Fly, my thoughts (Va pensiero)

January 3rd through 8th songs were a mix of classical opera and contemporary hits from around the time my parents met.

For as long as I can remember, my mother's favorite operas were Aida, Madame Butterfly, and Nabucco.

Two of those are much more famous than the other. I was able to take her to see both Aida and Madame Butterfly; I found a DVD recording of Nabucco for her. It was performed at L'Arena in Verona, where we had been together, so that was pretty cool, but it just doesn't get performed much now.

Madame Butterfly is by Giacomo Puccini and I think there are some things that are different about her love for that, so that will be a separate post.

Aida and Nabucco are both by Giuseppe Verdi. I think a lot of my mother's love for opera came from her father, and that is especially true for Nabucco, with its chorus, "Va Pensiero."

She always told me it was important to him because it was an anthem for Italians when they were under Austrian rule. As I was thinking about songs that were important to her, I started to wonder more about that. 

I was pretty sure it wasn't all of Italy, but maybe just the North. A little research indicated that it had to have been the kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, which existed from 1815 to 1866, when they were finally able to join with the rest of Italy, after first being ceded to France. (Italian unification was a lengthy and somewhat complicated process). 

We are from the Veneto, so this is the area. 

My grandparents were old, but not old enough to have been under Austrian rule.

Grandfather's father, Pietro, would have been 14 when they regained their independence. However, his father Domenico was five when the kingdom was created. Domenico died when Pietro was only 10. I don't know if he died in the fighting, but I can believe that there were some strong emotions tied into that song from an opera introduced in 1842 (just over one hundred years before my mother was born).

Shortly before its composition, Verdi had lost his wife and children to illnesses. He swore he would never compose again. The director of La Scala made him take the libretto, written by Temistocle Solera. Originally resisting looking, Verdi opened it to "Va Pensiero" based on the 137th Psalm.

The music came back to him, and he wrote again. 

Perhaps Solera should get more credit. In opera the libretto is often considered unimportant. As it was, Solera had already written one opera with Verdi before Nabucco and wrote three more in the next few years after. Still, the song is mostly associated with Verdi; onlookers in Milan began singing it spontaneously at his funeral procession and Toscanini conducted a version at Verdi's re-internment.

There was a powerful love for that song, and it is a powerful story of recovery from loss. I still don't know that I would have blogged about it if not for two other things that came up in my research. 

One is that various scholars dispute that Verdi meant for the song to be about independence. 

By all accounts, he was a very private man; there is not a proclamation of his determination. He was nonetheless associated with the move for independence and unification (The Risorgimento). The next opera that Verdi and Solera did together is also considered to have patriotic themes. 

Probably a coincidence. 

In addition, reading about Lombardy-Venetia, I found this:

"Austrian General Karl von Schonhals wrote in his memoires that the Austrian administration enjoyed the support of the rural population and the middle class educated at the universities of Pavia and Padua, who were able to pursue careers in the administration."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Lombardy%E2%80%93Venetia 

His explanation is that the nobles mistrusted the Austrians because they got positions through their nobility rather than their education, so it was the nobles who were into independence, not the common people.

Okay, as far as I can tell, Garibaldi was not aristocratic, but born to a merchant family and had some education. That should make him exactly the pro-Austrian type, yet somehow he became the key leader in the Risorgimento. He did at times work with monarchists, and certainly a movement can become more popular after it succeeds... but I think von Schonhals is projecting there.

As the granddaughter of a railroad man who was the son of a farmer, we say that song was about independence and yearning for freedom. 

That may not even matter that much, except that people lying about the motivations and the beliefs of those who oppose them, always having a way to justify themselves, feels relevant right now.

"If you are silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it." -- Zora Neale Hurston

I would be reluctant to use a quote that serious if not for the murder of Renee Good.

Of course, this administration lies more about how you deserved the killing than that you enjoyed it, but they lie a lot.

They also say history is written by the victors, so maybe it doesn't matter what an Austrian general thought after they lost the territory. Maybe the reason the Italians remember it differently is because they finally did become free.

It feels important to express ourselves now. Speak, write, yes, complain, but do not leave the lies unanswered. 

That can have an effect generations later.