ABSTRACT
Abramo Basevi, shrewd nineteenth-century student of Giuseppe Verdi's operas, began the chapter on Ernani in his Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi with some provocative general observations; they may serve as their beginning as well. Basevi's assertions—the connections he pointed out between Verdi and Gaetano Donizetti and between both composers and Victor Hugo—do not, to be sure, come as a surprise. Hugo's artistic and political intentions were manifested, in different ways and with varying success, in the group of dramas to which Basevi alluded— works like Cromwell, Hernani, Le Roi s'amuse, Lucrece Borgia, and Angelo. The opera is altogether unprecedented in its self-conscious application of Hugo's ideals to music-drama. Felice Romani's fidelity to Hugo's drama—his unwillingness to mutilate the action so as to fit it to the straightjacket of operatic convention—demanded a new formal freedom from the composer. Donizetti realized Hugo's dramatic ideals in Lucrezia through a new subtlety and breadth of musical characterization.
