'The Firmness of a Female Hand' in "The Corsair" and "Il corsaro" Author(s): Heather Hadlock Reviewed work(s): Source:

Cambridge Opera Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1/2, Primal Scenes: Proceedings of a Conference Held at the University of California, Berkeley, 30 November-2 December, 2001 (Mar., 2002), pp. 47-57 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3878282 . Accessed: 07/02/2012 16:21
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Cambridge Opera Journal,14, 1 & 2, 47-57 DOL- 10.1017/S0954586702000046

(0 2002 CambridgeUniversity Press

'The firmness of a female hand' in TheCorsair and Il corsaro

HEATHER HADLOCK The dramaticclimax of Byron's poem TheCorsair comes when Gulnare, a harem slave, seizes a weapon to free herself and Conrad,the piratewhom she loves, from the prison of their common enemy the Pasha Seyd. Gulnare declares:
If thou wilt perish, I will fall with thee. My life, my love, my hatred - all below Are on this cast - Corsair!'tis but a blow! Without it flight were idle - how evade His sure pursuit?- my wrongs too unrepaid, My youth disgraced,the long, long wasted years, One blow shall cancel with our future fears; But since the dagger suits thee less than brand, I'll try the firmness of a female hand.'

This is an example of the aesthetic of gesture that Gilles de Van has analyzedas The fundamental to Verdi's style, particularlyin the early operas like II corsaro. is a physicalmovement - Gulnare'sclaspingof the dagger- but also a moral gesture or ethicalact, a moment of action that at once revealsand transformsthe character.2 Although the usual defining gesture for a Verdi heroine - her 'primal scene' - is turns on a different,less familiaraction. In the climacticAct self-sacrifice,I! corsaro III duet Gulnaradoes not sacrificeherself, but ratherrescues herself and her lover. Still more unusual is the fact that both Byron's and Verdi's heroines resort to violence; when Conradrefuses to kill the sleeping Seyd, Gulnaredoes it herself. In taking up a weapon, the woman steps out of the passive femininitythat the opera has established as her proper sphere, crossing over into the masculine realm of action. and Although this transgressionoccurs in TheCorsair in two Italianoperas based on it, it has a strikinglydifferentethical valence in each work. In Byron's dungeon scene, with its overtones of Gothic horror, Gulnare's rescuing action almost corsaro destroys Conrad'sspiriteven as it saves him. But IK operasby Giovanni Pacini and Verdi present the female rescuer in a more positive light. Pacini's version (1831-32) departs completely from Byron, eliminating the dungeon scene, the murder, and Gulnare's rescue of Conrad. Gulnare's gesture, however, is not omitted; ratherthe opera displacesit on to another female characterand situation. Verdi's opera, while it follows Byron's plot closely, endows Gulnare'sgesture with positive revolutionaryforce and shelters the hero from its 'unmanning'effects.
Poetical are Works, 1 This and all subsequent quotations from TheCorsair from Byron, Complete ed. FrederickPage, rev. John Jump (Oxford, 1970), 293-303. 2 Gilles de Van, Verdi's Theater: Dramathrough Music,trans. Gilda Roberts (Chicago, Creating 1998), 88-91.

