Anna Giust: The Reception of G. Verdi
In my talk, I will include some of the observations I have included in the monograph La forza dell’amore, dell’odio e del destino: Verdi e l’opera italiana in Russia, currently in press for the National Institute for Verdi’s Studies (Parma).
The focus of the talk will be the reception of Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La forza del destino, commissioned by Imperial Theatres of Saint Petersburg in 1861, and staged in November 1862 with a great financial effort. At this time – after being present for a long time in the theatres of the capital city, and acted as the principal Crown propaganda tool – Italian opera had reached its peak of approval at the Russian court. The reception of the work was, however, contrasted: some newspapers broadcast a sensational outcome, others cause quite a bit of controversy.
We will explore its reasons and arguments, searching for them in the publications of the time. Wi will dig into the stratification of critical positions that had accumulated in reference to Italian work in Russia over the decades, since its arrival in the Russian Empire in the previous century, on the background of the political and cultural evolution of the country.
Anna Giust is Associate Professor of Russian studies at the University of Verona (Italy). She has previously taught Music Theory, History of Musical Instruments, and Russian Language at the University Ca’ Foscari of Venice. Her educational history includes a PhD in Visual and Performing arts (Towards Russian Opera: Growing National Consciousness in 18th-Century Operatic Repertoire, 2012), a master’s degree in Musicology (2008), a diploma in classical guitar (2005), and a master’s degree in Russian Studies (2004). Her main field of research is Russian music, notably opera. She has authored two monographs (“Ivan Susanin” di Catterino Cavos, Un’opera russa prima dell’Opera russa, Turin 2011, Cercando l’opera russa, La formazione di una coscienza nazionale nel teatro musicale del Settecento, Milan 2014), as well as articles on Russian opera from the 18th to the 20th centuries. Her research approaches include music nationalism, inter-semiotic translation, music mobility towards and from Russia, and the reception of Italian opera in Russia. In 2024 Giust has published a critical edition of the opera Ivan Susanin by C. Cavos and A. Shakhovskoy (1815). Her monograph La forza dell’amore, dell’odio e del destino, Verdi e l’opera italiana in Russia is presently in press.
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