel between Christian hatred of brother for brother and the holy war against Muslims. In fact, the Hermit's despised brother is the commanding officer of the Crusade. Giselda is his daughter. Her love for Oronte is possible only because she was for a time a captive of the Infidels who generally treated her with kindness with the exception of a few jealous women in the harem of the Potentate. There are hate choruses among Christians echoed by Muslims calling down Allah's vengeance on the invading army. A procession of pilgrims in the Valley of Jehoshaphat sings a devotional chorus of Risorgimento sympathies, which are immediately overshadowed by the entrance of the desolate Giselda.

The moral equivalence doctrine is now an article of faith among right thinking people, but in Verdi's time it must have been scandalous to find virtue among those of an alien culture and implications of atrocities in soldiers of the Cross. In the first scene of the final act Giselda is granted a vision of Oronte among the blessed in a presumably Christian heaven, but there is more than a hint of irony in the conclusion of the opera. Scene two opens with another great Risorgimento chorus of longing, this time in the Crusader camp. The soldiers are preparing for a final assault on Jerusalem. They will be led into battle by the Hermit and his brother, still mutually unaware of their identities as family rivals. Scene three takes place after the assault has begun. The Hermit has been carried into camp wounded. At the mention of his brother's name he comes out of his delirium muttering of parricide. Giselda joins him in begging for his brother's forgiveness. His last request is for sight of the Holy City over whose walls the banner of the Cross can be seen flying.

Ernani
The Medieval chivalry of Charlemagne towers over the events of Verdi's fifth opera Ernani just as Charlemagne's tomb looms over the scene of conspirators plotting in the vault of Aix-la-Chapelle. The legendary Charlemagne conquered and Christianized Bavaria and Saxony, shielded Italy from the raiding Saracens, and strengthened the defenses of France against the expanding Moors of Spain. His massive evangelizations involved forced baptisms and slaughter, but he was also the patron of artists, poets, and liturgical musicians. In the medieval world view only King Arthur compares to Charlemagne as heroic exponent of chivalry, wielding might for right, with reverence and nobles oblige. The plot of Ernani turns on a conspiracy to assassinate the reigning king, heir apparent to Charlemagne's dynasty, on the threshold of his coronation. Ernani plots to avenge the death of his father at the hand of this flawed successor to the throne. Against the background of chivalry the strange code of honor in this story connotes decadence of the ideals epitomized by Charlemagne.

Ernani and his henchmen cannot succeed in their plot to assassinate the king, only in entangling Ernani in an oath that costs him his life, and that, on his wedding night. Elvira, who loves Ernani, is desired both by the king and an aged nobleman, Silva, to whom she is betrothed. She is awaiting the arrival of Ernani, intent on elopement, but the king arrives intent on taking her away with him. Elvira resists, Ernani arrives, and Silva, Elvira's betrothed, comes in challenging both of them. The king's identity is revealed by a squire, Silva bows, and the king provides an alibi for Ernani, saving the life of his would be assassin.

With the collapse of the plot, Ernani is in retreat disguised as a pilgrim. He is offered refuge by Silva. The old man discovers him with Elvira, again plotting escape, but the king is now at the gate demanding custody of him. By an ancient code of hospitality Silva cannot surrender a guest in his home despite the ill will that he now has for him. He conceals Ernani. When the king is gone, he again challenges him to a duel, but the foes realize they have a common enemy in the king. They revive the conspiracy. Ernani now owes Silva his life and pledges to surrender it when Silva sounds the death knell on his hunting horn. The conspirators draw lots to decide who shall kill Carlo. Ernani is chosen. Silva asks Ernani to cede him the right, in exchange for his life, but is refused. A cannon shot interrupts the conspirators, announcing the coronation.

The king appears in celebration off his imperial election. Elvira is among the guests. She pleads for Ernani's life, and Carlo magnanimously assents. He pardons Ernani, restores his property, and gives Elvira to him as bride. Such generosity of spirit is in accord with the nobles oblige incumbent upon him in the tradition of the great Charlemagne. But this drama will not culminate in manner fitting to Arthurian legends. Ernani is a victim of the bastardization of chivalric ideals. Silva appears at the wedding, and Elvira's pleas of no avail in undoing the code of honor that binds Ernani. When the lovers withdraw, their joy is short lived. Silva sounds his hunting horn. Ernani is bound by his oath. He plunges his dagger into his heart and dies. Honor is both blessing and curse.

