LE «EDIZIONI DISTRUTTE» E IL SIGNIFICATO DEI CORI OPERISTICI NEL RISORGIMENTO

There has been considerable scholarly controversy in recent years about the signifcance of operatic choruses during the 1840s, particularly those by Verdi. This article examines the question by focusing on Verdi's activities after the Cinque giornate of 1848 (the composition of La battaglia di Legnano and the Inno popohre («Suona la tromba» , to a text by Goffredo Mameli). It invokes the work of the historian Alfredo Banti on the «morphology of the national discourse» to place the work of musicians in a broader intellectual and artistic context. Most important, it examines a significant group of more than fifty hymns and choruses written in the period leading up to the Cinque giornate (1846 through '48) and those written or published by Ricordi and other Milanese firms during the period in which there was no Austrian censorship. When the Austrians returned after August 1848, they compelled Ricordi to destroy the plates from which these compositions had been printed. Most of them, however, were already in circulation and it is possible to reconstruct much of the repertory. A consideration of these hymns and choruses provides an indispensable tool for interpreting the history of operatic choruses during the same period.