While Swedish had continued to be the language of the educated and of the middle class, Russian repression aroused strong nationalist feelings and initiated a revival of the Finnish language. But in 1870 Tsar Alexander II gradually began whittling away the Finns’ privileges and autonomy. When Sweden relinquished Finland to the Russian Empire in 1809, it became an autonomous duchy with significant control over its own affairs.
The pattern was “invented” by Rossini as a way to get the audience worked up to begin the opera proper. The conclusion, however, is an obligatory rousing allegro, an age-old device involving a catchy tune, repeated with increasingly more instruments and volume. The development section centers on the duet theme, now combined with the death motive of the introduction. The theme is taken from the Act 3 duet between father and son. The new theme represents the essential conflict of the Sicilian hero, Arrigo, who discovers during the course of the opera that he is the illegitimate son of Guy de Monfort, the leader of the French oppressors. The orchestra then bursts into the Allegro, the music of the massacre itself, which also acts as a bridge passage to the second theme. This motive persists as an undercurrent to the first theme, from the Act 1 aria of the heroine, Duchess Elena, in which she cryptically conveys to the Sicilians that their fate is in their hands. The introduction begins with a short stuttering three-note death motive that Verdi had already used in the last act of La traviata and the earlier Macbeth. The composer uses important themes from the opera to set the mood of the work as a whole and symbolize its important dramatic and political messages. It follows the typical structure for the genre, a slow introduction plus an allegro in modified sonata form. The overture is one of Verdi’s most ambitious. Naturally, there is a cross-cultural love story between the Duchess Elena (sister of Duke Frederick of Austria) and Arrigo, a Sicilian patriot. But perhaps because of its unflattering portrayal of the French, it has survived primarily in its subsequent Italian version as I vespri siciliani. The opera initially met with great popular acclaim in France. Les vêpres siciliennes, as the Paris version was called, was a five-act extravaganza with massive choral parts and ballet (an essential component of French opera of the mid-nineteenth century, which Verdi despised).
The title refers to the ringing of the bells for Vespers, the signal for the rebellion. The opera dramatizes the historic uprising of 1282, in which Sicilian patriots massacred some 2,000 of their French oppressors. Overture (Sinfonia) to I vespri sicilianiĪlthough Verdi originally composed I vespri siciliani in 1855 for the Paris Opera, the subject matter took up the theme of Italian nationalism so close to the composer’s heart.
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