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It may be useful to introduce a discussion of gender transgressionwith a review of Romantic gender norms, which TheCorsair establishesprimarily through sharply masculineand feminine spheres of action. Both on the pirates'island distinguished and in Seyd's palace, women reside in enclosed spaces while men range freely and widely. Medora, Conrad's beloved, lives cloistered away in a tower where she perpetuallywaits for Conrad'svisits. Medora epitomizes a feminine condition of enforced passivity,being limited to expression - soliloquies, prayersand laments ratherthan action. While Conradis away, she sings out her window and listens for messages from the waves. The open sea and the ships, predictably,are masculine When in desperationMedoraventures down from her tower to watch for territory. Conrad on the shore, the very ocean seems to object to her leaving her proper sphere: 'the spray ... dash'd her garmentsoft, and warn'd away' (III, 79-80). The poem's other female protagonist, the pasha's favourite slave Gulnare,is of course kept in a harem. But when, during a raid on Seyd's palace, Conrad rescues Gulnare from the burning harem, the poem's boundary between masculine and feminine spaces begins to breakdown. This is the first step in Gulnare'sliberation:althoughthe raid fails and she remains Seyd's slave, her encounter with Conrad has freed her spirit to rebel. After this she rejects feminine passivity and enclosure, visiting Conrad secretly,stealinga weapon, plotting their escape, and ultimatelykillingSeyd. Gulnare in short 'unsexes' herself, moving into the masculine condition that the poem has associated with Conrad himself: she is fierce, armed, embarkingon a campaignof liberation and retribution.Meanwhile, the imprisoned Conrad is in the condition that the poem has established as 'feminine':enclosed, immobilized, and unable to act in the face of danger. (The stage directions for Verdi's opera even specify that the prison is connected to the harem - both spaces under the despot's control.) Now he, like the poem's abandoned and enslaved women, is 'bound and fix'd in fetter'd solitude / To pine, the prey of every changing mood ...' (III, 222-3). Indeed it is Conrad's immobility and despair that creates a space for Gulnare's action. And although she hopes to restore Conrad's masculine vigour by her liberatingact, it drives him deeper into psychological and physicalpassivity. The unhealthy symbiosis between this 'unmanned'hero and 'unsexed' heroine drives the action and creates the horrific atmosphere of the dungeon scene. The poem strikesits most nightmarishnote when Gulnarereturns after Seyd's murder. Initiallyshe had seemed to Conrad 'a guardiansaint / and beauteous' (III, 274-5), but now she inspires a dread and disgust that drive out gratitude.To the appalled Conrad,the mere sight of Gulnare'shairfallingforwardover her face and shoulders evokes the spectacle of her leaning over to stab the Pasha. The bloodstain on her forehead, token of her murderousviolence, unmans him:
... ne'er from strife, captivity,remorse From all his feelings in their inmost force So thrill'd,so shudder'devery creeping vein As now they froze before that purple stain. That spot of blood, that light but guilty streak, Had banish'd all the beauty from her cheek! (III, 422-7)

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The 'purple stain' is evidence of a gender transgressionthat shocks even Conrad, who is inured to bloodshed in the course of his normal activities:'Blood he had view'd, could view unmoved - but then / It flow'd in combat, or was shed by men!' (III, 428-9). Even after Gulnarehas freed him, he does not resume his masculine energyand freedom, but follows her passivelyto the waiting ship. Its sailors,former slaves of the Pasha, have become 'hervassals - Greek and Moor'. One could imagine a context in which Gulnare's strike for freedom would be has no place for a female hero.3 Although presented as heroic, but The Corsair Gulnaregives up her claim to femininevirtue, she cannot be consideredvirtuous by masculine standardseither, for she has treacherouslymurderedher enemy in his sleep. Conrad had rejected this strategyin the gendered terms of male honour:
Seyd is mine enemy; had swept my band From earth with ruthless but with open hand, And therefore came I, in my bark of war, To smite the smiter with the scimitar; Such is my weapon - not the secret knife; Who spares a woman's seeks not slumber'slife. (III, 360-5)

