It has been suggested that this particular subject was chosen because , with its bard ( in the opera he becomes a chorus of bards ) , its evocative descriptions of wild scenery and its spasms of balladesque melancholy , it was of all Scott's works the most Ossianic ( Ambrose 1981 :sx 65-6) .sx Scott was to be a primary source of much that was most representative of the new era :sx of Manzoni's great historical novel I promessi sposi , and its many imitations ; of Tommaso Grossi's epic of the crusades , I Lombardi alla prima crociata ( the source of Verdi's opera ) ; and of many strands in the historical dramas of Victor Hugo and his epigones .sx It is no coincidence that the high tide of Scott's popularity in Italy arrived in the late 1820s at exactly the time when Bellini and Romani were producing Italy's first full-blooded , uncompromisingly Romantic operas .sx In a telling phrase Robert Louis Stevenson defined Romanticism as " the movement of an extended curiosity and an enfranchised imagination " ( Schmidgall 1977 :sx 114 ) , and placed Scott at the head of it .sx The Waverley Novels came to be seen as " the scenic and historical wonders of the Romantic era " ( ibidem ) ; and that far , at least , critical perceptions in Italy matched those in Britain .sx It is true that Scott was imperfectly understood , sometimes flagrantly misrepresented , often ineptly imitated .sx Some saw in his books little but " ghosts , ruined castles and ancestral curses " , and therefore placed him among the manifestations of Gothic Horror ( Ambrose 1981 :sx 59 ) ; some distorted his meaning for political ends ; in dramatic adaptations , especially in opera librettos , little trouble was taken to build up the all-important historical background that might have given some deeper perspective to the Romantic agonies holding the centre of the stage .sx But when all is said , Scott's books provided Italian opera with some kind of model for dramatic themes in which were blended history -in the sense of a distant past that could be upheld as exemplary in faith , or ethics or valour -and bizarre and terrible happenings , which attacked the nerves and emotions of the spectator as much as they spoke to the mind .sx This blend proved uniquely appealing to theatre audiences of the second quarter of the century .sx The mood of opera grew more sombre ; the tragic close became more general .sx As the full tide of Romanticism flooded in over Italy from the North , it was increasingly difficult for even the most nostalgic enthusiasts for Enlightenment optimism to evade this issue .sx There was of course resistance to the tragic mode , and spasmodic efforts to mitigate its effect .sx A notorious case was the re-writing of the final scenes of Rossini's Otello for Rome in 1816 .sx But once accepted , the closing death-scene became a cherished ingredient of Romantic opera .sx In Il pirata and the other 'melo-tragedies' he wrote for Bellini , Romani took particular care over the culminating 'tableau of terror' , establishing a pattern for those scenes of death , devastation and despair which , a few years later , Verdi was to make so peculiarly his own .sx And at least one great singer of the period , il tenore della bella morte -Napoleone Moriani -owed much of his reputation to his prowess in such scenes :sx " the extinction of life is expressed by singing that has the tints , the shuddering , of death itself ; it is like a trampled narcissus that bows its head , and in whose bosom the transient echo weeps and laments " ( a review in La fama , 1844 , quoted in Walker 1962 :sx 88) .sx Librettists usually found their subjects in the repertory of the prose theatres of the larger cities :sx the Teatro Fiorentini in Naples , for instance , supplied most of Cammarano's ( Black 1984 :sx 160) .sx A few of these plays were Italian , a few German or English , at least in origin , but the overwhelming majority came from France , where the playwrights of the period poured forth well made plays with inexhaustible facility .sx To a large extent this theatrical profusion amounted to the playing of resourceful variations on a common stock of themes ; but this was no disadvantage as far as operatic adaptation was concerned .sx Librettists and composers had few qualms about repeating subjects that were already familiar :sx a tragic and sanguinary love-triangle in a pseudo-historical setting , for instance , rarely failed to fire Donizetti's muse .sx The first Romantic generation in Italy was too enthralled with the expressive potential of the new fashion to worry much about repetitiousness within the fashion .sx They sought intoxicated states of soul , passions driven to violent extremes , tangles of character which sped the protagonists to an irrational doom .sx For no longer was there any question of the dictates of the heart being qualified by virtue and reason , no longer could every intrigue , every conflict be finally resolved in a harmonious denouement .sx Though many Italian librettists might now have cried with Werther :sx " Ossian hat in meinem Herzen den Homer verdr a ngt " , ultramontane fashions did not quite monopolize the Italian stage .sx Romani was ambivalent in his attitude to Romanticism from the first ( cf .sx p. 402 above ) , and ultimately , after he had abandoned his career as a theatre-poet for one in journalism , he became deeply hostile to many aspects of the new movement .sx Even Cammarano , a younger man by more than a decade , was sometimes prompted to distance himself from the more extreme manifestations of Romantic taste .sx Of Maria di Rudenz ( Venice 1838 ) , based on Anicet-Bourgeois and Maillan's La nonne sanglante , he was to write , " those who know the crude and gloomy happenings in that play will readily appreciate that I wanted to tone down its outlandish horrors , and if I hadn't been able to succeed in my purpose ( and perhaps no one could ) these few words will serve to indicate how much I abhor this bloodstained northern genre " ( Black 1984 :sx 44) .sx And Bellini did not speak for quite all composers in his scorn for Classical historical subjects .sx Mercadante seems to have been reluctant to abandon Metastasio :sx even as Romani and Bellini were revealing the brave new world of uncompromising Romanticism in the years 1827-28 , he was still setting Ezio and Adriano in Siria ( admittedly in much altered form ) ; and he returned to Classical sources with every appearance of satisfaction after barely a decade