Before we conclude that all this is medieval hokum, it is important to consider what chivalry was and what significant vestiges of it remain in our culture. Like many elements of the Western ethos, chivalry is an amalgam of pagan virtues and Christianity. Unsavory practices like forced baptisms leave the impression that Christianity obliterated the ideals of conquered peoples. The least familiarity with the customs, literature, artifacts, and churches of Christianized regions is sufficient to dispel this error. Codes of valor necessary in—it has to be said—less civilized periods of history had to be reconciled with—again, it has to be said—the feminizing virtues of Christianity. Woden is a warlike God. The Sermon on the Mount enjoins a code of a very different order. The Fascists of the 1930s certainly understood this and were quick to seize some of Wagner's material for their purposes. When the church was true to its own ideals, it affirmed the humanity of all people as created in the image of God. The code of chivalry swept over Europe as a massive cultural revolution. It adapted the indigenous virtues it found to a code that originated with a man who preached good news to the poor, fed the hungry, healed the sick, and conversed seriously with women. Chivalry was so pervasive because it incorporated valor, but prevented it from devolving toward atrocity. The Christian bible has it own aggressive virtues, which are as necessary to humanity as humility and grace. These things are part of the native endowment of the human race, not inventions of one religion or another. The code of chivalry has been a cultural force for more than a millennium. When Cervantes set out to ridicule it, he found that he was himself being converted by its ineluctable nobility.

I Due Foscari
Just eight months after the first production of Ernani in Venice, I Due Foscari opened in Rome. Verdi's sojourn in Venice apparently left him with some impression of the history of intrigue in the maritime city of the Doges. This adaptation of a play by the English poet Lord Byron turns on a conflict between an aged Doge and the implacable Council of Ten. It is a political balance of terror of the sort Verdi will revisit in many subsequent operas. The conflict is based on a feud between families and manifests in the case of Jacopo, the Doge's son. Jacopo has been accused of murder. The evidence is insufficient to convict him, but he is exiled. The sequence of events in the opera begins with his return to contest the decision and declare his innocence. His father, the aged Doge, trusts in Jocopo's innocence, but cannot legally pardon him. The incorruptible nature of Venetian justice depends on the Doge's willingness to let the Council of Ten decide the fate of his son, but Loredano, the presiding officer of the Council, is of a clan that hates the Foscari family and the mortal enemy of the Doge. Jacopo's wife, Lucrezia, calls down heaven's vengeance on the perpetrators of the evils against the Foscari family.

The council announces clemency in the murder charge but reaffirms its original sentence of exile for Jacopo. He pleads for pardon in the presence of his father the Doge and his wife and children who cannot accompany him in exile. The Doge can only watch this legal procedure in the Venetian court with resignation. Something of Verdi's sense of the implacable will of God is to be heard in the music of I Due Foscari. Lucrezia's begging to be allowed to accompany her husband in exile falls on the deaf ears of the Council. Jocopo's departure takes place in the Square of Saint Mark's Cathedral during carnival. His song of farewell turns to despair as he recognizes the family foe Loredano in the crowd. The Doge, in his private chambers, sings movingly of the fate that has bereft him of family, leaving him to die alone. When Jacopo's innocence is proved by the confession of the real murderer, it is too late to avert tragedy. Jacopo has died on the departure of the barge taking him away from Venice. The Council of Ten then demands the Doge's abdication on grounds of age and bereavement. He at first defies them, reminding them of when he asked to abdicate years ago and they constrained him to serve until death. They press their demands with threats, and he finally relents. He sinks down an exhausted and broken man watched by the Council and his arch enemy Loredano.