Within the terms of the poem, 'Gulnare, the homicide' (III, 463) - 'whom blood appall'dnot' (III, 515) - can be neither a hero nor a proper woman. Rather she is consigned to a third category, 'at once above - beneath her sex' (III, 514). Her assumption of the hero's masculine role 'unsexes' her, and the perversityof that gesture unmans Conrad even further. Their two unnatural conditions mutually reinforce each other throughout the events of the denouement - the rush to the ships and the voyage back towards the pirates'island. Proper gender roles are not re-establisheduntil the poem's end, when Conrad is reunitedwith his comrades: Up rose keen Conradfromhis silenttrance, in A long, long absentgladness his glance; 'Tis mine- my blood-redflag!Again- againI am not all deserted the main!' on and He, half forgetting danger defeat, as Returns theirgreeting a chiefmaygreet, with a cordial graspAnselmo'shand, Wrings And feels he yet can conquerand command! Likewise, as Malcolm Kelsall has pointed out, this encounter returns Gulnare to a feminine status: 'Precipitatedby her act of liberatingforce from the harem to the centre of the pirates'world, she is at once subjected again by what one would call in the language of our times "sexual harassment",and she resumes a submissive role'.4 Nor does the formerly fierce Gulnare resent this, but waits patiently for whatever treatmentConrad and fate will awardher: 'The worst of crimes had left her woman still!' (III, 522).
3 On the harem slave as a figure for humanity's sufferingunder tyranny,see Malcolm Kelsall, 'The Slave-Womanin the Harem', Studies Romanticism, (Fall 1992), 315-31. in 31 ed. Byron, Alice Levine 4 Malcolm Kelsall, 'Byron and the Women of the Harem', in Rereading and Robert N. Keane (New York, 1993), 167.

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'Duce una donna avremmo' In his discussion of Giovanni Pacini'soperaI corsaro (1831-32), MarkusEngelhardt out the difficultyposed by the poem's lack of a proper heroine. If Medora points is passive and, worse still, absent from the action, Gulnare'sunwomanly violence makes her an inappropriateobject for the hero's love. A narrativepoem could accommodate these two complementaryfemale protagonists, but such symmetry was inappropriatefor an opera in which one and only one woman must be prima into an opera, either Medora or Gulnarewould have donna.5To make TheCorsair to be elevated to a clear starringrole. Each opera invents a differentsolution to this problem, and in the process reframes Gulnare'sferocity and her murderousdeed. Pacini'slibrettist Jacopo Ferrettifollowed the Byron source up to the point where Conrad is captured in the raid on Seyd's palace, and then took off in a new direction.6Ferretti'spreface (ironically?)asks his readers'indulgence for 'several trivialinfidelitiesto the tale invented by the English poet', and to modern eyes these infidelities are anything but trivial:the rewrittenplot, together with the use of a corsaro as cross-dressedcontraltohero, inspiredJulianBudden to describePacini'sIR 'a travestyin every sense of the word'.' The new plot eliminates the prison scene for Gulnaraand Corrado;Gulnaraneitherkills the pashanor rescues the pirate.The 'fierce woman' topos would thus seem to have been dropped, but actuallyit is still present, displacedon to the story's other female protagonist.In Pacini'sopera it is the gentle Medorawho sets out to rescue Conrad,first disguisingherself as a man. Like Byron's Gulnare, Pacini's Medora steps in the heroic-active role that the captured pirate has left vacant. She becomes in a sense a new Conrad: his first mission having failed, she will replay it with the full support of his pirate band. "Duce una donna avremmo" [We shall have a woman as our leader], the pirates exclaim. Ferrettiand Pacini celebrate the female transgressionthat was a problem in Byron's poem. corsaro Although this rewrittenIR might seem no more than an absurd'travesty'of whose vision and the original, it does respond to two moments in The Corsair had not developed. The first such moment occurredwhen Medora, potentialByron waiting at home for Conrad to return from the raid on Seyd's palace, became convinced that he had died. Byron tells us that in this moment, Medora's natural 'softness' gave way to a new fortitude:
All lost - that softness died not - but it slept;

And o'er its slumber rose that Strengthwhich said, 'With nothing left to love, there's nought to dread'. (III, 98-100) Byron, however, did not develop this image of a strong and fearless Medora. Instead his heroine faints immediately after this stirring moment, leaving the reader
and Aida would Verdi create secondary female characterswhose 5 Not until Don Carlos musical-dramatic vitality matches that of the prima donna heroines. Indeed Gulnara's charactermay be seen to foreshadow that of Amneris, another anti-heroineconstrained within an odalisque tableau and thwarted in her love for a hero who prefers a gentler, more feminine object. in romantico treparti (Milan, 1830). melodramma 6 Giacopo [sic]Ferretti,II corsaro, Julian Budden, TheOperas Verdi,3 vols., rev. edn. (Oxford, 1992), I, 386. of

