The article is a detailed account of the thoughts of the author during the study of the piece. The first step was to compare Verdi’s and Liszt’s text in order to check their structural differences; then the analysis tried to identify the impact of the single difference on the general meaning of each episode – chosen by Liszt for his paraphrase – in itself and in comparison with the whole opera. The author pays particular attention to the sequence of the episodes and to Liszt’s apparently groundless expansions of the Verdi’s themes. Decisions for performance regarding tempo, dynamics, phrasing and touch derive from this comparison, enriched thanks to the information given by the lyrics of the libretto.
Many other suggestions arise from observations regarding several aspects of Liszt’s Réminiscences de Boccanegra compared with the whole repertory of the réminiscences of Liszt. As a conclusion of his analysis the performer has to find out the sound properties able to underline Liszt’s design for the personality of Boccanegra partially different from that emerging from Verdi’s opera.