The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. In the 29-volume second edition. Grove Music Online /General Editor – Stanley Sadie. Oxford University Press. 2001

Verdi, Giuseppe (Fortunino Francesco)

(b Roncole, nr Busseto, 9/10 Oct 1813; d Milan, 27 Jan 1901). Italian composer. By common consent he is recognized as the greatest Italian musical dramatist.

1. Introduction.

2. Life and works, 1813–39.

3. Life, 1839–53.

4. Operas: ‘oberto’ (1839) to ‘La traviata’ (1853).

5. Life, 1853–71.

6. Operas: ‘Les vêpres siciliennes’ (1855) to ‘Aida’ (1871).

7. Interregnum: the 1870s and the ‘Requiem’ (1874).

8. Life, 1879–1901.

9. The last style: ‘Otello’ (1887) and ‘Falstaff’ (1893).

10. Scholarship, dissemination, Verdi in the 20th century.

WORKS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ROGER PARKER

Verdi, Giuseppe

1. Introduction.

A month after Verdi's death, a solemn procession through Milan accompanied by hundreds of thousands of mourners assisted the transfer of his remains to their final resting place. The procession was sent on its way by a rendition of ‘Va pensiero’, the chorus of Hebrew slaves from one of Verdi's earliest operas, Nabucco.

It is easy to see why this event has captured the imagination and assumed significance. By the time of his death, Verdi had established a unique position among his fellow countrymen: although many of his operas had disappeared from the repertory, he had nevertheless become a profound artistic symbol of the nation's achievement of statehood. Parts of his operatic legacy had entered into a kind of empyrean, divorced from the checks and balances of context and passing fashion. The fact that ‘Va pensiero’, written some 60 years earlier, could express contemporary Italians' feelings for their departed hero demonstrated the extent to which Verdi's music had been assimilated into the national consciousness.

However, 100 years after Verdi's death, such an event is likely to take on other meanings, and it can serve as a cautionary note on which to introduce an account of the life and works. To begin at the end of Verdi's long life is a reminder of our present perspective. Verdi's story has continually been written backwards, the early events and achievements accruing narrative force and meaning through the powerful attraction of our sense of their ending. Such is of course true of all biography, but the extent to which it has influenced our perception of Verdi nevertheless makes his an exceptional case. In an attempt to revalue (rather than evade) that perspective, the present survey will follow much recent scholarship in attempting to place Verdi's operas more firmly in the context of their time; and, perhaps more important, it will treat their reception as a separate historical phenomenon, so far as is possible disentangled from present-day views of the composer.

After an outline of Verdi's early years, his life and works will be discussed within three unequal periods. This particular grouping of works is unusual, though as defensible as any other on artistic grounds; it is, however, made primarily for practical reasons and should not be taken to imply the kind of hierarchy of value traditionally signalled by subheadings such as ‘youth’ or ‘maturity’. The first period takes in the 19 operas from Oberto (1839) to La traviata (1853). Claims are frequently made for a qualitative leap to a ‘second period’, beginning some time in the late 1840s or early 1850s, with Macbeth, Luisa Miller or Rigoletto as the watershed; but the entire period is probably best seen as a gradual unfolding within the Italian operatic tradition. A second period, during which the influence of French grand opera is of great importance, includes the operas from Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) to Aida (1871). After the Messa da Requiem and the compositional hiatus of the 1870s, a final period, that of Verdi's last style, includes the revisions to Simon Boccanegra and Don Carlos, the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), and the final religious works.