# Am I the only one who doesn't like Verdi? An existential question...



## rojaba

Hi there, my apologies for entering the debate with a cold start but let me introduce myself: my name is Robert and I've been in a serious relationship with classical music for the past 20 years or so. :tiphat:

I believe that I have a very broad taste. I can get very excited about a well performed Monteverdi madrigal, a Haydn oratorio, a Shostakovich symphony or even John Adams' "Nixon in China". One thing I've never been able to access, however, is Verdi.

I've tried hard to give it a chance. I've been to various performances and I own quite a few Verdi CDs, from newer efforts to the, for want of a better word, "classical" Del Monaco recordings. Still, I do not like it.

I can hear some of you say: oh but you must not like Italian opera in general, but I do. I would even rank La Boheme and Pagliacci among my favourite works. But with Verdi, it's hard. There are certain parts which are more pleasant than others, of course, with the "Eri tu" aria from "ballo" being something I enjoy, especially if Hvorostovsky sings it. But overall I find it too brash, too staccato (and please, please, please stop with the cymbals in every single bar) to listen to an entire opera.

I've been quite late to the party with Wagner, especially as I first came to know him through old Bayreuth recordings with lots of coughing from the audience and out of tune shouting from the cast, but I quite enjoy him now.

Does anyone have any advice on how I can gain access to Verdi and start to enjoy him just like so many people do? Or is there anyone here who agrees with me? I'd love to hear from you!


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## joen_cph

Welcome to the forum!

I think it´s perfectly OK not to like Verdi, but I guess you´re interested in coming to like him. Except from the _Requiem _& the parts he wrote for _Mass for Rossini_, I don´t fancy his works either - but many other composers in stead.


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## starthrower

There's always the string quartet!


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## rojaba

Thanks starthrower, I wasn't aware of it. I just had a quick look on spotify and it's quite a piece! And hoorah for lack of cymbal! But he only wrote one of them?


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## starthrower

As far as I know, but I'm no authority on Verdi.


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## joen_cph

Except from the opera ouvertures etc., there´s only little purely instrumental music by him:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...i#Instrumental.2C_orchestral.2C_chamber_works

Some of the orchestral examples - also some not in Wiki - can be found here:
http://www.deccaclassics.com/en/cat/4737672


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## Nereffid

In my ongoing series of composer polls, 54% of participants say they like Verdi, so no, you're certainly not the only one who doesn't like him!
Depending on how one wishes to interpret these things, the polls suggest Verdi might be the least valued of those composers that are (more or less) universally recognised as "great".


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## Heliogabo

The string quartet, yes, and the Requiem as well.


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## helenora

no, you are not the only one, that's for sure. I understand what you mean , because many people like his music, that makes you feel you are one of few.

but Verdi is easy to like , so as music of JS Bach. May be not all their compositions, but everyone will find something for oneself.


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## Manxfeeder

Verdi hasn't clicked with me, either. I have attempted to warm to the requiem, especially because of the story of the defiant Jewish performance before the Nazis at Terezim, but it's too theatrical for my taste. 

I think the Quattro Pezzi Sacri is the only Verdi piece I listen to, and I don't listen to that as much as I probably should.


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## Sonata

Yes. You are the only one that doesn't like Verdi. 
Kidding. I adore Verdi but everyone has their own tastes and that's fine!


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## hpowders

Listen to a Verdi greatest arias set for either soprano or tenor. Do it quite a few times, remembering that repetition is your friend.
If you enjoy any of them, zero in on the opera containing the aria you like.

If still nothing emotionally, then simply move on. Verdi isn't for you. Not a crime.

Just don't move to Milan.


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## superhorn

Welcome to the forum ! I don't know how many of Verdi's operas you've heard, but there are about 28 of them . I've heard them all, and while the early ones tend to be somewhat coarse and formulaic at times, the late ones are among the greatest of Italian operas . 
The last two, Falstaff and Otello, are among the greatest operas, period . Aida and Don Carlo are also wonderful . None of the operas is completely devoid of merit . Verdi was a cunning practical man of the theater who knew how to give opera audiences what they wanted to hear without dumbing his music down . 
The operas were written from approximately the early 1840s to the 90s , and Verdi gradually matured his compositional technique from relatively simple and formulaic to refined complexity and sophistication . 
I don't know how many complete recordings of the opera on CD and live DVD performances you've heard and seen , but you can;'t go wrong with the ones with such great Verdi conductors as Toscanini, Tullio Serafin, James Levine, Riccardo Muti, Claudio Abbado, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Solti, Karajan ,
and Lamberto Gardelli etc .


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## Pugg

Sonata said:


> Yes. You are the only one that doesn't like Verdi.
> Kidding. I adore Verdi but everyone has their own tastes and that's fine!


I am with Sonata on this, no hard feelings.


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## Mandryka

rojaba said:


> Hi there, my apologies for entering the debate with a cold start but let me introduce myself: my name is Robert and I've been in a serious relationship with classical music for the past 20 years or so. :tiphat:
> 
> I believe that I have a very broad taste. I can get very excited about a well performed Monteverdi madrigal, a Haydn oratorio, a Shostakovich symphony or even John Adams' "Nixon in China". One thing I've never been able to access, however, is Verdi.
> 
> I've tried hard to give it a chance. I've been to various performances and I own quite a few Verdi CDs, from newer efforts to the, for want of a better word, "classical" Del Monaco recordings. Still, I do not like it.
> 
> I can hear some of you say: oh but you must not like Italian opera in general, but I do. I would even rank La Boheme and Pagliacci among my favourite works. But with Verdi, it's hard. There are certain parts which are more pleasant than others, of course, with the "Eri tu" aria from "ballo" being something I enjoy, especially if Hvorostovsky sings it. But overall I find it too brash, too staccato (and please, please, please stop with the cymbals in every single bar) to listen to an entire opera.
> 
> I've been quite late to the party with Wagner, especially as I first came to know him through old Bayreuth recordings with lots of coughing from the audience and out of tune shouting from the cast, but I quite enjoy him now.
> 
> Does anyone have any advice on how I can gain access to Verdi and start to enjoy him just like so many people do? Or is there anyone here who agrees with me? I'd love to hear from you!


I can sympathise with this for nearly all the music Verdi wrote apart from Otello and Falstaff and maybe Don Carlos. That's to say, the final music.


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## PoorSadDrunk

I have always thought of Verdi as being a little progressive and a lot of bombasticism. Easy to feel alienated in certain regards. 
I'm with you on this, homeboy. Verdi uses the expressionistic style in a very theatrical way; boarder line disturbing.


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## rojaba

Thanks for all the responses, I feel more at ease now. I really liked the string quartet though. Will look for a good recording of it.


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## TxllxT

From Verdi's operas Don Carlos and Macbeth are the ones I listen to from the beginning to the end. With the others I incline more towards the best-of-the-best-arias compilations with great singers. Even Verdi wouldn't be bothered about that, I guess.


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## hpowders

The question of liking or not liking the music of any composer is always a matter of individual taste.

Considering not liking a composer's music as an existential crisis is in my opinion an over-reaction to a rather minor "problem".


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## Guest

Try Otello. Several times. If you don't like it, there's something seriously wrong with you.


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## SixFootScowl

Don't know much about Verdi but that he has some operas. I do have Jerusalem on CD and DVD. It is good. So he must have some other good stuff.


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## alan davis

DoReFaMi said:


> Try Otello. Several times. If you don't like it, there's something seriously wrong with you.


Am still chuckling over this. Gotta agree though. Otello is a seriously great opera.


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## Pugg

Try Don Carlo as mentiond above, several times, if not...same answer.


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## manyene

I think it depends on which Verdi it is. Yes, much of his earlier work was too close to the sometimes meretricious world of Donizetti, but move forward and you begin to find the masterpieces - Traviata and Rigoletto, and then finally, the crowning glories of his career, Otello and Falstaff, which have much to say about life (and death).


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## Sonata

Rojaba...I should add: even though Verdi is my favorite opera composer, I agree that he could lighten up on those cymbals a bit!!!


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## majlis

Am I the only one who hate opera. and can't stand the shrieks of tenor and soprano?. It's a phobia to me.


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## SixFootScowl

majlis said:


> Am I the only one who hate opera. and can't stand the shrieks of tenor and soprano?. It's a phobia to me.


Get Boris Godunov and you will not have so much tenor or soprano to deal with.


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## Pugg

majlis said:


> Am I the only one who hate opera. and can't stand the shrieks of tenor and soprano?. It's a phobia to me.


We still like you though.


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## Francis Poulenc

Verdi is great. Even his splashiest operas have an undeniable beauty to them, much like Beethoven's 9th.


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## hpowders

Heliogabo said:


> The string quartet, yes, and the Requiem as well.


For me the Requiem is actually Verdi's greatest opera.


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## Pat Fairlea

As the OP hasn't attracted fire, brimstone, tar and feathers (yet), I'll poke my head above the parapet and admit that I just can't be doing with Verdi either. Too much heart on the sleeve, too theatrical, just too....too.... much!


