LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Verdi: Operas
built 644 days ago
Verdi's best known opera nowadays is Aida, set in ancient Egypt. Aida is the girlfriend of Radames, the coach of the Egyptian national soccer team. The plot concerns Aida's efforts to draw Radames' attention to her, in spite of the fact that he is busy training the team for the 2335 BC World Cup. Act two mainly concentrates on the tragic defeat of the Egyptian team by the Hittite team. After this the Pharaoh threatens to behead Radames unless Egypt is able to beat Ethiopia the following week. In the third and final act, Aida sneaks into the Ethiopian team's changing room and puts laudanum in their energy drink bottles.
Source:
There were no tears for Verdi at Carnegie Hall on Saturday, the day of the centenary of his death, but there were cheers and enthusiastic applause when Vincent La Selva and his New York Grand Opera company performed his Requiem. Mr.La Selva was the man for the job. Few conductors in the world can have as deep, full and long an experience with Verdi's scores, and the Grand opera Company's summer productions in Central Park of all the Verdi operas - with just three this summer to complete the set - have borne the fruits of that expert musicianship.
Source:
Verdi returned to Italy, to live at Genoa. In 1870 he began work on Aida, given at Cairo Opera House at the end of 1871 to mark the opening of the Suez Canal (Verdi was not present): again in the grand opera tradition, and more taut in structure than Don Carlos. Verdi was ready to give up opera; his works of 1873 are a string quartet and the vivid, appealing Requiem in honour of the poet Manzoni, given in 1874-5, in Milan (S Marco and La Scala, aptly), Paris, London and Vienna. In 1879 the composer-poet Boito and the publisher Ricordi prevailed upon Verdi to write another opera, Otello; Verdi, working slowly and much occupied with revisions of earlier operas, completed it only in 1886. This, his most powerful tragic work, a study in evil and jealousy, had its première in Milan in 1887; it is notable for the increasing richness of allusive detail in the orchestral writing and the approach to a more continuous musical texture, though Verdi, with his faith in the expressive force of the human voice, did not abandon the ‘set piece’ (aria, duet etc) even if he integrated it more fully into its context - above all in his next opera. This was another Shakespeare work, Falstaff, on which he embarked two years later - his first comedy since the beginning of his career, with a score whose wit and lightness betray the hand of a serene master, was given in 1893.
Source:
Verdi managed to overcome his unhappiness in 1842 when he produced his opera Nabucco. This was a great success and made him world-famous. He started to work very hard, composing two operas a year. He not only had to write the music but organize all the people to perform it. It was a huge workload. His opera Ernani (1844) was one of the best from this period. In 1847 he had another big success with “Macbeth”.
Source:
Verdi is best known for the operas from his middle years, Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), and La traviata (1853) and his three final works, Aida (1871), Otello (1887), and Falstaff (1893). In these works, as in all his operas, Verdi attempted to balance the art of bel canto, which he had inherited from Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, with the demands of the drama. Because of this, his works present characters that are vocally exciting and at the same time emotionally engaging. Verdi's orchestra and chorus ... played a vital role. No composer has so dominated the Italian stage as Verdi did, and his works are still a mainstay of the operatic repertoire throughout the world.
Source:
The Verdi is supplied with an infra-red remote control. This can ... be used to operate the dCS Elgar and dCS Delius D/A converters and the dCS Purcell upsampler. The remote control codes top enable the Verdi to used used with a programmable remote control are available by clicking here.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Operas