dabbling with more fashionable types of theme :sx for , reported Florimo , " in subjects taken from Roman history , Mercadante felt at ease , and his imagination had ample space to roam .sx He seemed to envisage with surprising clarity those severe customs , those virile sentiments , those robust practices which made the Roman people conquerors and governors of the world " ( Florimo 1880-84 , III :sx 16) .sx The staging of Romantic opera .sx New dramatic themes and new aesthetic ideals inevitably led to a new type of spectacle .sx Traditional neo-classical perspective sets remained popular into the 1820s , and particularly in Milan made the opera of the age of Rossini a spectacle of monumental grandiosity :sx " in Milan , everything is sacrificed to mass effects of form and colour , and to the general impression .sx It is [Jacques-Louis] David's own special genius transposed into the medium of decor " ( Stendhal 1956 :sx 439) .sx But during that decade sets became more modest , and a greater premium was set on the suggestive and the individual .sx The vogue for Romantic historicism brought in new iconographical motifs :sx the ruined Gothic castle , graveyards , moonlight scenes , and scenes of wild nature which surely echo contemporary developments toward a more natural style of landscape painting ( Ambrose 1981 :sx 76-7) .sx New effects of lighting became possible .sx As a matter of fact gas-lighting was often felt to be more prosaic and less flexible than the oil lights and prisms of the past -Ricci indeed goes so far as to call it a " mortal blow to scenography " ( 1930 :sx 28 ) -but Daguerre's invention of the diorama in Paris in 1822 , and such new resources as the phantasmagoria , which Verdi learned about from Sanquirico at the time he was planning Macbeth , put extra poetic and evocative powers into the hands of stage designers .sx It remained a prime consideration in Italian opera to present an enchanting visual composition on stage .sx A cultivated pictorial allusiveness was still common .sx Moses' costume in Rossini's Mos e-grave was copied from Michelangelo's statue in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli ( Stendhal 1956 :sx 310 ) ; Verdi intended to model the spectacle of the Act I finale of Attila on the Raphael " tapestries or frescoes " in the Vatican ( Verdi 1913 :sx 441) .sx But an interest in visual authenticity was slowly gaining ground -Stendhal tells us that for the premi e-grave re of Rossini's Elisabetta in 1816 the Naples management sent to England for historically accurate costume sketches ; and Lady Morgan witnessed a production of Spontini's La Vestale at La Scala in ( ?sx )1820 in which .sx the chariots , moulded upon that splendid relic of antiquity , the Biga at Rome , are drawn by fiery and impatient horses , and driven by impetuous charioteers , exactly as they are represented in the ancient bas-reliefs .sx .. The living groups are formed after the finest sculptures , and down to the bronze vase in the Consul's festive board , the lamp , tripod , and consular chair , all seemed borrowed from Herculaneum or Pompeii .sx ( Morgan 1821 , I :sx 99 ) .sx Above all librettists and scenographers were becoming sensitive to the need for a more intimate harmony between the action , the characters and their visual setting .sx A good example of this scenographic pathetic fallacy is to be found in Cammarano's synopsis for Lucia di Lammermoor , where he remarks of the Act II duet between Edgardo and Ashton , " .sx .. The storm howls terribly and reflects the rage which invests the two cruel enemies " ( Black 1984 :sx 244) .sx Performers too were affected by these developments .sx Malibran , under the influence of Talma , " wished to introduce in the theatre artistic and archeological truth and , with this in view , she had copies made of a quantity of costumes from the archives of Venice , and from the miniatures in some old manuscripts " ( Sterling-Mackinlay 1908 :sx 118) .sx Authentic and truthful impersonation became the aspiration of many of the finest singers , and Cammarano's production notes for Naples show that the librettists of the period were eager to encourage these naturalistic tendencies ( Black 1984 :sx 283) .sx One could , however , go too far ; in London Giuseppe Ambrogetti had , while learning the role of the father in Paer's Agnese , sought " to qualify himself for this part [by studying] the various forms of insanity in the cells of Bedlam ; but unfortunately , in seeking to render his impersonation true , he made it too dreadful to be borne .sx Females actually fainted , while others endeavoured to escape from so appalling a spectacle " ( Hogarth 1851 , II :sx 299) .sx A new ideology .sx The kind of nostalgia which Mercadante felt for a more familiar , humane world was not a major creative force in the opera of the age .sx More vital was an aspiration , which we find clearly articulated only by philosophers and critics , but which some creative artists certainly shared , towards a quite new type of drama , more in tune with the political and social aspirations of the age .sx And in this context , we must first invoke the name of Mazzini .sx He too , like the later Romani or the later Mercadante , rejected the idea that the delirious , ego-centred effusions of Romantic melodrama provided a sound basis for modern opera .sx But he rejected it not in order to regress into an outdated eighteenth-century world view .sx Mazzini saw , or believed that he saw , that mankind was on the verge of a new stage in its evolution , which he defined as the age of " socialized humanity " .sx This new age needed its own archetypal dramatic form .sx It would be a " profoundly religious , profoundly educative social drama .sx .. greater than Shakespeare by as much as the idea of Humanity is greater than the idea of the individual " ( Mazzini 1910 :sx 196) .sx Mazzini's prescription , clearly , is a left-wing programme for risorgimento art .sx Ideologically tendentious opera had occasionally made its appearance in the productions of the revolutionary period at the close of the eighteenth century , but at the Restoration this note falls silent .sx The bel canto of Rossini and his epigones was largely innocent of extra-musical ideas - " who would seek in an opera for an idea ?sx " enquired Mazzini witheringly ( 1910 127 ) ; though that was not to prevent audiences at a later date from reading their own ideology into Rossini ( cf .sx Chapter 25,p .sx 453 below) .sx