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## Pat Fairlea

majlis said:


> Am I the only one who hate opera. and can't stand the shrieks of tenor and soprano?. It's a phobia to me.


Ooooh, that's an interesting comment. One of the things that puts me off some opera and other works for voice is the apparent obsession with getting soprani to sing at the top of their range, all that Queen of the Night squeaking. Can't see the point. Give me a good mezzo singing well within her range, or a chesty contralto with real texture to her voice (sounds like Mrs Pat in her singing days...). A shrill soprano just makes my tinnitus resonate unpleasantly.
And as for tenors, why do so many of them insist on a mannered, sobbing style like Pavarotti at his most camped-up? Whenever I hear about the latest wonder-boy tenor being marketed, I get out my Bjorling CDs and think "No, just not in his class". 
Apologies to any tenors reading this - I don't mean to demean your register, I just find the lower male and female voices so much more interesting and tonally rich. Many others will disagree, and so they should.


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## Pugg

Pat Fairlea said:


> Ooooh, that's an interesting comment. One of the things that puts me off some opera and other works for voice is the apparent obsession with getting soprani to sing at the top of their range, all that Queen of the Night squeaking. Can't see the point. Give me a good mezzo singing well within her range, or a chesty contralto with real texture to her voice (sounds like Mrs Pat in her singing days...). A shrill soprano just makes my tinnitus resonate unpleasantly.
> And as for tenors, why do so many of them insist on a mannered, sobbing style like Pavarotti at his most camped-up? Whenever I hear about the latest wonder-boy tenor being marketed, I get out my Bjorling CDs and think "No, just not in his class".
> Apologies to any tenors reading this - I don't mean to demean your register, I just find the lower male and female voices so much more interesting and tonally rich. Many others will disagree, and so they should.


Like the Verdi choice, each his or her own taste.


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## rojaba

I think I may have found something: Simon Boccanegra


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## Retrograde Inversion

It would be easy to dismiss "Joe Green" as just a talented tunesmith, although there's certainly more to him than that. Still, a bit too much "peasant" crudity for my taste, despite some lovely things like _D'amor sull'ali rosee_ and_ O patria mia_.


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## lextune

Honestly, there is so much music, there are very few composers worth making a concerted effort 'to like'. Bach, Beethoven, Wagner...?

So you don't like Verdi, plenty of people agree with you.

Be thankful you escaped the bad performances of Wagner. He may have been cursed with more of them than any other composer. Chopin too I suppose...


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## Woodduck

Retrograde Inversion said:


> It would be easy to dismiss "Joe Green" as just a talented tunesmith, although there's certainly more to him than that. Still, a bit too much "peasant" crudity for my taste, despite some lovely things like _D'amor sull'ali rosee_ and_ O patria mia_.


Among Verdi's earlier works, _La Traviata_ exhibits the least of that crudity, and for that reason has always been my favorite of his operas before _Otello_ and _Falstaff._


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## Reichstag aus LICHT

I must admit that Verdi doesn't do much for me. In some 35 years of opera-going - and I've seen a good couple of hundred in that time - I can count the number of Verdi operas I've attended on the fingers of one hand. They're _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ (Welsh National Opera); _Aida_ and _Simon Boccanegra_ (Covent Garden) and Jonathan Miller's _Rigoletto_ at the London Coliseum.

These were excellent productions, and I enjoyed rather a lot of the music, but for some reason Verdi doesn't light my fire - at least, not in the same way that Puccini, Donizetti, Rossini or Bellini do. I can't for the life of me explain why, because it's obvious to me that Verdi was the greatest composer of romantic Italian opera.

I've just got a blind-spot, I guess.


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## amfortas

I've always had mixed feelings about Verdi. At his weakest, he sounds crude and simplistic--too much the oom-pah bandleader. At his very best--_Otello_, _Falstaff_, the Requiem (and, for me, _Don Carlo_)--he transmutes some of those same basic elements into works of inspired musical and dramatic genius.

Since the latter circumstance is far more rare in music history, it's the one I tend to focus on.


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## Woodduck

amfortas said:


> I've always had mixed feelings about Verdi. At his weakest, he sounds crude and simplistic--too much the oom-pah bandleader. At his very best--_Otello_, _Falstaff_, the Requiem (and, for me, _Don Carlo_)--he transmutes some of those same basic elements into works of inspired musical and dramatic genius.
> 
> Since the latter circumstance is far more rare in music history, it's the one I tend to focus on.


It's impossible to praise _Falstaff_ too highly, I think. For Verdi, the composer of that ultimate tub-thumper _Il __Trovatore_, to have produced such a brilliant, subtle score (with help from Shakespeare and Boito, of course) at the age of 80 is amazing. As an opera composer Verdi traveled a greater artistic distance than any composer I can think of except Wagner.


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## amfortas

Woodduck said:


> It's impossible to praise _Falstaff_ too highly, I think. For Verdi, the composer of that ultimate tub-thumper _Il __Trovatore_, to have produced such a brilliant, subtle score (with help from Shakespeare and Boito, of course) at the age of 80 is amazing. As an opera composer Verdi traveled a greater artistic distance than any composer I can think of except Wagner.


Agreed, though I have a real soft spot for _Trovatore_. Maybe because it's such an *unabashed* ultimate tub-thumper.


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## David OByrne

Verdi, like Mozart and Rossini, have a certain sound/style that originally put me off classical music


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## Woodduck

David OByrne said:


> Verdi, like Mozart and Rossini, have a certain sound/style that originally put me off classical music


Glad those wankers didn't ruin it for you forever.


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## David OByrne

Woodduck said:


> Glad those wankers didn't ruin it for you forever.


Yes!! I'm glad too because if I didn't explore more then I wouldn't like classical music at all, sorry to say  Luckily it's a very diverse genre


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## AlanB

I'll join the queue of non Verdi listeners. Been listening to classical music for around 67 years and he is one of those composers who never ticked my boxes.


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## Woodduck

It's interesting, and honestly a little surprising, to me to see how many people dislike Verdi or are lukewarm to him. I suspect it has a lot to do with his fach being opera. We have to remember that when we hear 19th century opera we are hearing a "popular" art form, as opposed to the "learned" symphonic and chamber repertoire, and composers like Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Auber, Herold, Meyerbeer, Weber, Von Suppe and Johann Strauss knew how to give musically unsophisticated audiences the sort of catchy tunes and thumping rhythms that would bring in the box office receipts and send people away humming, while still bringing classical training to bear and to varying degrees aspiring to "serious" art. Wagner really threw down the gauntlet with his imaginative, psychologically probing music dramas and challengingly complex scores, and other composers, including Verdi, responded with more emotionally complex and aesthetically integrated creations which asked more of both composer and audience.

Verdi's later works parallel Wagner (though always in an Italianate way) and show a loosening of the aria as a distinct entity, an enrichment of the orchestral contribution, a wider range of compositional techniques, and a greater unity of atmosphere. It isn't surprising that many people who don't care for early Verdi (and/or Italian opera of the "bel canto" era) do enjoy his late works. _Otello_ and _Falstaff,_ especially, really are different and go quite a distance beyond obviously tuneful "popular" idioms. Anyone not enamored of Verdi should give these works some attention.


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## arpeggio

I am one of the few non-Verdi people here. When the Verdi train left the station I was not on it. I just do not get Verdi like some people do not get many contemporary composers. There is no crime in not getting whatever. Words will not change our minds. So there is something wrong with our ears, so what. Verdi is still one of the greatest opera composers is spite of my feelings.

The one opera I do like is _Falstaff_.

It is ironic that the _Requiem_ is a desert island disk for me.

One of my many prior posts concerning Verdi:

http://www.talkclassical.com/23274-perverse-approach-opera.html?highlight=verdi#post403954


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## Pugg

AlanB said:


> I'll join the queue of non Verdi listeners. Been listening to classical music for around 67 years and he is one of those composers who never ticked my boxes.


I could not live one day without his music, being younger and that.


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## hpowders

OP: It's simple. If you don't have a taste for opera, you won't like Verdi.

My advice is to listen to La Boheme by Puccini. This is the starting point for a potential opera lover. If you don't like it, then there is no hope for you, but if you do like it, move on to Puccini's Tosca and if you like that, try Verdi's Rigoletto.


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## Tuoksu

Verdi is the most Italian of all composers. If you don't like Verdi chances are you don't like/get anything Italian at all and you probably don't really like Opera either and here is why: Verdi, or Opera in general, is a singer's art form before anything. You have to sing it or at least have an idea about vocal technique to be able to appreciate it. If your main concern isn't singing then of course you can never get into that kind of music. If that's the case chances are you like Wagner and non-Italian repertoire far more than Verdi and Bel Canto. Verdi was a genius and I don't agree on his Italian style being labeled as "crude" or "unsophisticated". The whole Opera thing, real Opera, that is Bel Canto and Verdi, complete with the libretti and the drama and whatnot, at the end of the day is just a hat stand on which which we hang an _Italian vocal art of supreme beauty, finesse, complexity and sophistication. _ Verdi revolutionized this art form. He added a deeper human and dramatic dimension to what once was almost limited to vocal exhibitionism. Not to mention that among singers if you ask what the meaty repertoire is you will mostly get one answer that is "Verdi". He changed things. He gave birth to Grand Opéra and paved the way for Verismo.