This is a far cry from the romance at the conclusion of Nabucco where lovers are reunited and the priest Zaccaria promises glory to his convert Nabucco, the former oppressor of the Jews. It is hard not to imagine that Verdi's own anguish at the deaths of his wife and two children is somehow recapitulated in the sorrow of Francesco Foscari, his son Jacopo, and his daughter-in-law Lucrezia whose pleas for the mercy of the Council and the retribution of God are of no effect.

Giovanna d’Arco
Verdi’s setting of the Joan of Arc legend was shaped more by Friedrich Schiller’s play than by the Roman Catholic ethos of Verdi’s time and place. Joan’s concourse with angels and demons notwithstanding, the spiritual battle in this opera involves the morale of the French in resisting the incursions of the English. Though the librettist Temistocle Solera maintained that his work was original, he follows Schiller in all essentials. He reduced the major characters to three and simplified the plot for theatrical immediacy. The poetry of Schiller’s play is lost but the pathos remains. Nobody could transform the story of Joan of Arc to circumvent its tragic conclusion, and this plot is in accord with Schiller’s conception of tragic art. Schiller’s idealism attests a freedom of the will against historical events and even death. A reading of his philosophical piece, On the Sublime, will discover the poet’s contention that this freedom is to be attained in a kind of rational transcendence apart from the injustices of human history and the random forces of nature.

In this opera Joan is compelled by her angelic visions to eschew worldly love in order to champion the cause of France against the English. Her mission is to inspire Charles the VII (Carlo) and reinvigorate the army at low ebb in the 100 years war, a cause in which she succeeds, but Carlo falls in love with her, leading to the spiritual conflict that makes it impossible for her to defend her purity when, strangely, her father Giacomo becomes convinced of her concourse with Satan or his minions. He betrays her by inciting French superstitions against her powers as liberator and delivers her to the English. When he discovers that she has not consummated her love for Carlo and that her heart is pure in the cause of France, he has himself gone over to fight for the English. Since he is Joan’s custodian, he can release her to return to the battlefield for another rout of the English, a fray in which she is mortally wounded. When she returns on a stretcher under French standards, she revives to sing of heavenly visions and a golden cloud transporting her spirit beyond earthly struggles. Joan has lived to see Carlo’s coronation in the cathedral at Rheims. The English are in retreat. Her visionary mandate is fulfilled. Just as in its origin at a forest shrine of the Virgin Mary, its conclusion is set in the resplendent imagery of Roman Catholic metaphysics, but the demythologized impact of this on Verdi’s audience probably tended more in the direction of patriotic idealism than Christian otherworldliness.

The conflict inherent in Joan’s acquiescence to Carlo’s love against her concession to a chorus of angels to forego worldly attachments is made even more emotionally wrenching by her father’s betrayal on the basis of his sincere conviction of her sacrilege with evil spirits. This added to the climactic otherworldly resolution of the resulting tragedy pushes the limits of credulity for modern audiences. How is God served by the demand that Joan renounce human love in exchange for supernatural valor on the battlefield? It seems an antithesis more characteristic of medieval monasticism than Enlightenment idealism, but it is no more extreme than the requirements of Schiller’s belief in a freedom that is attained beyond the irreconcilable contradictions of reason and the random forces of nature. Sublime art, in Schiller’s view, is a rehearsal in the human spirit for the kind of nobility required to act on the highest conceivable good in spite of personal cost and regardless of the likelihood that the ideal will ever be realized.

Schiller’s literary theory is of a completely different order than contemporary academic deconstruction of texts for the class oppression not only in their imagery and meaning, but in the very syntax of the language. Schiller’s plays gave precedence to poetic truth over historical fact in an effort to inspire the kind of intellectual freedom that patriots require in order to sacrifice their lives in the fight for actual freedom. When Solera economized The Maid of Orleans for maximum dramatic impact, what seems to have survived is the pathos of detachment from self interest and even rational understanding in the interest of a noble cause.

Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco was composed in four months for La Scala while the composer was also rehearsing a new production of I Lombardi. The distinction of the soprano role insured that the score would not be forgotten despite neglect after problems in the first production. The opening was a success, but Verdi did not attend. He was so angry he vowed never to compose another work for La Scala, a resolution he kept for nearly twenty five years.