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uncertain whather 'Strength' accomplish. of The poet consignsMedorato the care will his 'Whate'er of her handmaidens, while the piratesset out to rescueor avengeConrad: fate - the breastshe form'dand led / Will save him living,or appeasehim dead' (III, 127-8). Again the poem reinforcedits genderedspheresof action:Medora'sdignified faint is a quintessentially feminineresponseto the news of her lover'sprobabledeath, while the pirates'resolve to act is the manlyresponsewe would expect from comrades in whom 'still lingeringthere / breath'dConrad'sspirit'(III, 124-5). In Pacini'sopera,by contrast,this moment provides an opportunityfor the action to diverge radicallyfrom the plot and the rigorous gender divisions of its Byronic source. Here Medora does not faint; instead we witness her transformationfrom 'softness' to 'Strength'in the most graphicway. Rather than retire fainting to her tower, Medoraenters in masculinedisguiseto lead the piratesback to Seyd'spalace. Her transformation takesplace in the Act II double aria,'Caresponde', in which she bids farewell to the feminine sphere, assuming a new masculine-heroicrole. The change may be measuredby her new costume and by her alteredrelationshipto her 'beloved shores':
Care sponde, che pietose Sospirando a voi narr6:

ai Eccheggiaste miei lamenti, Quandoil core i suoi tormenti Parto,addio... per sempreaddio Ma beatoe il fato mio
Forse pid non torner6;

Se il mio ben io salver6! Fortunate le mie pene,

Se per lui morirdovrb!

hearttold whenmy sighing who once sympathetically echoedmy laments, shores, [Beloved I allits torments: depart, I farewell Perhaps willneverreturn; ... ... farewell forever, you if but happymy fate if I shallsave my love!Blessedmy sufferings, I shoulddie for him!] Until now, Medora has regardedthe sea as a sympatheticbut distant friend who echoed her lonely sighs and carriedthem to Conrad,but as the pirates'leader she will make the sea her ally in action. In the cabalettashe claims a new identity as a fearlesswoman warrior,stepping into the hero's place fully and unproblematically. Henceforth shouts of battle will replace gentle sighs:
Della battagliail grido Parmi suonar sul lido. Fatto di se maggiore Piti freno il cor non ha. 11pianto che ho sul ciglio Non e pel mio periglio; L'idea del caro amante Gelar, tremarmi fa. Ma se cadr6 pugnando La morte orror non ha.

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[Thedin of battleseems to resoundupon the shore.Strengthened its own effort,my by hearthesitates more.The tearin my eye is not for my own danger; thoughtof my no the belovedmakesme freezeandtremble. if I shoulddie fighting, But deathholds no terror.] This radiant, positive image of the armed woman as rescuer is exactly what Byron's poem had refused to authorize. Yet neither was this frame of mind completely absent from the poem, for Byron gave Gulnarea speech that described it perfectly.Gulnarehad challengedthe traditionalmasculine-feminine polaritythat governed Conrad's and Medora's relationship,declaringthat if shewere Conrad's lover she would join him in his exploits. Given the chance, she would be a worthier and more truly loving 'outlaw's spouse' than the stay-at-homeMedora:
Though fond as mine her bosom, form more fair, I rush through peril which she would not dare. If that thy heart to hers were truly dear, Were I thine own thou wert not lonely here: An outlaw's spouse and leave her lord to roam! What hath such gentle dame to do with home? (III, 298-303)