Generally, instrumentalists don't seem to like Verdi or Opera at all.


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## PlaySalieri

There are plenty of classical music lover who find Mozart boring - so why not Verdi? No it's not strange at all.

As for me - I have some blind spots - like Aida and most Don Carlo, Forza, Un Ballo. Trovatore and Traviata, and Rigoletto to a lesser extent have so much melodious music in them it's hard not to like them. Otello is really a masterpiece supreme - how Verdi moved from oom pa pa formulas to the magnificent music of Otello - what happened in between the middle period and Otello - goodness only knows - he's like a new composer.

For me Mozart is first in opera (in everything) but Verdi is a close second.


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## ArtMusic

Verdi is a master of opera. Disliking Verdi' music is likely equating to disliking opera in all statistical likelihood. Pure and simple.


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## Woodduck

It's absurd to say that to dislike one particular composer is to dislike a whole genre or national tradition. I dislike quite a lot of Verdi's music, and am lukewarm toward much of the rest, choosing to listen to it only when my favorite singers are involved. This doesn't mean I don't like opera or Italian music in general. Taste is far more nuanced, specific, and individual than that. I'm always amazed at how glibly some people speak for the tastes of others.


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## Becca

Tuoksu said:


> If you don't like Verdi chances are you don't like/get anything Italian at all and you probably don't really like Opera either and here is why: Verdi, or Opera in general, is a singer's art form before anything. You have to sing it or at least have an idea about vocal technique to be able to appreciate it.





ArtMusic said:


> Verdi is a master of opera. Disliking Verdi' music is likely equating to disliking opera in all statistical likelihood. Pure and simple.


I'm sorry but these are quite simply (and purely) a ridiculous set of assertions not least because they are so over-generalized. To assume that love of Verdi implies love of singing (and really, must you be able to sing it to appreciate it??) and if singing is not important then you don't is nonsense. What about Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Puccini? How about Berlioz? Mozart, in particular his Da Ponte operas?

In my teens it was opera that really got me into classical music, and that included the Bel Canto and Verdi repertoires. For a long time now I have not been able to tolerate most of Verdi even though I love his Falstaff, most Rossini and Puccini and some of the other verismo composers. I also think that Berlioz' Les Troyens is amongst the greatest operatic works. And yes, I am also a Wagnerian, albeit not all of it. Admittedly this is only one person's opinions but I am not that much of an outlier.


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## DavidA

ArtMusic said:


> Verdi is a master of opera. Disliking Verdi' music is likely equating to disliking opera in all statistical likelihood. Pure and simple.


Yes but not everyone needs to like him. I do like Verdi and consider ~Falstaff the greatest of all operas after Mozart. I just can't imagine anyone not liking Falstaff. But not everyone has my taste - my wife for one!


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## Huilunsoittaja

Woodduck said:


> It's absurd to say that to dislike one particular composer is to dislike a whole genre or national tradition.


This is plausible in theory. But Verdi is not a top of the top composer, so it is easier to call it absurd. In reality, there are some exceptions especially for some composers that completely defined a genre, a style, an era, or even a country...

"Beethoven is a not a part of my life" =


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## Clairvoyance Enough

My biggest criticism of italian opera, Rossini and Verdi particularly, is actually how tuneless it sounds. It's hard to describe, but the melodies and rhythms sound constrained by the syllables of the words, like I'm just listening to vowels receive emphasis in blocky, predictable patterns, always with that same slow linear glide from the expected direction through the pronunciation of a word - the motions are just so samey. It's hard for me to find exciting compared to Handel's machine-gun arias or Bach's more multi-layered vocal stuff, or even the richer colors of Puccini's orchestral writing.


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## Nevum

I have been unable to even listen to Verdi. His music simply bothers me. So, we may have the same mutation in one or more of our music genes  I would certainly not feel bad about it. 

I think his music is nearly as a bad as Schoenbergs


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## SiegendesLicht

Huilunsoittaja said:


> This is plausible in theory. But Verdi is not a top of the top composer, so it is easier to call it absurd. In reality, there are some exceptions especially for some composers that completely defined a genre, a style, an era, or even a country...
> 
> "Beethoven is a not a part of my life" =


Yep. And everyone who does not appreciate the ultimate genius of Wagner is an ignorant Germanophobe who gets his information from Hollywood war movies. Just kidding, please do not get riled up, everybody.

And Verdi... I think I do not like him as much as he probably deserves, but more out of lack of time spent with his music than for any objective reason.


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## Woodduck

SiegendesLicht said:


> Yep. And everyone who does not appreciate the ultimate genius of Wagner is an ignorant Germanophobe who gets his information from Hollywood war movies. Just kidding, please do not get riled up, everybody.


It's worse than that. Those people are utterly lacking in taste or even basic intelligence and should not challenge their brains with anything more complex than "Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads." Or maybe _Il Trovatore._


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## DaveM

ArtMusic said:


> Verdi is a master of opera. Disliking Verdi' music is likely equating to disliking opera in all statistical likelihood. Pure and simple.


That assumes that Verdi is considered to be the pinnacle of opera. Well, he isn't. But Mozart is. No, Wagner is. No, Puccini is. No, Donizetti is, No, Bellini is. No Gluck is. No, ....


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## Meyerbeer Smith

No, you're not alone. Some of his operas are excellent - _Don Carlos, Otello, Aida, Ballo _(excellent, but no reason to overlook Auber's _Gustave III_) - but on the whole I don't like him much.

I find his music crude and unpolished, even as late as _Forza_. His bel canto predecessors Rossini and Donizetti had a much finer sense of form (pure music), while his instrumentation is dull compared to the French, German and Russian musicians of the mid-to-late 19th century or, in Italy herself, Mercadante.

The early ones are noisy and bombastic, full of sound and fury. There are, admittedly, fun things in almost all of them, even _Corsaro _("Si: de' corsari il fulmine") and _Attila _("Oh, miei prodi!"). But it's unsurprising that the galley operas languished in obscurity. Do _Attila, Giovanna d'Arco, Ernani _or _Nabucco _deserve to be performed as often as they are?

Most of his operas have idiotic and preposterous plots, with bipolar, suicidal characters, and atmospheres of inspissated gloom. This is boring in the galley works, while more mature operas like _Forza _and _Luisa Miller _are depressing.

His popularity may also make opera unpopular. The public think that opera is incomprehensible rubbish sung beautifully in Foreign (which sometimes lasts a week). In fact, in the 19th century Verdi was often lambasted for his illogical, convoluted plots. He also dominates the opera house more than he did in the 19th century. True, in Italy he was a symbol of the Risorgimento (Viva V E R D I), but the French and Germans thought he was second-rate - and not in the same class as Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Weber, Gluck, the Beethoven of _Fidelio_ or, later, Wagner.


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## hpowders

^^^^It's a shame he died. You could have left the above post in his suggestion box. Always room for improvement from one who knows better.

He seems to have become universally famous despite you.


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## Woodduck

SimonTemplar said:


> No, you're not alone. Some of his operas are excellent - _Don Carlos, Otello, Aida, Ballo _(excellent, but no reason to overlook Auber's _Gustave III_) - but on the whole I don't like him much.
> 
> I find his music crude and unpolished, even as late as _Forza_. His bel canto predecessors Rossini and Donizetti had a much finer sense of form (pure music), while his instrumentation is dull compared to the French, German and Russian musicians of the mid-to-late 19th century or, in Italy herself, Mercadante.
> 
> The early ones are noisy and bombastic, full of sound and fury. There are, admittedly, fun things in almost all of them, even _Corsaro _("Si: de' corsari il fulmine") and _Attila _("Oh, miei prodi!"). But it's unsurprising that the galley operas languished in obscurity. Do _Attila, Giovanna d'Arco, Ernani _or _Nabucco _deserve to be performed as often as they are?
> 
> Most of his operas have idiotic and preposterous plots, with bipolar, suicidal characters, and atmospheres of inspissated gloom. This is boring in the galley works, while more mature operas like _Forza _and _Luisa Miller _are depressing.
> 
> His popularity may also make opera unpopular. The public think that opera is incomprehensible rubbish sung beautifully in Foreign (which sometimes lasts a week). In fact, in the 19th century Verdi was often lambasted for his illogical, convoluted plots. He also dominates the opera house more than he did in the 19th century. True, in Italy he was a symbol of the Risorgimento (Viva V E R D I), but the French and Germans thought he was second-rate - and not in the same class as Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Weber, Gluck, the Beethoven of _Fidelio_ or, later, Wagner.


