Toye notes for example, that one series of harmonies "looks positively frightening on paper" but "must have sounded most effective." "Alzira" was taken out of performance in the 1840s and not revived until the Rome Opera mounted a production in 1967. Surrounding it in the Verdi chronology of 1844-46 are three other works composed under severe time pressure, all of which are flawed: "I due Foscari," "Giovanna d'Arco" and "Attila." These four operas all had their premieres within a period of 18 months, which meant too much writing on deadline ("Alzira" was composed in 20 days), even for a composer as energetic and productive as Verdi.Įxcept for Verdi himself, the opera's best-known critics have based their impressions on the published vocal score-not actual performance, which is always the acid test for Verdi. "Alzira" does not have the excuses of youth and inexperience it comes after such accepted works as "Nabucco," "I Lombardi" and "Ernani." But it is from a period during which the composer suffered from overwork and ill health. The usually admiring Francis Toye may be taken as a spokesman for this chorus of naysayers: "To my mind, Alzira is undoubtedly the worst of Verdi's operas," he writes in his biography of Verdi. It is the most unequivocally harsh criticism Verdi ever uttered about his own work, and it has been echoed and elaborated by nearly every Verdi commentator since then.
His judgment stood unchallenged for more than a century during which the opera was denounced but not heard. GIUSEPPE VERDI'S eighth opera, "Alzira," inspired Verdi himself to write, "That one is really ugly" ("Quella e proprio brutta"), in a letter to a friend in his later years.
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