TheCorsair does not contain such a woman: Byron's Conradneither wants nor has such a partner,and the poet invokes this egalitarianvision of femininity only to make the readeraware of its absence. Within the poem, this heroic type of 'gentle dame' existed only in Gulnare'simagination.But Ferrettiand Pacini make over the character of Medora to conform precisely with Gulnare's vision, displacing Gulnare'smilitancyon to her gentle rival. Indeed we might say that Ferrettiand Pacini shapedByron'sgothic adventuretale into something more like an old-fashioned rescue opera,with its idealisticvision of the woman as liberator.A heroine's desire to 'rush throughperilwhich [an ordinary woman] would not dare', and her transgressivecondition 'above - beneath her sex', are not horrifying or unnatural,but admirable.Pacini's Medora has more in common with Beethoven's Leonore than with Byron's 'Gulnare, the homicide'. The librettistand composer might well have had Fidelio mind as they rewrote The in Corsair with the cross-dressed rescuer Medora as its central character, for the musical-dramatic climax of Act II turns on a 'Fidelio'-moment. Medora, having infiltratedSeyd's palace and discovered Conradjust moments before Seyd is about to execute him, gives herself away with a cry of horror and defiance. As in Fidelio, the woman's naturalvoice breaksout at the criticalmoment, changingthe terms of the conflict, and the chorus briefly exclaims in admiration:'Oh eroica fedelti, che paragon non ha'. But then, Gulnare herself had dreamed of being a Leonore - if accommodates the only Byron had allowed it. Unlike its source, Pacini's II corsaro woman of action, even the armed woman in warriordrag, within its definition of femininity. Perhaps the most important limit on the adaptation of Byron's Gulnare into Pacini's new Medora is its rewritingof Seyd's death. Medora'sresolve and defiant gesture - her willingness to kill the tyrant - does not culminate in anything like Byron's horrific scene of midnight assassination.In the first version of the libretto (1830), the plot ends with the report that the captive Medora has killed Seid,

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sacrificingher own life in the process. She thus becomes a martyrrather than a murderess,a far more honourable status. Corrado flees, reluctantly,with Gulnara. This ratherunsatisfactoryending, with the disappearanceand off-stage murder of Gulnarato donna the heroine Medora and the last-minutepromotion of the seconda heroine status,was revised the following year. In the new version, Medora escapes from Seid but learns in the final scene that he and Corradohave killed each other. But whether she ends as martyr or survivor, Pacini's heroine remains idealized because (unlike Gulnare) she never gets her hands dirty.Her gesture remains only in the realm of intention and image, untainted by blood. Thus Pacini's II corsaro partakesof a revolutionaryethos, not only authorizingbut celebrating'the firmness of a female hand'. Medora,in her warriorgarb,is no usurperof masculineprivilege removed from the but rathera worthy surrogatefor the hero when he is temporarily action. This opera seems unconcerned about emasculatingits hero, and nothing in the libretto or music condemns Medora's stepping into his place. Perhaps the as presence of a female musico the hero Corrado(evidence of an aprioriassumption that female performerscould embody male protagonists) created a space for other gender transgressionswithin the plot. Despite its Romantic subject matter,Pacini's presents a pre-Romantic conception of heroic action as something not IKcorsaro essentiallylinked to or limited by gender. Verdi's avenging angel more than a decade after Pacini, Verdi and Piave followed Taking up TheCorsair Byron's poem closely.8 Their Medora does not go on rescue missions, but languisheson the island throughoutthe opera.The dungeon scene is once againthe climax of the action, and with it Gulnara'sunsettlingmixture of feminine devotion and masculineviolence. Verdi, like Byron, does criminalizeGulnare'stransgression in takingup a weapon againstthe tyrant.Given the similarities between Gulnareand Macbeth - as Kelsall points out, 'the sign of the act, called a Shakespeare'sLady "crime"is, as with Lady Macbeth, a spot of blood' - the resonances between this scene and the parallelone in Verdi'sMacbeth worth noting.9Verdi had sketched are the Corrado-Gulnaraduet in 1846, and its events and ambience foreshadow the Macbeth-Ladyduet in severalimportantways. Both involve a resolute woman and reluctantman, a woman running off with a dagger,and a crime scene immediately off stage. In both the music evokes a stormy night, looming thoughts of crime and guilt, and above all the urgencyof being half-finishedwith a perilous deed. In both duets Verdi rose to the occasion with unprecedentedmusicalcontinuityand variety, the music shaping itself freely to the twists and turns of dialogue rather than
imposing patterns of repetition. for Yet Verdi's Gulnara is not a second Lady Macbeth. I! corsaro, all its fidelity to omits that blood on Gulnare's face: Gulnara bears no ineradicable mark of Byron,
8 According to Elizabeth Hudson, Piave's libretto was based on an Italian translation,I1 corsaro,

by Giuseppe Nicolini (Milan, 1824, repr. 1834 and 1837); see Hudson, 'Introduction',
I1icorsaroin Works of Giuseppe Verdi (Chicago and Milan, 1998), xvii. 9 Kelsall (see n. 4), 166.