Good post. I find myself in agreement with much of it - to a point. There are reasons why even early Verdi is now so popular, and Mercadante isn't. The combination of inspired tunefulness and sheer physical energy compensates many for a lack of subtlety or profundity. Verdi traveled far artistically from his early barnstormers, with their silly plots and rum-ti-tum choruses, to the depth and sophistication of _Otello_ and _Falstaff_, with their strong character portraits and richness of expression, and there are many and increasing beauties along the way which even his grim outlook on life can't keep down. (Actually the dark cynicism never completely goes away - am I alone in feeling it even beneath _Falstaff's_ levity?- and I don't much sympathize with it. But that's a personal thing.)


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## znapschatz

SimonTemplar said:


> No, you're not alone. Some of his operas are excellent - _Don Carlos, Otello, Aida, Ballo _(excellent, but no reason to overlook Auber's _Gustave III_) - but on the whole I don't like him much.
> 
> I find his music crude and unpolished, even as late as _Forza_. His bel canto predecessors Rossini and Donizetti had a much finer sense of form (pure music), while his instrumentation is dull compared to the French, German and Russian musicians of the mid-to-late 19th century or, in Italy herself, Mercadante.
> 
> The early ones are noisy and bombastic, full of sound and fury. There are, admittedly, fun things in almost all of them, even _Corsaro _("Si: de' corsari il fulmine") and _Attila _("Oh, miei prodi!"). But it's unsurprising that the galley operas languished in obscurity. Do _Attila, Giovanna d'Arco, Ernani _or _Nabucco _deserve to be performed as often as they are?
> 
> Most of his operas have idiotic and preposterous plots, with bipolar, suicidal characters, and atmospheres of inspissated gloom. This is boring in the galley works, while more mature operas like _Forza _and _Luisa Miller _are depressing.
> 
> His popularity may also make opera unpopular. The public think that opera is incomprehensible rubbish sung beautifully in Foreign (which sometimes lasts a week). In fact, in the 19th century Verdi was often lambasted for his illogical, convoluted plots. He also dominates the opera house more than he did in the 19th century. True, in Italy he was a symbol of the Risorgimento (Viva V E R D I), but the French and Germans thought he was second-rate - and not in the same class as Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Weber, Gluck, the Beethoven of _Fidelio_ or, later, Wagner.


I kind of agree with this, but Verdi has his uses. As a youngster, I attended a 1953 movie of *Aida*, starring Sophia Loren in the title role, with Renata Tebaldi providing voice. In the Nile scene, Tebaldi's splendid singing, Verdi's inspired music and Loren's deep breathing went far in winning me over to the art. Beyond that, there are compensations for Verdi's overwrought melodramas, such as the preposterous *Nabucco* featuring the rather nice *Va, pensiero*. With the right performance, I have been known to blubber at the fate of poor Violetta, and the Manzoni *Requiem* definitely winds me up. 
For me, Verdi definitely deserves props as my gateway drug.


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## ArtMusic

DaveM said:


> That assumes that Verdi is considered to be the pinnacle of opera. Well, he isn't. But Mozart is. No, Wagner is. No, Puccini is. No, Donizetti is, No, Bellini is. No Gluck is. No, ....


Whoever is the "pinnacle" of opera, no doubt Verdi is in the top five. Fact.


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## Becca

ArtMusic said:


> Whoever is the "pinnacle" of opera, no doubt Verdi is in the top five. Fact.


To say 'Fact' is demeaning of those who disagree and whose opinion is just as valid as yours. There are no facts other than the existence of the operas, everything else is opinion.


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## Woodduck

There doesn't have to be a "greatest" opera composer. While some operas are unquestionably finer as works of art than others, ranking masterpieces is an exercise in rank juvenility. We have magnificent operas from a number of composers and they are not interchangeable or even comparable in any way that increases our understanding. How do you you compare _Figaro_ with _Otello_ or _Parsifal_ or _Peter Grimes?_ Why bother?


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## jailhouse

I thought id find verdi cheesy and then i lisyened to rigoletto start ti finish and found it quite moving actually. Gotta hear more!


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## Pugg

jailhouse said:


> I thought id find Verdi cheesy and then I listened to Rigoletto start to finish and found it quite moving actually. Gotta hear more!


Good on you, so much more to explore.


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## DavidA

SimonTemplar said:


> No, you're not alone. Some of his operas are excellent - _Don Carlos, Otello, Aida, Ballo _(excellent, but no reason to overlook Auber's _Gustave III_) - but on the whole I don't like him much.
> 
> I find his music crude and unpolished, even as late as _Forza_. His bel canto predecessors Rossini and Donizetti had a much finer sense of form (pure music), while his instrumentation is dull compared to the French, German and Russian musicians of the mid-to-late 19th century or, in Italy herself, Mercadante.
> 
> The early ones are noisy and bombastic, full of sound and fury. There are, admittedly, fun things in almost all of them, even _Corsaro _("Si: de' corsari il fulmine") and _Attila _("Oh, miei prodi!"). But it's unsurprising that the galley operas languished in obscurity. Do _Attila, Giovanna d'Arco, Ernani _or _Nabucco _deserve to be performed as often as they are?
> 
> *Most of his operas have idiotic and preposterous plots, *with bipolar, suicidal characters, and atmospheres of inspissated gloom. This is boring in the galley works, while more mature operas like _Forza _and _Luisa Miller _are depressing.
> 
> His popularity may also make opera unpopular. *The public think that opera is incomprehensible rubbish sung beautifully in Foreign (which sometimes lasts a week).* In fact, in the 19th century Verdi was often lambasted for his illogical, convoluted plots. He also dominates the opera house more than he did in the 19th century. True, in Italy he was a symbol of the Risorgimento (Viva V E R D I), but the *French and Germans thought he was second-rate* - and not in the same class as Mozart, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Weber, Gluck, the Beethoven of _Fidelio_ or, later, Wagner.


See also most opera

See Wagner for length.

Who cares what the French and Germans thought? They have their own prejudices anyway. Anyone who rates Meyerbeer above Verdi should not be seriously listened to anyway! Verdi might not be quite in the same class as Mozart but the late operas - Carlos, Aida, Otello, Falstaff - are a more than a match for anything else that has been written in the genre.


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## jailhouse

Pugg said:


> Good on you, so much more to explore.


Yeah the only operas i really know are the wagner cannon and a bunch of 20th century opera like bluebeards castle, ligetis weird opera, a few others, and a couple by mozart.

I knew donna e mobile obviously but i didnt expect the way it was used in the full opera...i always just assumed it was a silly aria..but its used in a disturbing and awesome way when the father hears the duke singing it at the end after he realizes the girl was killed. Great libretto!


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## ArgumentativeOldGit

I absolutely love Verdi, and not just his later works. There are at least a dozen or so of his operas that I couldn't imagine myself being without (as well as the glorious _Requiem Mass_). Even his lesser works have in them elements of greatness. Stravinsky once said that he loved Verdi beyond the point where criticism makes any difference, while Britten once said that if he ever heard anything in Verdi that didn't seem to him right, he'd assume it was hs reaction to the music rather than the music itself that was deficient.

This doesn't mean, of course, that one must necessarily like Verdi. We all have our own personal tastes and blind spots, and that's just fine. There are some major composers whose music leaves me cold (Berlioz, say, or Vaughan Williams), and a few others, like Shostakovich, whose music I actually find myself disliking. This doesn't mean they were _bad_ composers - of course not: it's just that no one person can like everything.

But I can't say I'm too bothered: there's more than enough that I _do_ love to keep me going a whole lifetime. So if anyone dislikes Verdi, that's fine: I'm sure none of us is short of music that we _do_ love!


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## Tuoksu

Woodduck said:


> It's absurd to say that to dislike one particular composer is to dislike a whole genre or national tradition. I dislike quite a lot of Verdi's music, and am lukewarm toward much of the rest, choosing to listen to it only when my favorite singers are involved. This doesn't mean I don't like opera or Italian music in general. Taste is far more nuanced, specific, and individual than that. I'm always amazed at how glibly some people speak for the tastes of others.





Becca said:


> I'm sorry but these are quite simply (and purely) a ridiculous set of assertions not least because they are so over-generalized. To assume that love of Verdi implies love of singing (and really, must you be able to sing it to appreciate it??) and if singing is not important then you don't is nonsense. What about Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Puccini? How about Berlioz? Mozart, in particular his Da Ponte operas?
> 
> In my teens it was opera that really got me into classical music, and that included the Bel Canto and Verdi repertoires. For a long time now I have not been able to tolerate most of Verdi even though I love his Falstaff, most Rossini and Puccini and some of the other verismo composers. I also think that Berlioz' Les Troyens is amongst the greatest operatic works. And yes, I am also a Wagnerian, albeit not all of it. Admittedly this is only one person's opinions but I am not that much of an outlier.


You did not quite understand what I was trying to say. That was not an attempt to speak for someone else's taste. It was merely an observation based solely on what Verdi detractors (I don't think either of you qualify as one, at least not you, Duckie) themselves admit to. Yes, it is a generalization, a rather sweeping one I admit, but it is not a capricious assumption I made for the sake of it. These are patterns I've objectively observed and my "theory" is at the very least plausible and realistic regardless of whether you identify with it.

