Teaching opera in schools is a minor revolution (with a few risks)

Valditara is right: including opera in sixth-form curricula is a minor revolution. One that could have happened a few decades ago. It is surprising that no one thought of it sooner. Imagine if, across the Alps, Stendhal and Balzac were not studied, and across the Channel, Dickens were forgotten. Here, we had Nievo and Manzoni, granted. But the crowds went wild for Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi. As Gramsci explained, in nineteenth-century Italy, opera fulfilled the role that the novel had taken on in France and England. When D’Annunzio wrote that Verdi ‘gave voice to hopes and sorrows. He wept and loved on behalf of everyone’, this is precisely what he meant. Opera was the true collective narrative through which Italians recognised themselves in passions, struggles, misfortunes, sacrifices and ideals. For teachers, it is a treasure trove of ideas and points for discussion, given that many librettos are drawn from the great works of European literature: Lucia di Lammermoor from Walter Scott, Rigoletto from Victor Hugo, Macbeth from Shakespeare. Here, words that were read in silence elsewhere were set to music. Since then, our country has never again been able to create such a lofty yet popular art form, capable of bringing an entire world to life in a single evening. Even today, few forms of performance manage to portray love, hate, power and death with such intensity and immediacy.

There is, however, a risk. To quote "The Barber of Seville": there is some trickery afoot. I have the utmost confidence in the teachers, but I would not want the most zealous among them to start preaching about Violetta Valéry as a victim of patriarchy and Rigoletto as an example of body shaming. It is laudable that Verdi is being introduced in schools, but it would be disconcerting to see his works emerge in a politically correct guise. This has already occurred in the theatre: in Un ballo in maschera, it has become standard practice to censor the line ‘the filthy blood of the Negroes’ referring to the sorceress Ulrica. If directors and conductors stoop to such obscenities, what lies in store for us in the classrooms of our schools? Pupils would run a mile even from opera, transformed into yet another edifying fable. The very opposite of what it is. At its heart lies an attempt to breathe new life into Greek tragedy, the West’s oldest theatrical form, whose wild spirit remains unyielding to any taming pedagogy. On stage, triumphs and defeats follow one another, along with screams and fury; characters who are extreme in their generosity and treachery; and conflicts in which being on the right side serves no purpose. Dumped by her lover, who has chosen a younger woman over her, Norma plans to kill her children, just like Medea. Bellini draws from this embittered soul a song that radiates moonlight. Let us hope that no one covers pupils’ ears with a lesson on ‘toxic masculinity’ and ‘responsible parenting’.