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her crime, and the sight of her guilt will move Corradoto pity and action ratherthan horrifiedpassivity.In Verdi's hands, Gulnareis againremade, this time as a female avenger,a compromise between Byron'svirago and Pacini'sidealizedrescuer.Verdi endows her ferocitywith positive revolutionary value and (equallyimportantly)sets limits on it so that it does not so thoroughly disable Conrad as in the source. Without overhaulingTheCorsair drastically had Ferrettiand Pacini, Verdi and so as Piave preparedGulnare'sgesture and rewrote its aftermathin ways that moderate its horror and transgressiveforce. Her most 'monstrous' moment comes at the start of the duet's tempo mejzzo, di when she taunts Corradofor his cowardiceand rushes out to kill Seid. Abandoning the lyric exhortationsof the preceding slow movement, she declaims on one note: 'Then you disdainto follow me? Are you afraidof a dagger- you, a robber,a pirate? Shall a weak woman teach you how to use it?' This is the closest Verdi's Gulnara comes to 'unsexing'herself. Her strenuousand exposed declamationon E, an effect of vocal power fraughtwith maximum tension, is analogous to the 'baritoneC' of other Verdi operas. She leaves, 'brandishing (with the greatest exaltation) the dagger'. The stormy interlude that follows has little purely musical interest, but its narrativeimportance should not be underestimated.First, it does the work that Byron's breathless rhetoric had done in the poem, supplying a tone of terror and violence. The storm also answers and gives voice to the hero's own emotions, as Corrado,alone on stage, raises his chained hands to the window and implores the lightningto strikehim. But althoughthe heavens seem to sympathizewith Conrad's inner tempest, this proves to be no more than a coincidence, for the raging storm passes over him. At the crucialpoint the apparentconnection between his emotion and the elements is broken. The storm's limited response to Conrad's plight suggests an ironic limit to the old-fashioned poetic device of seeing naturalevents as reflections of or responses to human feelings. But Verdi gives the storm one more, unironicpurpose, using it as a theatricaldevice to evoke off-stage events. The storm music extends the space of dramaticaction beyond the visible stage - not by literalistdepictions of specific events such as footfalls or blows, but by evoking the absent Gulnara'semotions as she commits the murder.The risingand abatingof the storm traces for us her violent rage,its peak, and its 'break'.Furthermore, this storm has been foreshadowed in such a way that we may interpret it as a sympathetic reflection of Gulnara's deed rather than a judgement on it. The storm fulfils a violence that has been brewingin Gulnaraover the course promise of revolutionary of several earliernumbers. Byron had made Gulnare'sviolence innate, an essential aspect of 'the fire that lights an Eastern heart' (III, 353). This ethnicity is marked in the poem by such
stereotypical features as flashing dark eyes, dark hair, and occasional invocations of Allah. Although she remains nominally Eastern in Verdi's opera, her cavatina bears no orientalist markers, and indeed her very first utterance is to scorn Seid as a 'vile Muslim'. If the number is designed 'merely to introduce the prima donna by means of the most conventional of all formulae, the cavatina with chorus', it is nevertheless significant in presenting Gulnara as an object of identification for the Western

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audience, out of place among Seid's other women.10Her solo movements set her apartfrom the chorus of 'odalisques bearing embroideredveils and jewels', whose orchestrationalla turca, with prominent triangle,cymbals, and trombone, evokes a harem tableau by Delacroix:
Oh qual perenne gaudio t'aspetta, tu prima gioia sei del Pasciai. Vieni, Gulnara,vieni, diletta, per te qui brilla sol volutti. Di vesti seriche, di ricche gemme cingi ed adorna la tua belta. Tu sei la stella di quest'Haremme, Uri pinivaga il ciel non ha.