Becca, no. That was not quite what I was trying to say, you actually had it the other way around. If you do not like Verdi but you do appreciate the rest of Italian opera, then good on you. I was NOT saying that unless you like Verdi you don't qualify as an Opera lover. I very clearly said that if you don't like Verdi chances are (that is, most likely, not certainly) it's because you don't have a taste for that particular "bombastic" Italian style of his.

About singing, I was saying that while you can always appreciate it- it would be totally preposterous to say you can't unless you are a professional singer for obvious reasons, I don't see why you would assume I meant that- I was simply pointing out that if you didn't come to classical music just for the singing, and are looking for things beyond that, you're not going to really find it in Italian Opera. And that's totally fine. I personally listen to it only for that. I don't care about Azucena's baby or Violetta's tragic death. I came here for legato, for Ponselle's timbre, for trills, for acciaciature, for dramatic fireworks.. you name it. I listen to Metal and it give me the things that Opera doesn't. 
Being a Soprano, I can confidently say that there are things about Verdi, and singing in general, that you (not you in particular) can't truly fathom unless you sing or have a at least have a very extensive knowledge of the vocal methods of that period.


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## Tuoksu

Clairvoyance Enough said:


> My biggest criticism of italian opera, Rossini and Verdi particularly, is actually how tuneless it sounds. It's hard to describe, but the melodies and rhythms sound constrained by the syllables of the words, like I'm just listening to vowels receive emphasis in blocky, predictable patterns, always with that same slow linear glide from the expected direction through the pronunciation of a word - the motions are just so samey. It's hard for me to find exciting compared to Handel's machine-gun arias or Bach's more multi-layered vocal stuff, or even the richer colors of Puccini's orchestral writing.


Justement, Monsieur.
Verdi, like I've previously explained, and Bel Canto composers, wrote for singers. Only Verdi wrote for dramatic voices (as opposed to helden voices who are just loud) because those voices are the most expressive. Yes, the result can be a bit over-the-top and simplistic musically, but he did it to serve the singers and the dramatic purpose and not the other way around, that is being the singer serving the music. This is why I insist on it being a singer's art form, hence a singer's cup of tea.

If you look closely you will notice that the most beautiful, most accomplished of all voices are the Verdi voices. The names that come to mind are Ponselle, Muzio, Callas, Price, Tebaldi, Cappuccilli, Bruson, Scacciatti, Caruso, Gigli, Tamagno... the list can go on forever.

My two cents; if you really didn't come here *for the singing per se*, Verdi is not for you.


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## Meyerbeer Smith

Woodduck said:


> Good post. I find myself in agreement with much of it - to a point.


Thanks!



> There are reasons why even early Verdi is now so popular, and Mercadante isn't.


Unfamiliarity, partly, but that begs the question *why* M is unfamiliar! Verdi, of course, began to be rediscovered in the German Renaissance of the 1920s, and is now the most performed opera composer worldwide. Mercadante is still obscure, although is appearing more frequently at festivals like Martina Franca and Wexford.

Mercadante doesn't have Verdi's easy to remember big tunes, but his harmonies and orchestration are more interesting. The _Orazi e Curiazi_ finale (



) or the oath scene (



) are magnificent, and more sophisticated than Verdi's galley works - but Verdi would balk at the idea of a 20 minute scene more driven by music than drama. Is that part of the reason why Verdi's scores can seem unsophisticated? His values are more dramatic than purely musical. (Unlike Rossini, who's wonderful but for whom music is more important than drama.)



> The combination of inspired tunefulness and sheer physical energy compensates many for a lack of subtlety or profundity.


That, I think, is true. It's wildly extravagant and often silly, but at the very least it's entertaining. (Entertaining, though, may be different from good.) And there are tunes which the people could hum.

Verdi's instinct from the beginning was for directness and theatrical effectiveness. In his early years, thanks to a lack of time and experience, and the quality of libretti, his work can seem rushed, brutal and melodramatic - but it's seldom boring. Even though Verdi's plots might be clotted and the action and motivations unlikely or sometimes hard to follow, there's seldom a moment where something isn't happening. It's almost all event or character, rather than genre scene or local color. Characters rush onstage, wave swords about, curse, drink poison, jump off cliffs and set cities on fire. (No wonder the Sturm and Drang of early Schiller appealed!)



> Verdi traveled far artistically from his early barnstormers, with their silly plots and rum-ti-tum choruses, to the depth and sophistication of _Otello_ and _Falstaff_, with their strong character portraits and richness of expression, and there are many and increasing beauties along the way which even his grim outlook on life can't keep down. (Actually the dark cynicism never completely goes away - am I alone in feeling it even beneath _Falstaff's_ levity?- and I don't much sympathize with it. But that's a personal thing.)


Yes! He learnt quickly (what, a dozen years from _Oberto _to _Rigoletto_?). His ability to compose music improves thenceforward - partly under the influence of French opera (both grand and comique), partly having more time to compose (two-year gaps rather than six months), and partly because he conceived of each opera as a distinct work, with its own atmosphere. So the ratio of greatness to dross increases.

Well, the dark cynicism is certainly there - and one of the reasons why I find Massenet more congenial. Then again, Verdi had lost his wife and children, and he was disappointed with the Italian political situation after the Risorgimento.

_Falstaff_ is in some ways a cruel opera, and the guying of Falstaff reminds me of the guying of Beckmesser. or Don Pasquale. All get their comeuppance, but the audience is expected to find humor in seeing them get their comeuppance - which is different from the more sentimental or farcical operas buffo, comique or Offenbachian.

_Otello _is sublime. The tumultuous storm chorus at the start, Iago's Credo, the brindisi, the luminous love duet, the handkerchief quartet, the oath swearing scene and "A terra" are Verdi at the height of his powers.


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## Meyerbeer Smith

DavidA said:


> See also most opera


Not necessarily; this is a furphy! A lot of operas have strong stories and good characterisation, but aren't naturalistic. _Trovatore_, _Forza_ and _Simon Boccanegra_ are in a class of their own for convoluted plots - although _Trovatore_ has hit number after hit number, and the more subdued _Boccanegra_ has the Council Scene. And they seem relatively sane and well-constructed compared to the likes of _Masnadieri_ or _Ernani_.



> See Wagner for length.


I was referring to Wagner for length!  "The Teutonic reputation for brutality is well-founded. Their operas last three or four days. And they have no word for 'fluffy'."



> Who cares what the French and Germans thought? They have their own prejudices anyway.


It's instructive to see what composers' contemporaries thought of them, and how their works were received at the time.



> *Anyone who rates Meyerbeer above Verdi should not be seriously listened to anyway!*


In that case you're disagreeing with a lot of 19th century critics, musicians and writers, people who knew the scores of both composers intimately and had seen and heard them performed as their creators intended.
I'd rank Meyerbeer - certainly _Huguenots_, and probably _Prophète_ and _Vasco_ - above all Verdi's operas except his last four. This isn't, by the way, a criticism of, say, _Rigoletto_ or _Ballo_.
(Oh, and Verdi, for his part, thought Meyerbeer a better musical dramatist than Mozart!)
:devil::devil::devil::devil:



> [/B]Verdi might not be quite in the same class as Mozart but the late operas - Carlos, Aida, Otello, Falstaff - are a more than a match for anything else that has been written in the genre.


Change that to "at least a match", and we're agreed!


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## znapschatz

Tuoksu said:


> Justement, Monsieur.
> Verdi, like I've previously explained, and Bel Canto composers, wrote for singers. Only Verdi wrote for dramatic voices (as opposed to helden voices who are just loud) because those voices are the most expressive. Yes, the result can be a bit over-the-top and simplistic musically, but he did it to serve the singers and the dramatic purpose and not the other way around, that is being the singer serving the music. This is why I insist on it being a singer's art form, hence a singer's cup of tea.
> 
> If you look closely you will notice that the most beautiful, most accomplished of all voices are the Verdi voices. The names that come to mind are Ponselle, Muzio, Callas, Price, Tebaldi, Cappuccilli, Bruson, Scacciatti, Caruso, Gigli, Tamagno... the list can go on forever.
> 
> My two cents; if you really didn't come here *for the singing per se*, Verdi is not for you.


About Verdi, I must agree. Of course, while singing per se is a crucial element in any opera, I come for the gestalt. I can overlook some elements if drawn to the dramatic, historical and/or mythic character of the piece, *Boris Godunov* and *Ring Cycle*, my prime examples. I can, for the most part, overlook a smelly staging, sub-par (not wretched) orchestral or vocal work on others, so long as it's at least listenable.

My wife, for whom voice is paramount, is usually distracted by singing performances not up to top quality, while I can subsume same while wallowing in the rest. Most recently, we attended a Live at the Met theater broadcast of *Nabucco*, which for her was about Placido Domingo, one of her favorites, and the always superb Met chorus, but was bothered by some of the other aspects of the production while I was not. Neither of us is really nuts about the book, but that meant little to me. In the post-opera coffee shop banter with fellow opera buffs, her topics were about two of the singers' flatted high notes that I had barely noticed.

