Word: verdis
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...half of the performances going on; as usual, the smaller halls were filled with so many trios, quartets, pianists, choruses and sopranos that even the dutiful New York Times didn't try to cover them all. This week, with a Kirsten Flagstad Isolde and a Toscanini performance of Verdi's Requiem (see below), looked just as dazzling. In short, Manhattan was in midseason...
...Giuseppe Verdi came from peasant stock and never lost the blunt imprint. But the composer of some of the most moving and impassioned operas ever written-Trovatore, Traviata, Rigoletto, Aïda, Otello-remained a hard man only outwardly. Verdi's music eloquently tells the story of the inner man. And so, in a way, did his will...
...comparatively wealthy man, Verdi gave some 450,000 lire, five years before he died, at 87, to establish a Casa di Riposo for worn-out musicians. In his will he left it 250,000 lire, plus all future opera royalties...
Until World War II, "Casa Verdi" in Milan housed 100 pensioners in gracious ease. But Casa Verdi's income suffered when buildings in which some of its capital was invested were bombed in air raids. Moreover, the lira isn't what it used...
Facing Milan's quiet Piazza Buonarroti and its huge, brooding statue of Verdi, the three-story, red brick Casa now accommodates 50 men and 35 women in elegant austerity. There are still a few who remember the old maestro. Said Soprano Giannina Russ, 77, once a star at La Scala: "He was always critical. Just like Toscanini, he was never satisfied...