Giuseppe Verdi – Page 10 – C Major Entertainment

La forza del destino

TUTTO VERDI – this edition to mark the Verdi bicentenary sets standards by which all similar projects will be judged. It includes all twenty-six operas by the greatest Italian stage composer, together with his immortal Requiem, all of them in definitive performances. “This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI

For La forza del destino, Verdi created one of his most famous melodies, the “fate” motif that permeates the whole of the score. Music and action alternate in masterly fashion between large-scale crowd scenes and intimate interiority, in that way illustrating Verdi’s real theme: the manner in which fallible human beings are destroyed by a cruel fate.

Don Carlo

Based on Schiller‘s play of the same name, Don Carlos was written for the Paris Opéra in 1865–66 in the tradition of a French grand opera. Repeatedly revised and performed in Italian as Don Carlo, the opera is seen here in the version that Verdi prepared for Modena in 1886. In many respects, this is Verdi’s most ambitious and most forward-looking work.

Aida

Commissioned by the Viceroy of Egypt, Aida is Verdi’s only opera to be written for a non-European house. Although set in Egypt in the 19th century BC, it borrows only superficially from the current fashion for exotic subjects but on closer examination emerges as an implacable indictment of nationalism and imperialism.

La Traviata

La traviata is Verdi’s most popular opera and one of the best loved of all stage works. Romance, tragedy and unforgettable tunes – this opera has it all. But modern audiences have largely lost sight of the fact that its plot was altogether unprecedented at the time of the work’s composition: with the tale of a highclass prostitute dying of consumption, Verdi raised his fondness for daring subjects to a whole new level.

I vespri siciliani

Not until 1855 did Verdi have a chance to try his hand at the genre of French grand opera. A setting of a libretto by Eugène Scribe, Les Vêpres siciliennes proved a success in Paris despite the problematical nature of its subject matter, which deals with the Sicilian uprising against occupying French forces in Palermo in 1282. Today, the opera is usually given in the Italian version of 1861 as I Vespri siciliani.

Simon Boccanegra

None of Verdi’s other operas was subjected to as radical a series of revisions as Simon Boccanegra. The initial version of 1857 was not a success, so that in 1880/81 Verdi not only rewrote large sections of the score but together with his new librettist Arrigo Boito also reworked the libretto. The result was a sombre work full of overwhelming sound pictures. This second version proved a great and lasting success.

Un ballo in maschera

In 1792 King Gustaf III of Sweden was shot at a masked ball, and this was the starting point for Verdi’s

Un ballo in maschera. But before the opera could be performed in Rome in 1859, the composer had to deal with a whole series of problems with the censor. It was only when the action was moved to Boston and all reference to real-life figures removed that the work could be launched on its triumphant career.

Luisa Miller

“This is how Verdi should be played” – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on TUTTO VERDI

Stiffelio

The wife of a Protestant preacher as an adulteress – problems with the censor were inevitable from the outset with Verdi’s opera Stiffelio, which was premièred in November 1850. Even today the finale seems astonishingly bold: superficially it deals with forgiveness and reconciliation, but the orchestral writing is in such striking contrast that Verdi appears to be tolling the death knell of the protagonists’ marriage.

Rigoletto

For Verdi, Victor Hugo’s play Le roi s’amuse was “arguably the greatest drama of the present day“. But many of his contemporaries were scandalized by this tale of corpses, jesters, cripples and a king addicted to venal love. And yet this no doubt helps to explain why Rigoletto turned out to be Verdi’s second great success and laid the foundations for his emergence as Italy’s leading opera composer.