If anything does distract me, it is any concept of a piece that doesn't serve context. We have a Gergiev DVD of Boris (the one recommended to me by Florestan, thank you), a fine performance that I can listen to but not watch because of a dreadfully misguided staging that repeatedly pulls me out of the story. But in general, I do not approach the art as a connoisseur but as a fan.
Yeah, team! Give me more!


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## Meyerbeer Smith

znapschatz said:


> I kind of agree with this, but Verdi has his uses. As a youngster, I attended a 1953 movie of *Aida*, starring Sophia Loren in the title role, with Renata Tebaldi providing voice. In the Nile scene, Tebaldi's splendid singing, Verdi's inspired music and Loren's deep breathing went far in winning me over to the art. Beyond that, there are compensations for Verdi's overwrought melodramas, such as the preposterous *Nabucco* featuring the rather nice *Va, pensiero*. With the right performance, I have been known to blubber at the fate of poor Violetta, and the Manzoni *Requiem* definitely winds me up.
> For me, Verdi definitely deserves props as my gateway drug.


Verdi's a very accessible composer, and can be a good place to start; he's tuneful, his operas move quickly, and his best operas are both powerful and insightful. I discovered Verdi about a decade ago, when I first got heavily into opera [*] - I'd listened to most of his works within a year, but I soon had Doubts about the early ones!

[*] About five years after discovering Mozart and Rossini, and having grown up thinking opera was what normal adults did.

Yes, I can see why Loren's deep breathing would appeal!


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## Retrograde Inversion

Tuoksu said:


> Verdi is the most Italian of all composers. If you don't like Verdi chances are you don't like/get *anything Italian at all*


This is my main issue with your post. There's an enormous history of Italian music beyond the narrow confines of 19th century Italian opera: from Renaissance and Baroque greats to the modern era. I am at best indifferent to Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti etc, but the same is hardly true of Palestrina, Monteverdi or Berio.


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## rojaba

I salute the high level of conversation this has generated


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## jailhouse

wrong thread..................


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## EdwardBast

jailhouse said:


> I thought id find verdi cheesy and then i lisyened to rigoletto start ti finish and found it quite moving actually. Gotta hear more!


_Rigoletto_ is exceptional, due to the influence of Victor Hugo, who condemned Verdi's earlier opera on his play _Hernani_. Hugo called Verdi's _Ernani_ a travesty and campaigned to have it blackballed in Paris, and since Hugo was his favorite and most admired living writer, Verdi seems to have taken the criticism to heart. This is likely why he instructed his librettist Piave to be sure to preserve all of the great lines that have such effect in the theater, and why he took special pains to sacrifice operatic conventions to the demands of the drama.


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## Pugg

jailhouse said:


> wrong thread..................


This always makes me curious.


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## Tuoksu

Retrograde Inversion said:


> This is my main issue with your post. There's an enormous history of Italian music beyond the narrow confines of 19th century Italian opera: from Renaissance and Baroque greats to the modern era. I am at best indifferent to Verdi, Puccini, Donizetti etc, but the same is hardly true of Palestrina, Monteverdi or Berio.


Most of you seem to take those words you put in bold out of the context I put them in. If you pair it with the sentence that immediately precedes it you would see that my point was not about dismissing the vast majority of the Operatic repertoire from Baroque to Verismo, and since you're all taking it too literally and too seriously, no I wasn't dismissing pasta, neorealism or Vittorio de Sica either. 
_It was simply a way of saying that Verdi was the epitome of the everything that was Italian about Opera._ Opera is supposed to be popular, at least in Italy (It's commonplace to have the barber bellow out "largo al factotum" while shaving your beard) but some elitists seem to have a problem with that. Verdi's works are full of energy and power and even the most tragic, dramatic ones (trovatore, traviata, forza, macbeth, rigoletto) have great moments of life-celebration that no life-loving listener can resist. 
Verdi also gave the Italian language its importance. He was careful choosing libretti and unlike some preposterous claims made in this thread, most of his libretti were nowhere near as ridiculous as Bel Canto libretti for instance. Actually he made a great step away from that direction towards realism. We owe Verismo to him. He was a huge fan of Shakespeare and with the help of Piave he wrote a Macbeth that surpassed the original work in my opinion, and you really have to speak Italian to appreciate Piave's libretto otherwise it wouldn't make sense since a lot is lost in translations. Otello is generally regarded in the same way in comparison to the original too. I've seen many singers explain what to do differently when singing Verdi and what makes a voice Verdian. Renata Scotto, Callas, Zeljko Lucic.. I can't remember everyone nor the exact instances, but they all agreed on many things, one of them was that if you want to sing Verdi, you need to know what words to emphasize exactly and have a real sense of their meanings. Verdian voices were human voices and they were "the main instrument of the orchestra" in Callas' words, as opposed to singers being just another instrument or a canary-bird.


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## SixFootScowl

Pugg said:


> This always makes me curious.


Too bad they don't include a link, but I guess we can look at the members recent posts.


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## Woodduck

Tuoksu said:


> I've seen many singers explain what to do differently when singing Verdi and what makes a voice Verdian. Renata Scotto, Callas, Zeljko Lucic.. I can't remember everyone nor the exact instances, but they all agreed on many things, one of them was that if you want to sing Verdi, you need to know what words to emphasize exactly and have a real sense of their meanings. Verdian voices were human voices and they were "the main instrument of the orchestra" in Callas' words, as opposed to singers being just another instrument or a canary-bird.


 I doubt that there is, or should be, such a thing as a "Verdian" voice. This question first arose for me in a discussion of baritones. We hear constantly that so-and-so is or is not a "Verdi baritone," but that seems not to have been a category recognized in the early 20th century, when Verdi's baritone roles were sung superbly by voices as different as the suave Mattia Battistini, the leonine Titta Ruffo, and Josef Schwarz, whose Wagner was as noteworthy as his Verdi.















 (in German!)

If we're going to bring Callas into this, it's clear not only from her own approach to music of all sorts but from her advice to students in her master classes that she always considered it important to know "what words to emphasize exactly," regardless of repertoire. As Callas liked to say, "a soprano is a soprano." Our division of singers into "fachs" is a convenience, but we mustn't reify the categories.

A great "Verdi singer" is a singer who can do justice to the music of Verdi - and if she has technique and power and can sing in idiomatic German there is no reason why she shouldn't also be a great Wagner singer. Lilli Lehmann, Johanna Gadski, Frida Leider, Giuseppina Cobelli, and many others in the "golden age," sang it all. Wagner wanted singers accomplished in Italian opera, recognizing that the musical and dramatic values required were not different. For some reason, now that we pigeonhole singers in these "fachs" it's hard to find singers who can really do justice to Verdi _or_ Wagner.


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## jailhouse

Florestan said:


> Too bad they don't include a link, but I guess we can look at the members recent posts.


It was just a now playing post lol

This forum should have a delete post button.


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## SiegendesLicht

jailhouse said:


> I knew donna e mobile obviously but i didnt expect the way it was used in the full opera...i always just assumed it was a silly aria..but its used in a disturbing and awesome way when the father hears the duke singing it at the end after he realizes the girl was killed. Great libretto!


Yes, that was a powerful moment. But the story leading up to it - a father conspiring to steal his own daughter just because he does not recognize his own house with a blind put on - is pretty silly.

I listened to Rigoletto in German - with Heinrich Schlusnus and Helge Rosvaenge in the main roles.


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## Tuoksu

Woodduck said:


> I doubt that there is, or should be, such a thing as a "Verdian" voice. This question first arose for me in a discussion of baritones. We hear constantly that so-and-so is or is not a "Verdi baritone," but that seems not to have been a category recognized in the early 20th century, when Verdi's baritone roles were sung superbly by voices as different as the suave Mattia Battistini, the leonine Titta Ruffo, and Josef Schwarz, whose Wagner was as noteworthy as his Verdi.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> (in German!)
> 
> If we're going to bring Callas into this, it's clear not only from her own approach to music of all sorts but from her advice to students in her master classes that she always considered it important to know "what words to emphasize exactly," regardless of repertoire. As Callas liked to say, "a soprano is a soprano." Our division of singers into "fachs" is a convenience, but we mustn't reify the categories.
> 
> A great "Verdi singer" is a singer who can do justice to the music of Verdi - and if she has technique and power and can sing in idiomatic German there is no reason why she shouldn't also be a great Wagner singer. Lilli Lehmann, Johanna Gadski, Frida Leider, Giuseppina Cobelli, and many others in the "golden age," sang it all. Wagner wanted singers accomplished in Italian opera, recognizing that he musical and dramatic values required were not different. For some reason, now that we pigeonhole singers in these "fachs" it's hard to find singers who can really do justice to Verdi
> _or_ Wagner.


