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A Career of Musical Peaks |
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by Kevin Filipski (The New York Times) |
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After Giuseppe Verdi’s death on January 27, 1901, the outpouring of grief in his native Italy was unprecedented. When his funeral procession passed through the streets of Milan, nearly a quarter of a million people turned out to mourn the man whose music had stirred the emotions of passionate people. Toscanini conducted the “Va, pensiero” chorus from Nabucco, which had become a quasi-Italian national anthem. Italian and European dignitaries attended, as did Puccini, Mascagni and other composers of the younger generation.
Such public grieving demonstrated Verdi’s exalted position in his native country. His operas were popular not only for their musical and dramatic virtues but also for the large role politics played in them. Verdi was a fervently in favour of a unified Italy, at a time when such sentiments were hardly popular with the various foreign rulers who governed the collection of states that made up the country. The composer poured his patriotism into his operas, many of which hinged on political themes that his audiences grasped and took to heart. In Nabucco, for example, the aforementioned “Va, pensiero” chorus of the captive Hebrew slaves mirrored for many Italians their situation: a people without a unified, free country.
Soon after Verdi’s death his place in opera history grew hazy. His works are gripping, some aficionados said, but many are also crudely obvious and melodramatic. With the partial exception of his last works – the Requiem, Otello and Falstaff – the merits of his operas were rabidly argued among critics, for whom the newer verismo style made Verdi’s melodramatic Romanticism seem old-fashioned. Many of his earlier operas virtually disappeared from the stage.
Today, of course, Verdi’s operas are essential to any audience-seeking opera company. What season goes without performances of Rigoletto, La Traviata, Il Trovatore and Aida? The thrilling music, sharply etched characterisations and taut dramatic structures of Verdi’s works have kept them, if not fully in the repertory of opera houses around the globe, at least in a unique position where they are heard regularly, either live or on recordings.
Born in 1813 at Le Roncole – then part of Napoleon’s Italy, technically rendering this most Italian of composers French by birth! – Verdi’s lower-class background seemingly made a career in music unlikely (though his was not the “rags-to-riches” story he himself perpetuated). He overcame obstacles that would have discouraged someone with less confidence, including the humiliation of being refused admittance to the Milan conservatory.
His long career is generally divided into three periods. The earliest operas (Oberto, I Lombardi, Giovanna d’Arco) are marked by remnants of the bel canto of Bellini, Donizetti and Rossini. Nabucco (1842) is a prime example: His ear for transforming dross (erratic plotting and cardboard characters) into riveting drama never falters.
The middle period begins with Rigoletto (1851) and continues with such treasures as Il Trovatore (January 1853), La Traviata (March 1853) and Un Ballo in Maschera (1859). It was here that the earlier, often four-square works were replaced by operas with a remarkable fluidness and sophistication.
In semi-retirement following Aida (1871), Verdi entered a golden age of dramatic power and economy of expression. After the 1874 Requiem – a rousingly dramatic opera in all but name – Verdi worked on two librettos by the composer and writer Arrigo Boito to create his final Shakespearean masterworks, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), considered by many the finest operas in the entire Verdi canon.
After a career spent moving from peak to musical peak, Verdi had nothing left to prove. Beginning as a crowd-pleasing composer, he methodically brought about extraordinary changes in opera: he placed fearsome demands on his singers but always grounded them in fleshed-out characters and exciting drama. In a much less attention-getting way, he rivalled the revolution Wagner was loudly leading in Germany. A century after his death, Verdi’s place in opera history is not only secure, but exalted. |
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