Word: verdis
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...There is, and should be," trumpeted Giuseppe Verdi, "only one kind of music pleasing to Italian ears-the music of guns! I would not write a note for all the gold in the world: I should feel immense remorse for using up music paper, which is so good for making cartridges." The declaration, prompted by the news of the 1848 rebellion against the Austrians, who were then ruling most of Italy, is indicative of the flaming patriotism that consumed the composer's early life and work. He was then 35 and had already written twelve operas, most of them...
Conductors, like all musicians, are often branded with easy epithets that distort far more than they illuminate. Detractors of Toscanini claim, "He is too fast, too harsh--though great at Verdi," which ignores the intuition behind his intensity. Klemperer is overly eulogzed as "the Olympian, interpreter of the classics." And too often it is said of Charles Munch, beloved as he is, that "he does well only in French music." Friday's contert clearly belied this cruel simplification. Choosing three of his favorite works--by Elgar, Martinu, and Saint-Saens, Munch displayed powers of drama and orchestral coloring over...
...Verdi Te Deum, performed by the multitudes of the Glee Club, Choral Society, and Orchestra, was in contrast, a thrilling piece. Verdi uses a number of effective emotional techniques. He alternates short phrases between the men's and women's choruses, contrasting an esoteric female sound with the rich, luscious chords that a male chorus can provide. He goes from one extreme of the dynamics spectrum to the other in a relatively short period of time. And he startles you with sudden harmonic shifts into big, massive, stirring chords...
...passionate defenders must concede that the plots are often preposterous. Coincidence stretches the bounds of credibility (though critics might note that there is a lot of coincidence in life, too, and that its absence in a story can be more unrealistic than its presence). Typical is the moment in Verdi's La Forza del Destino, when Don Alvaro throws his pistol to the floor to show that he is above dueling with his sweetheart's father, the gun goes off and fires a bullet right through Pop's heart. Mistaken identity is rife; a girl...
Such absurdities notwithstanding, the most enduring operas have very good plots indeed. The plays by Victor Hugo or Alexandre Dumas on which various Verdi operas are based are alive in their musical incarnations, though hardly bearable in the original. The fact is often missed because in the U.S., at least, opera is usually sung in the original language, and most members of the audience have little more than a basic vocabulary consisting of amore morire, andia-mo, bene, coraggio, preghiera; Götter, Liebe, Tod, Sturm, Blut; merveille, sourire, larmes, yeux. English-language performances usually do not help because...