Category:Italian language--1800s

Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi

Silvio Pellico

Giuseppe Verdi

Giovanni Pacini

Daniele Manin

Aurelio Bianchi-Giovini

Samuel David Luzzatto

In the first half of the 19th century, in the climate of Italian Risorgimento, Italian scholarship produced some remarkable works. It started in 1802-07 with the historiographical and bibliographical work on Jewish and Arabic literature by Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi, Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Parma. It went on in 1820 with a jewel of Enochic research, a commentary on the Greek fragments of Enoch by sixteen-year-old Daniele Manin, and in 1844 with the work of Giuseppe Marchi on the Roman catacombs. The climax was the publication in 1844 of the Storia degli Ebrei e delle loro sette e dottrine religiose durante il secondo tempio by Aurelio Bianchi-Giovini, a comprehensive introduction to Second Temple Judaism that stands up for its critical analysis of ancient sources, its unapologetic view of Christian origins, and its "modern" approach to Jewish diversity. Giovini found a brilliant respondent in Samuel David Luzzatto, the leading authority of Italian Jewish scholarship of the time, who also offered in 1848-52 his view on Second Temple Judaism.

Along with the scholarly production, some works of fiction captivated the Italian imagination, gaining large popular success. The operas Ciro in Babilonia (1812) by Gioachino Rossini, and Nabucco (1842) by Giuseppe Verdi as well as the drama Ester d'Engaddi (1821) by Silvio Pellico, all focused on the Second Temple period. For some time italian patriots identified themselves with the Jews of that time, who like them were longing for freedom under the oppression of foreign nations (the Babylonians and then the Romans). To avoid censure without loosing the political implications of the story, in 1844 Giovanni Pacini gave a Second Temple Jewish setting ("in the times of Vespasian") to Eugène Scribe's drama La Juive, which Jacques Fromental Halévy had already set to music in 1835 in France in its original Inquisition setting. In 1848 Giovanni Pacini also set to music Pellico's drama [[Ester d'Engaddi. }}

Italian language (1800s) -- Highlights