LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Verdi: La Traviata
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Verdi retired in the 1870s. He was a rich man who owned a lot of land. He gave a lot of money to charities, particularly to one charity for elderly musicians. Even in retirement he was persuaded by his publishers to write two more operas. He became fascinated by Shakespeare and he wrote Otello to a libretto (words) by Arrigo Boito. This was a brilliant libretto and it helped him to write a great masterpiece in which every little detail of the story is beautifully described by the music.
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Throughout his career, Verdi rarely utilised the high C in his tenor arias, citing the fact that the opportunity to sing that particular note in front of an audience distracts the performer before and after the note appears. However, he did provide high Cs to Duprez in Jérusalem and to Tamberlick in the original version of La forza del destino. The high C often heard in the aria Di quella pira does not appear in Verdi's score.
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As a rule... it must be acknowledged that there is an absence of intimacy in Verdi's writing here. All has the weight of battle, of violence, of terrible happenings. Both the orchestration and the vocal writing is designed to have the listener feel terror.. But then this is perfectly consonant with Shakespeare's play (heightened, it might be said, by music and by the economy with which Verdi invests each scene.) Macbeth does not walk gently; he does not really talk to men, and his political aspirations have indeed very little to do with social ideas. Furthermore, it might be noted that he and Lady Macbeth are not really husband and wife, much less lovers; they are crude,and obvious political conspirators, stridently wailing for power, obsessively searching to fill who knows what human void. The listener's responses are commensurate with Macbeth's and Lady Macbeth's lack of virtue; their lack of sweetness and light (to borrow Matthew Arnold's words) compel us to recoil from them in confusion and spiritual disarray; we listen with fascination but never do we identify with them.
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Verdi vowed never to compose another comedy and developed a fatalistic belief in inescapable destiny. Even so, the director at La Scala kept faith with Verdi, who later declared that with his next work, Nabucco, "my musical career really began." At dress rehearsals for Nabucco in the La Scala theater, carpenters making repairs to the house gradually stopped hammering and, seating themselves on scaffolding and ladders, listened with rapt attention to what the composer considered a lackluster chorus rendering of "Va, pensiero." At the close of the number, the workers pounded the woodwork with cries of "Bravo, bravo, viva il maestro!" The opening of Nabucco was a triumph. Verdi was famous, commanding a higher fee than any other composer of his time.
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In the meantime, Verdi said he will start the game with the undersized but energetic frontcourt combo of Adia Revell and Sue Altman. Even if they are unable to stop the Tigers’ and Quakers’ post players, Revell and Altman at least have the potential to outscore them, as each player registered a season-high in points last weekend.
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Typically, the locals are squabbling over his legacy - the regional capital, Parma, having beaten Verdi's home town, Busseto, to the lion's share of state benefice for the coming year. Verdi nursed grudges against both towns. Busseto refused him a job as church organist and Parma declined his early operas. Nevertheless, his attachment to the region was fierce; he wrote Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata in Busseto and bought the nearby Sant' Agata estate with the profits. He ... helped to build Busseto's 300-seat theatre (though condemning it as "costly and useless"), and he left bequests to almost every family in the town.
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La Traviata