#final scenes

the ending of Stiffelio is so uplifting because it is so full of pure, unadulterated (pun very much intended) hope.

as much as we, the audience, want to know what happens to the characters after the curtain falls, Verdi and Piave leave it ambiguous. do Stiffelio and Lina end up back together? they don’t say, but it doesn’t really matter in their eyes.

all that matters is that there is hope.

everyone in the church, all of them singing a prayer for mercy at the beginning of that scene, fully expected a condemnation, that Lina’s fate would be sealed and she would be cast out forever. but instead, there is a simple yet extraordinary act of forgiveness—an act which leaves room for hope.

“let him who has never sinned cast the first stone.”

over the course of the opera, Lina has fully reckoned with everything that has led to this point. it’s torn her apart and then some, and she fully believes by the final scene that she will never be forgiven. but here is a moment where the entire community is forced to stare at their own shortcomings in the face. can they condemn her? and by that logic, can they condemn anyone?

and this is the main thing I liked about Graham Vick’s Parma 2017 staging. there are a lot of things I liked and a lot of things I didn’t like, but at the very end of the opera, every single hateful banner hung by the congregation around the theater is torn down. one by one. even the ones not directly related to what has happened. there is hope for one, there is hope for all.

as a young woman raised in a conservative Christian family who attended conservative, ostensibly-non-denominational-but-actually-evangelical churches growing up but who disagrees with most of what both family and church tried to ingrain into her, I have struggled and still do struggle with what exactly religion means to me.

but what I do believe is that the best of religion is the best of humanity: it’s what recognizes the inherent dignity and magnificence of all human beings by virtue of being human. it encourages people to love and care for one another, to create things to show the world with both its pain and its beauty, to free people’s hearts and minds, to have hope that things can become better.

and all this is wrapped up in this little eight-minute scene. we all have dignity. we are all loved and cared about enough to be created and to be forgiven, so why shouldn’t we love and care for each other, regardless of what may have happened in the past? on this level, we are all the same: not perfect, but capable of caring for one another. we all want something better. we all hope for something better. we all live for hope. we must realize this and forgive one another. and so it is.

at the end, in spite of everything, there is hope. there is hope that the best of humanity will truly and fully prevail. it has not been shut out, unlike so many other similar stories.