March 30, 1282—Easter—the Sicilian Vespers—Sicilians slaughtered the French rulers, more than 10,000 people, who had invaded & conquered a generation back—this was after an earlier Norman conquest which was not quite French, since those were Vikings… So, a perfect memory for national sentiment, & the subject of a Verdi opera!
But first another word on the interesting history—Sicily was caught in the conflict between the Holy Roman Empire & the Papacy; this was partly about authority in Italy, but partly about political authority as such, since the claims of spiritual authority were not simply limited to worship... The Empire was in disarray with the collapse of the Hohenstaufen dynasty; so the Pope invited the brother of the French king—St. Louis, no less—to invade Sicily. Later popes learned to regret putting themselves in the hands of French kings, of course, when the papacy as such was abducted & imprisoned at Avignon. A third power involved in the matter was the king of Aragon, who was invited by the Sicilians to invade in order to get rid of the French—that began another fateful invasion of Italy, by the Spanish, as well as Franco-Spanish mutual invasions.
This is not of interest to the opera, however, which has its own strange story. First, although it is now performed in Italian, it was written in French, in 1855, for the Paris opera, in which Verdi was very interested. Verdi then had the libretto translated into Italian, which required a funny change of setting from Sicily to Portugal, since a Sicilian story didn’t fit the censorship requirements in Italy, apparently. This political impediment, however, was removed when Garibaldi1 invaded Sicily in 1860 and the unification of Italy proceeded. So in 1861, Les Vepres Siciliennes became I Vespri Siciliani.
Now, the story ends with the impending Vespers massacre—but that is only for the audience to know, it’s not part of the plot, which is a doomed love story between the Duchess Elena, an aristocratic figure involved in the coming liberation of Sicily, & Arrigo (Henri in the French version—the Italian name is a corruption), who turns out to be the son of the French governor, Montfort (the name may remind you of English history, since this fellow was the son of Simon de Montfort, the French-turned-English aristocrat involved in the Second Barons’ War).
Here’s the aria Merce, dilette amiche (Thanks, dear friends) sung by Maria Callas:
Here’s the Overture, which has some wonderful passages one could imagine would conjure the frightful events:
Here, finally, is the opera, Muti conducting—there are remarkably few options on youtube, but then again, it’s also remarkable that it’s at all available online, free, at the drop of a finger on a plastic computer button:
Garibaldi also got married that same year, to a young girl of eighteen, who told him after the wedding that she was pregnant with another man’s child. He left her on the spot.