awaityou, the favourite the Pasha.Come,Gulnara, of for come,delight, [O whatpleasures will with silkenrobesandrichgems.You you shinesonly desire.Yourbeauty be adorned are the starof this harem; heavenspossess no more beautiful the houri.] Gulnarahowever refuses to delight in her status as the Pasha's favourite:'M'ama Seid!io l'odio!' [Seidloves me! I hate him]. Scorninghis rich gifts, she expresses her longing for freedom and love in the clear air of an unspecified 'ciel natio' [native sky], a 'ciel d'amor' beneath which her soul might forget its chains. The characteristic instruments drop out, not to return until the danced tempo mezzo. di Her barcarollerhythmand liberalleaningsinvite us to perceive Gulnara,despite her rich Oriental costume, as another strandedItaliangirl. Nothing in this scene or the first-act finale preparesus for the ferocity she will exhibit in Act II. It is in the cabalettaof her duet with Seid that Gulnaraemerges from the generic presentationof her entranceariaand begins to revealher potential for violence; but there too she remainsunmarkedby 'Eastern'ethnicity.Insteadher angerand desire for revenge are sung to music that evokes a gatheringstorm. When the Pasha, angered by Gulnara'spleading for the captive pirate'slife, informs his favouritethat she will no longer be his bride but his slave, he threatensher con forza, accompanied by a conventional martial rhythm. Gulnara responds with a truism about the rebellious strength that accumulatesin the souls of the oppressed: 'Ei minaccia,e non conosce / quantopossa un' almaoffesa,/ ei non sa qual furiaaccesa / v'ha qui dentro ira ed amor' [He threatens,and does not know what an offended spiritcan do; he does not know the inner fury kindledby rage and love]. One could imagine this defiant sentiment accompanied by music as energetic as Seid's, but instead Verdi shifts to the relativeminor and introduceswinding chromaticfigures under Gulnara'ssottovocemelody. Her melodic phrases alternate between stifled middle registerand trumpetinghigh register,and not until Seid has departeddoes she give voice to an unfetteredfffconforzaexclamation'Guai, tiranno!'on sustained high Bb. The total effect is of repressed energy about to break free, of distant
10

and Galzerani's 1826 ballet Ii corsaro, notes that all subsequent Italian operas on the subject introduced Gulnarawith female chorus at this point. Zambon, 'Quando il ballo anticipa di di Dal II l'opera:I1 corsaro Giovanni Galzerani',in Creature Prometeo: balloteatrale. divertimento Sutdiofferti AurelM. Milloss,ed. Giovanni Morelli (Florence, 1996), 305-13. a al dramma:

