— Teatro Nuovo

Verdi: Lo spazzacamino

Here is another of the romanze Verdi published in the 1840s to texts by Manfredo Maggioni. For information on that fascinating poet and factotum, see Il poveretto. The life of the chimney-sweep was a popular subject for songs and verses both in Italy and in Maggioni’s adopted home in London. Verdi’s music alternates three lively verses wtih “oom-pah” accompaniment and a brilliant waltz as a refrain, with trills for the soprano and octaves for the pianist. It is one of the few Verdi songs heard regularly in modern performance.

Lo spazzacamin!

Son d'aspetto brutto e nero,
Tingo ognun che mi vien presso;
Sono d'abiti mal messo,
Sempre scalzo intorno io vo.

Ah! di me chi sia più lieto
Sulla terra dir non so.
Spazzacamin!
Signori, signore, lo spazzacamin
Vi salva dal fuoco per pochi quattrin.

Io mi levo innanzi al sole
E di tutta la cittade
Col mio grido empio le strade
E nemico alcun non ho.

Ah, di me chi sia più lieto (ecc.)

Talor m'alzo sovra i tetti,
Talor vado per le sale;
Col mio nome i fanciulletti
Timorosi e quieti io fo.

Ah, di me chi sia più lieto (ecc.)

Chimney sweep!

My face is ugly and sooty,
everyone who comes near me gets dirty,
my clothes are a mess,
I always go barefoot…

I don’t know anyone on Earth|
happier than me!
Chimney sweep!
Ladies and gentlemen, the chimney-sweep
will save you from fire for just a few pennies!

I rise before dawn,
and all over town
I fill the streets with my call,
and have not a single enemy...

I don’t know anyone (etc.)

Now I’m up on the roof,
now I’m in the room,
and my name is enough
to frighten the children to silence.

I don’t know anyone (etc.)

Of course the carefree chimney sweep in “Lo spazzacamino” (or for that matter in Mary Poppins) is a Victorian romanticization of a darker reality. The “master sweeps” depended on “climbing boys,” recruited from orphanages or from impoverished parents, who were small enough to shimmy up narrow chimney flues, brushing soot down on themselves as they went. The profession had an appalling mortality rate and generated the first known workplace-associated cancer. By today’s standards it was simple child abuse.

Spazzacamini with bicycles, courtesy of the Museo dello Spazzacamino

When evolving ethics have taught us to understand something as unacceptable, what do we do with earlier art that treats it lightly? It’s the same question we face with Stephen Foster’s nostalgic slaves “still longing for the old plantation” and with probably half the colonialist poetry of Rudyard Kipling. One approach is simply to reject such works - to cancel any current contact with them, and perhaps also their authors. Another is to see them as historical artefacts, and there is some justification for this in the case of Mary Poppins or “Lo spazzacamino.” Oppressed and abused people, after all, do sometimes sing, and do find and express happiness within the lives fate has given them. If the dominant culture noticed and appropriated such expressions - even if it assuaged its own guilt through them - that is perhaps one step better than leaving the victims wholly invisible in their misery. Indeed the popular image of the carefree chimney-sweep was potent also in the efforts of the reformers who finally, in 1875, succeeded in making it a crime in England to send a human being up a chimney. (America followed suit around the end of the century; I’m not sure when the practice was abolished in Italy, where the “climbing boys” traditionally repeated their call of “spazzacamino,” meaning approximately “chimney clear,” upon emerging at the top.)

To go a little farther: looking into the art of other days is one of the ways we can remind ourselves of history’s non-simplicity. The widespread employment of chimney-sweeps in London arose from an effort to reduce human suffering by preventing recurrence of the catastrophic Great Fire that destroyed more than 13,000 homes in 1666. Heightened awareness of fire hazards, in particular of the buildup of flammable creosote deposits on the chimney walls, made cleaning a higher priority, and meanwhile the use of narrower flues (often with angles) to create a better draught made it difficult or impossible for adults to reach the entire interior surface. Mechanical sweepers were invented as early as 1803, but it took years for them to reach a level of effectiveness that could compete with the climbing boys.

In the meantime? Life was cheap in an age that knew far more disease, combat, and risky occupations than ours. But suffering was seen, and liberal-minded people took up campaigns to end it. For a poet who peered behind the carefree image of the chimney-sweep, we have William Blake:

Bel Canto Collection

Verdi: Lo spazzacamino