Вердидің «Сицилиялық кеш намазы» операсының француз тіліндегі түпнұсқасы

Opera by Giuseppe Verdi
the original French version of Verdi's opera

Les vêpres siciliennes (le vɛːpʁ sisiljɛn; The Sicilian Vespers) is a grand opera in five acts by the Italian romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi set to a French libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier from their work Le duc d'Albe of 1838. Les vêpres followed immediately after Verdi's three great mid career masterpieces, Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata of 1850 to 1853 and was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 13 June 1855. Today the opera is performed both in the original French and (rather more frequently) in its post 1861 Italian version as I vespri siciliani. The story is based on a historical event, the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, using material drawn from the medieval Sicilian tract Lu rebellamentu di Sichilia.

The first performance at the Paris Opéra on 13 June 1855 was received to great acclaim. La Presse noted: "Verdi's music has conformed to the procedure invented by French genius without losing anything of its Italian ardour. Hector Berlioz wrote: "In Les vêpres the penetrating intensity of the melodic expressiveness, the sumptuous, wise variety of the instrumentation, the vastness and poetic sonority of the concerted pieces, the hot colour that shines throughout  communicate to this opera an imprint of grandeur, a species of sovereign majesty more distinguishable than in this composer's earlier products. Budden notes that "the critics found much to admire in the new opera. Adolphe Adam declared that Les vêpres had converted him to Verdi's music", but Verdi himself, in a letter of late June, notes that three Italian writers were the most critical". However, its success was not long lasting. Because the original version never entered the established repertory, performances "limped along"

After a long period of relative neglect, the opera in its original French version has begun to appear onstage more regularly in the 21st century. A production was mounted at the Bastille Opera in 2003 and Bavarian State Opera in 2018. The Royal Opera House Covent Garden's staging of the full version for the first time in its history (minus the ballet) in October/November 2013 drew a variety of critical responses.

In summing the effect of the libretto as "a competent framework for an opera of effects, of spectacle and theatrical surprise, and Verdi ended by accepting it as such", musicologist Julian Budden then notes two of its aspects which appear distinctive and which are visible in the music. Firstly, "he used it as a basis for a new, more ample, more rhythmically complex style of melody. Here the model of Meyerbeer was important  Secondly, he seized the opportunity of solving a problem which had eluded him in a somewhat similar work, La battaglia di Legnano; namely that of reconciling the private and public emotions of the main characters. the problem being overcome by means of a more varied musical language." Musicologist Roger Parker, writing in Grove in 1992, offers a somewhat different point of view in explaining that the sheer length and scale of this opera (as well as others in the grand opera tradition) find themselves being rarely staged by modern opera houses (since 1992 this situation has changed, see performance history section above). Parker states "with very few exceptions, its main lyrical numbers lack the melodic immediacy of the trio of Italian operas (Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata) that immediately preceded it." However, he does go on to say that Les vêpres "marks a decisive turn away from the language of the middle period Italian operas and the emergence of many stylistic features we associate with the later Verdi. "(Italics in the original).</blockquote>
Kolodin comments: "It was, of course, the principle by which Verdi's later career was guided when he had the land and the position he craved and the security that went with them and a wise wife."