for Budden,I, 374. RitaZambonfindsthe prototype this haremscenein Giovanni

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Heather Hadlock

thundercloudslit by flashes of lightning.But her tempestuouspersonalityseems less a cliche of 'Oriental'character than a product of her situationas a woman oppressed a man, and a subject oppressed by a tyrant. by The prison scene that follows fulfils both Gulnara'srevolutionaryenergyand her connection with storms. The orchestral prelude and solo scena for Corrado, brooding alone in his cell, establishes the hero's physical and psychological immobility,againstwhich Gulnarawill strugglein the duet. Gulnara'sentrancesets in motion what Scott Balthazarhas described as 'the most dramatically complex d'attacco Verdi's earlycareer,rivallinghis most adventuroustempi mezo in of tempo di its presentationof an evolving situation'." This section includes Gulnara'sringing rejection of the notion that she might love Seid; her proposal that they should kill Seid and escape;and Corrado'srefusalof the daggeron honourablegrounds. It ends with a sweeping chromaticE minor melody as Gulnaraevokes the 'tempesta'that threatensCorradoand herself. In the slow movement they stake out these opposing positions, Gulnaraurging flight and Corradorefusing. Although his duet conforms to the poem closely on the level of plot, Verdi seems more sympatheticto Gulnarathan Byron was. Her themes in the tempo d'attacco and slow movement have heroic energy. A polonaise rhythm accompanies her declaration that love is impossible under slavery, and its 'revolutionary'significance is confirmed when we hear it again at the climax of the tempo as d'attacco, she offers Corradothe daggerthatwill kill the tyrant.The urgencyand sensuous warmthof her 'Ah, fuggiam da queste mura' is strongly contrasted with Corrado's pessimistic response. While Gothic darknessbroods over Corrado,Verdi 'envoices' Gulnaraas a liberator, a revolutionary, a Romantic heroine. Thus Verdi's Gulnara is a murderess,but (unlike the coldly ambitious Lady Macbeth) she is also a freedom fighter,an oppressed woman avengingher own 'stained'honour. If she is guilty, so was her tyrant-victim.Most importantly, the storm of rage that drives her is situational,not innate. This is confirmedimmediatelyafterthe murder,when her ferocityevaporatesand she returnsto the stage a figureof pity ratherthan horror.Verdi effects a restoration of traditionalgender roles immediately,specifying that Gulnara,who had stormed off 'brandishing (with the greatest exaltation) the dagger', should now 'ritorna volgendo lo sguardo inorridita dentro di se ... cammina vacillando e cade ...' [enter,turningher horrifiedgaze inwards... she walks unsteadilyand collapses ...] (316). Halting unison figuresin the strings choreographher falteringsteps. Verdi's instructionsto the soprano MariannaBarbieri-Nini,the first Gulnara,indicate that it would be impossible to overplay her new manner after the murder:'when you return pale and unsettled, take each step virtuallyas the music indicates, until the moment when you can no longer stand on your feet: you should utter the following
words lying on the ground: "gi. ... l'opra 6 finita, per destarsi egli stava". Say them without following the tempo, without paying attention to the notes, but with a
11 Scott Balthazar,'Evolving Conventions in Italian Serious Opera: Scene Structurein the Works of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, 1810-1850', Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania (1985), 369.

'The firmness a femalehand'in TheCorsair I1corsaro and of

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stifled voice that is barely audible'.12 Gulnara begins the cabalettawith a theme sapped of its traditionalvigour: the minor mode, muffled dynamics, and piangente marking all undermine its martialaccompaniment and declamation.Most importantly,Corradofinds his voice in the very moment that Gulnaraloses hers, rousing her out of despairwith a vigorous major-moderesponse. Her situationas a damsel in distress has reactivatedCorrado'ssense of honour in a way that her taunts and exhortations could not. The opera contrives to have it both ways: as soon as Gulnara'sunwomanly ferocity has freed Corrado,it self-destructs,creatinga space for him to be an active hero again. These three works, then, offer three Romantic perspectives on the fierce woman who, by seizing a weapon and rushing into danger, proves herself to be 'above-beneath her sex'. To Byron she is a fascinating monster, a beautiful yet nightmarish figure (though not beyond redemption). Gulnare is the feminine counterpart to the Byronic anti-hero, her fiery temperament and murderous determinationa complement to his tendencies towardsintroversion,pessimism and passivity. She is the partner of Conrad's dark side, just as the gentle Medora complements his idealized aspects. The taboo pairingof Conrad and Gulnareis if anythingmore essential to the poem's Byronic sensibilitythan is the conventional love between Conrad and Medora. Verdi's and Pacini's IKcorsaro operas suggest that there were limits on how far Italian opera could follow Byron's 'unsexing' of the heroine and consequent 'unmanning' of the hero. In order to revel in the extrovertedaspects of the Byronichero - his colourful,adventurous,rebelliousside - and at the same time to repress his darker tendencies towards introversion, pessimism and passivity,it was necessary to rewrite the plot, or at least to temper the fiercest aspects of the woman who acts when he cannot.

12 Letter of 6 October 1848, in Marcello Conati, ed., Encounters Verdi,trans. Richard with Stokes (Ithaca and New York, 1984), 320.