Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Nabucco

Nabucco and the Bible

Opera- the very word inspires thoughts of intrigue, murder, revenge, grand passions, and sweeping events. What better place to find all these elements than in the pages of your family Bible? In his return to the opera stage after the bitter years following the deaths of his wife and children, Giuseppe Verdi chose a vehicle that could best express the powerful emotions surging within him- Nabucco , a romanticized version of the Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar (“Nabucco” is a shortened version of “Nabucodonosor”, the Greek and Latin version of the name). The operatic version of this story provides all the fodder for a bang-up spectacle with a happy ending; but how does Verdi's telling of the story compare with the Good Book's?

Our first clue to the authenticity of the libretto comes from the four Biblical quotations that preface each act of the libretto. They each come from the Book of Jeremiah, which refers repeatedly to Nebuchadnezzar, but curiously three of the four quotations are cited incorrectly. This fuzzy Biblical scholarship is only a taste of the interesting liberties that the librettist, Temistocle Solera, permitted himself throughout the opera (although perhaps the blame should fall on the authors of the French stage drama, Nabuchodonosor , on which the libretto is based). In the opera, Nabucco (the only authentic Biblical figure in the story) is a bloodthirsty tyrant who declares himself a god, for which he is punished by being driven insane. When the life of his daughter Fenena is threatened by the machinations of his adopted daughter Abigaille, he prays to the God of the Hebrews and his sanity is restored, at which point he rescues his daughter, regains his throne, and returns the Hebrews to their homeland.

The Nebuchadnezzar of the Bible, although certainly an autocrat, seems to be a relatively reasonable and patient man on first reading, who only besieges Jerusalem after being deceived several times by various Israelite rulers, and in fact the prophet Jeremiah presents him as an instrument of God's retribution upon the Hebrews. The Rabbinic literature paints him as the personification of evil and attributes to him every sort of depredation, but these character traits are more homiletical than historical, and the only really cruel deed ascribed to him is in the Book of Daniel, when he casts the three Hebrews into the fiery furnace for failing to bow down to his statue (an act that would probably not even have been considered cruel and unusual punishment in those days).

The issue of Nebuchadnezzar's madness is dealt with very colorfully in the Bible:

“The King spoke, and said, Is not this great Babylon , that I have built as a royal residence by the might of my power, and for the honor of my majesty?

While the word was in the king's mouth, a voice fell from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to you it is spoken: the kingdom is departed from you.

And you shall be driven from men, and your dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field; you shall be made to eat grass like an ox, and seven seasons shall pass over you, until you learn that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whom he pleases.

On the same hour was the thing fulfilled upon Nebuchadnezzar: and he was driven from men, and ate grass like an ox, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hair was grown as eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws.

And at the end of the days I Nebuchadnezzar lifted up my eyes to heaven, and my understanding returned to me, and I blessed the most High, and I praised and honored Him who lives forever, whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation .” (Daniel 4:27-31)

We can see that the three main points of this episode- Arrogance, Punishment, and Repentance- are present in both Daniel and Solera, although much more dramatically in the operatic version; the biblical story contains no bolt of lightning, no usurpation of the throne and no dramatic last-minute rescue, and the destroyed idol at the end of the opera is most likely taken from an earlier dream of Nebuchadnezzar's which is interpreted by Daniel. As far as the return of the captives to their native land, and the rebuilding of the Temple- that was not to take place until 40 years after Nebuchadnezzar's reign, under the rule of Cyrus the Persian.

The remaining major characters in the opera are there for dramatic effect and not biblical accuracy- Abigaille, the vengeful, lustful warrior princess; Ismaele, the least satisfying of all Verdi tenors; Fenena, Nabucco's true-blue daughter; and Zaccaria the high priest, who is of passing Biblical interest. His verbiage is very similar to his namesake the prophet Zecharia (which means “God remembers”), who was a priest at the time of the Jews' return to Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile, and who lifted the spirits of the Jewish people with visions of a renewed Israelite nation and a restored Temple. But his actions are more like those of an operatic heavy, first threatening Fenena with a dagger, then cursing Ismaele for saving her, and finally urging her to accept the “Palm of Martyrdom” at the hands of the Babylonians.

As in the Bible, however, the most important character in Nabucco is the chorus, for whom Verdi provided one of the most beautiful and moving moments in all of opera- “Va, pensiero”, where the Hebrew exiles lament their lost homeland and sadly hang their harps upon the branches of the willows. With this one chorus Verdi cuts through the improbable conventions and the fanciful plot twists, and makes of Nabucco a universal testament to hope and freedom. This was his genius, and this was his gift to the world.

- Thom King

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