Indeed. "A great "Verdi singer" is a singer who can do justice to the music of Verdi". A Verdian voice does NOT mean "a voice limited to Verdi". I would call that a Verdi specialist. The "Verdian voice" is the "bigger circle" not the smaller one. By its very nature, la voce Verdiana is very large and can support the weight of a Wagnerian role. In addition to that it is also a very agile voice that can tackle the fioriture of many of his works, Il trovatore being the last of them. Verdi's lines are big and arching and call for great elegance and legato and masterful appoggio. Now that would basically be just your regular dramatic-coloratura right? No, there is an additional key element that is a sense of Italian style, and a sort of color I can't describe that most real Spintos have. Sutherland had the fach for most Verdi roles. She didn't have the color. In a video of Virginia Zeani where she mimics Dame Joan, Callas and others she points it out. 



 Sutherland, like Birgit Nilsson, sounded German. Nilsson and Ponselle are both Dramatic Sopranos. One of them sounded Verdian and Italianate, the other didn't. I looked up Scotto's video where she teaches some young singer but it's gone from youtube. Luckily I still have it so I will just attach screenshots. 
"Piangea cantando" from Otello playing in the background as she speaks (in Italian):







"Your voice is really the verdian voice...







where it's necessary to have the agility, the color...







the volume, the virtuosity..







the tessitura and all that.
(You really abhor classifications don't you?  )


----------



## ArtMusic

It is also a fact that Verdi has always been performed since his own times to this current day. Of course his popularity varied throughout history, but the consistency of performance has always been there since his death. *History is always kind and consistent to truly great composers.*


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## Michael42

ArtMusic said:


> *History is always kind and consistent to truly great composers.*


Absolutely false, many many great composers go completely unrecognized. It often takes a much more popular composer years or centuries after their death to get *any* recognition


----------



## Woodduck

Tuoksu said:


> Indeed. "A great "Verdi singer" is a singer who can do justice to the music of Verdi". A Verdian voice does NOT mean "a voice limited to Verdi". I would call that a Verdi specialist. The "Verdian voice" is the "bigger circle" not the smaller one. By its very nature, la voce Verdiana is very large and can support the weight of a Wagnerian role. In addition to that it is also a very agile voice that can tackle the fioriture of many of his works, Il trovatore being the last of them. Verdi's lines are big and arching and call for great elegance and legato and masterful appoggio. Now that would basically be just your regular dramatic-coloratura right? No, there is an additional key element that is a sense of Italian style, and a sort of color I can't describe that most real Spintos have. Sutherland had the fach for most Verdi roles. She didn't have the color. In a video of Virginia Zeani where she mimics Dame Joan, Callas and others she points it out.
> 
> 
> 
> Sutherland, like Birgit Nilsson, sounded German. Nilsson and Ponselle are both Dramatic Sopranos. One of them sounded Verdian and Italianate, the other didn't. I looked up Scotto's video where she teaches some young singer but it's gone from youtube. Luckily I still have it so I will just attach screenshots.
> "Piangea cantando" from Otello playing in the background as she speaks (in Italian):
> View attachment 91393
> 
> "Your voice is really the verdian voice...
> View attachment 91394
> 
> where it's necessary to have the agility, the color...
> View attachment 91392
> 
> the volume, the virtuosity..
> View attachment 91395
> 
> the tessitura and all that.
> (You really abhor classifications don't you?  )


Thanks for clarifying. Verdi does often require all the vocal virtues in his leading roles: size, range, flexibility, verbal clarity, tonal warmth and vibrancy... That does allow some very different instruments to succeed in his music, and I do think people easily stereotype voices. But I agree that some voices do "sound" less apt for certain roles and repertoire, even if they have many of the qualities needed to execute and interpret the music. Sutherland lacked an effective chest voice and verbal distinctness; she could succeed in a few lighter Verdi roles (Gilda, Violetta, conceivably Desdemona, though she didn't sing it to my knowledge). Nilsson had a relentlessly bright timbre and poor flexibility; she could sing a respectable Aida and power through Lady Macbeth, let the coloratura fall where it may. But I don't know that either of them sounds "German," and they certainly sound nothing alike; I'm not convinced by Sutherland's late forays into Wagner.

No, I don't like classification ("fach") of voices, for most purposes. When we say, e.g., "a Verdi voice," I _feel_ I know what people are talking about, but I always want to keep the differences between singers and roles, and the various possibilities for matching singer with role, in mind. An unconventional matching of singer and role can sometimes be interesting, revealing, and effective. Ever hear Melchior sing Otello (in German)?






I don't know whether that's a "Verdi tenor," but I suspect Verdi would have been ecstatic to hear it. I know I am.


----------



## jailhouse

SiegendesLicht said:


> Yes, that was a powerful moment. But the story leading up to it - a father conspiring to steal his own daughter just because he does not recognize his own house with a blind put on - is pretty silly.
> 
> I listened to Rigoletto in German - with Heinrich Schlusnus and Helge Rosvaenge in the main roles.


yeah true that. that part made zero sense lol


----------



## ArtMusic

Michael42 said:


> Absolutely false, many many great composers go completely unrecognized. It often takes a much more popular composer years or centuries after their death to get *any* recognition


No, what I wrote was history is always kind and consistent to truly greats but I did not say that apply to all great composers ever existed, indeed many good composers need more modern research to prove their merit. Needless to say however, Verdi is one that history have been kind and consistent to.


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## PlaySalieri

Michael42 said:


> Absolutely false, *many many great composers go completely unrecognized*. It often takes a much more popular composer years or centuries after their death to get *any* recognition


And there are thousands of great novelists sitting home alone waiting for their first acceptance letter.


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## PlaySalieri

ArtMusic said:


> No, what I wrote was history is always kind and consistent to truly greats but I did not say that apply to all great composers ever existed, indeed many good composers need more modern research to prove their merit. Needless to say however, Verdi is one that history have been kind and consistent to.


You are trying to wriggle out of a quite reasonable point you made - why? what is the difference between truly great and simply great? It seems to me the difference is there is only great or not great. Great meaning you are broadly recognised as such by posterity and there is significant interest in your works by the academic and general world of classical music.
There's not much point being a great composer if your works are not recognised as such. It really begs the question over one's greatness at all. Based on Michael42's statement - any composer can lay claim to unrecognised greatness which is absurd.


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## ArtMusic

stomanek said:


> You are trying to wriggle out of a quite reasonable point you made - why? what is the difference between truly great and simply great? It seems to me the difference is there is only great or not great. Great meaning you are broadly recognised as such by posterity and there is significant interest in your works by the academic and general world of classical music.
> There's not much point being a great composer if your works are not recognised as such. It really begs the question over one's greatness at all. Based on Michael42's statement - any composer can lay claim to unrecognised greatness which is absurd.


A truly great composer is one that is not just perception by fringe group supporters but one that is recognized by history - people over time and people over different geopraphies.


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## pokeefe0001

I'm a bit late to the party (having only found this forum yesterday) and have only scanned this thread so I may be saying nothing new. I like very little Italian opera so an no great fan of Verdi, but I think his Quattro pezzi sacri - particularly the Te Deum - beautiful.


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## asiago12

Animated-humoristic tribute to the Opera composers Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner, on their 200th anniversary (1813-2013)


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## Sonata

I'm amused by the above picture, looks like Verdi is giving Wagner the side eye! :lol:


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## Flutter

starthrower said:


> There's always the string quartet!


Probably his best IMO


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## paulbest

rojaba said:


> Hi there, my apologies for entering the debate with a cold start but let me introduce myself: my name is Robert and I've been in a serious relationship with classical music for the past 20 years or so. :tiphat:
> 
> I believe that I have a very broad taste. I can get very excited about a well performed Monteverdi madrigal, a Haydn oratorio, a Shostakovich symphony or even John Adams' "Nixon in China". One thing I've never been able to access, however, is Verdi.
> 
> I've tried hard to give it a chance. I've been to various performances and I own quite a few Verdi CDs, from newer efforts to the, for want of a better word, "classical" Del Monaco recordings. Still, I do not like it.
> 
> I can hear some of you say: oh but you must not like Italian opera in general, but I do. I would even rank La Boheme and Pagliacci among my favourite works. But with Verdi, it's hard. There are certain parts which are more pleasant than others, of course, with the "Eri tu" aria from "ballo" being something I enjoy, especially if Hvorostovsky sings it. But overall I find it too brash, too staccato (and please, please, please stop with the cymbals in every single bar) to listen to an entire opera.
> 
> I've been quite late to the party with Wagner, especially as I first came to know him through old Bayreuth recordings with lots of coughing from the audience and out of tune shouting from the cast, but I quite enjoy him now.
> 
> Does anyone have any advice on how I can gain access to Verdi and start to enjoy him just like so many people do? Or is there anyone here who agrees with me? I'd love to hear from you!


The NY Met adores all things Verdi. This may be the root of your puzzlement..*If the Met can place such high value on Verdi, obviously his music must be great, and so what is it with me?* 
IMHO
Stay with the best from Wagner (I prefer the Bayreuth early 1950's records) and just give up on Verdi, as I have past 35 yrs. I never bought a single LP of Verdi. You are not alone. 
Leave the NYers to glee over their Verdi.


