Verdi's Emperor Charles V: Risorgimento Politics, Habsburg History, and Austrian-Italian Operatic Culture

This article considers the figure of Habsburg Emperor Charles V in relation to Italy, first as perceived by Italians in his own time, the sixteenth century, but then especially as evaluated by Italians of the Risorgimento-and notably by Verdi in his operatic work. The article emphasizes opera as a crucial cultural medium of Habsburg engagement with the Italian peninsula and of Italian culture within the Habsburg monarchy. Contemporary Italian evaluations of Charles's role in the domination of Italy were both regretful of his military interventions (including the sack of Rome in 1527) and respectful of his political skills. During the Risorgimento, the conventional Mazzinian perspective was deeply hostile to the Habsburgs and conditioned the wars of Italian unification against the Habsburg monarchy. Italian opera, however, especially Rossini's Guillaume Tell (1829), Verdi's Ernani (1844), and Verdi's Don Carlos (1867) indicate a complex operatic perspective on the Habsburgs in Risorgimento culture. While the Austrian Habsburg representative Gessler is the villain in Rossini's Guillaume Tell, Verdi's Ernani actually places Charles V on stage in a major baritone role with beautiful music and an ambivalent presence. In Don Carlos, the ghost of Charles V hovers over and haunts the whole opera.