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## Enthusiast

I've listened to two very different Verdi operas over the last couple of days (Falstaff and Otello) and, really, what wonderful music! It beats me why so many classical fans love the Verdi Requiem but don't listen to his operas. Operas do tend to be long and require a bit of investment in getting to know what is happening in the story but the best of them (and that includes many of Verdi's) are well worth the effort.


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## Art Rock

I love the requiem, but never could get into his operas. Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, love them. Verdi, blank, no interest.


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## DavidA

stomanek said:


> And there are thousands of great novelists sitting home alone waiting for their first acceptance letter.


Not any longer. With advances in technology you can publish your own novel. Whether anyone will read it, of course, is another matter


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## DavidA

Dr. Shatterhand said:


> Thanks!
> 
> Unfamiliarity, partly, but that begs the question *why* M is unfamiliar! Verdi, of course, began to be rediscovered in the German Renaissance of the 1920s, and is now the most performed opera composer worldwide. Mercadante is still obscure, although is appearing more frequently at festivals like Martina Franca and Wexford.
> 
> Mercadante doesn't have Verdi's easy to remember big tunes, but his harmonies and orchestration are more interesting. The _Orazi e Curiazi_ finale (
> 
> 
> 
> ) or the oath scene (
> 
> 
> 
> ) are magnificent, and more sophisticated than Verdi's galley works - but Verdi would balk at the idea of a 20 minute scene more driven by music than drama. Is that part of the reason why Verdi's scores can seem unsophisticated? His values are more dramatic than purely musical. (Unlike Rossini, who's wonderful but for whom music is more important than drama.)
> 
> That, I think, is true. It's wildly extravagant and often silly, but at the very least it's entertaining. (Entertaining, though, may be different from good.) And there are tunes which the people could hum.
> 
> Verdi's instinct from the beginning was for directness and theatrical effectiveness. In his early years, thanks to a lack of time and experience, and the quality of libretti, his work can seem rushed, brutal and melodramatic - but it's seldom boring. Even though Verdi's plots might be clotted and the action and motivations unlikely or sometimes hard to follow, there's seldom a moment where something isn't happening. It's almost all event or character, rather than genre scene or local color. Characters rush onstage, wave swords about, curse, drink poison, jump off cliffs and set cities on fire. (No wonder the Sturm and Drang of early Schiller appealed!)
> 
> Yes! He learnt quickly (what, a dozen years from _Oberto _to _Rigoletto_?). His ability to compose music improves thenceforward - partly under the influence of French opera (both grand and comique), partly having more time to compose (two-year gaps rather than six months), and partly because he conceived of each opera as a distinct work, with its own atmosphere. So the ratio of greatness to dross increases.
> 
> Well, the dark cynicism is certainly there - and one of the reasons why I find Massenet more congenial. Then again, Verdi had lost his wife and children, and he was disappointed with the Italian political situation after the Risorgimento.
> 
> _Falstaff_ is in *some ways a cruel opera, and the guying of Falstaff reminds me of the guying of Beckmesser. or Don Pasquale. All get their comeuppance, but the audience is expected to find humor in seeing them get their comeuppance - which is different from the more sentimental or farcical operas buffo, comique or Offenbachian.*
> 
> _Otello _is sublime. The tumultuous storm chorus at the start, Iago's Credo, the brindisi, the luminous love duet, the handkerchief quartet, the oath swearing scene and "A terra" are Verdi at the height of his powers.


 Of course there is some pretty cruel humour in Falstaff but we must remember that it is the fat knight getting his comeuppance for trying to seduce other men's wives. The difference is that of course that Ford also gets his comeuppance from the women and at the end everything is made up and they all go after dinner together having sung the last chorus, "Life is a joke and we've all been fooled" very different to the ending of mastersingers


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## Littlephrase

Enthusiast said:


> I've listened to two very different Verdi operas over the last couple of days (Falstaff and Otello) and, really, what wonderful music! It beats me why so many classical fans love the Verdi Requiem but don't listen to his operas. Operas do tend to be long and require a bit of investment in getting to know what is happening in the story but the best of them (and that includes many of Verdi's) are well worth the effort.


I've been listening to Otello over the last few days as well. It is indeed an operatic masterwork, with a fine Boito libretto.


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## paulbest

Art Rock said:


> I love the requiem, but never could get into his operas. Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Puccini, love them. Verdi, blank, no interest.


When Puccini is in the opera house, , who needs Verdi?


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## DavidA

paulbest said:


> When Puccini is in the opera house, , who needs Verdi?


Quite a few of us, by the look of things! :lol:


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## Dimace

I'm also not Verdi's fan. I like one-two of his operas a lot (Luisa Miller & Attila and sometimes Rigoletto) and his Requiem. From the Italian opera I prefer Bellini (the best Italian opera composer) and Donizetti. Puccini also (because of his Boheme and Tosca) is more beloved to me than Verdi. Rossini is also a no go for me. Very nice melodies here and there, but very weak operas. Rossini as piano composer is OK. Catalani, Spontini etc. are also very fine opera composers and (for me) better than Giuseppe. Despite all these, the Attila and Luisa are the operas I'm listening very often and maybe my opinion for Verdi is not absolutely correct.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> It's interesting, and honestly a little surprising, to me to see how many people dislike Verdi or are lukewarm to him. I suspect it has a lot to do with his fach being opera. We have to remember that when we hear 19th century opera we are hearing a "popular" art form, as opposed to the "learned" symphonic and chamber repertoire, and composers like Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Verdi, Auber, Herold, Meyerbeer, Weber, Von Suppe and Johann Strauss knew how to give musically unsophisticated audiences the sort of catchy tunes and thumping rhythms that would bring in the box office receipts and send people away humming, while still bringing classical training to bear and to varying degrees aspiring to "serious" art. Wagner really threw down the gauntlet with his imaginative, psychologically probing music dramas and challengingly complex scores, and other composers, including Verdi, responded with more emotionally complex and aesthetically integrated creations which asked more of both composer and audience.
> Verdi's later works parallel Wagner (though always in an Italianate way) and show a loosening of the aria as a distinct entity, an enrichment of the orchestral contribution, a wider range of compositional techniques, and a greater unity of atmosphere. It isn't surprising that many people who don't care for early Verdi (and/or Italian opera of the "bel canto" era) do enjoy his late works. _Otello_ and _Falstaff,_ especially, really are different and go quite a distance beyond obviously tuneful "popular" idioms. Anyone not enamored of Verdi should give these works some attention.





Tuoksu said:


> Verdi is the most Italian of all composers. If you don't like Verdi chances are you don't like/get anything Italian at all and you probably don't really like Opera either and here is why: Verdi, or Opera in general, is a singer's art form before anything. You have to sing it or at least have an idea about vocal technique to be able to appreciate it. If your main concern isn't singing then of course you can never get into that kind of music. If that's the case chances are you like Wagner and non-Italian repertoire far more than Verdi and Bel Canto. Verdi was a genius and I don't agree on his Italian style being labeled as "crude" or "unsophisticated". The whole Opera thing, real Opera, that is Bel Canto and Verdi, complete with the libretti and the drama and whatnot, at the end of the day is just a hat stand on which which we hang an _Italian vocal art of supreme beauty, finesse, complexity and sophistication. _Verdi revolutionized this art form. He added a deeper human and dramatic dimension to what once was almost limited to vocal exhibitionism. Not to mention that among singers if you ask what the meaty repertoire is you will mostly get one answer that is "Verdi". He changed things. He gave birth to Grand Opéra and paved the way for Verismo...Generally, instrumentalists don't seem to like Verdi or Opera at all.





Becca said:


> I'm sorry but these are quite simply (and purely) a ridiculous set of assertions not least because they are so over-generalized. To assume that love of Verdi implies love of singing (and really, must you be able to sing it to appreciate it??) and if singing is not important then you don't is nonsense. What about Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Puccini? How about Berlioz? Mozart, in particular his Da Ponte operas?
> In my teens it was opera that really got me into classical music, and that included the Bel Canto and Verdi repertoires. For a long time now I have not been able to tolerate most of Verdi even though I love his Falstaff, most Rossini and Puccini and some of the other verismo composers. I also think that Berlioz' Les Troyens is amongst the greatest operatic works. And yes, I am also a Wagnerian, albeit not all of it. Admittedly this is only one person's opinions but I am not that much of an outlier.





Woodduck said:


> It's absurd to say that to dislike one particular composer is to dislike a whole genre or national tradition. I dislike quite a lot of Verdi's music, and am lukewarm toward much of the rest, choosing to listen to it only when my favorite singers are involved. This doesn't mean I don't like opera or Italian music in general. Taste is far more nuanced, specific, and individual than that. I'm always amazed at how glibly some people speak for the tastes of others.


As an "outsider" to opera, these assertions and generalizations of Woodduck's and Tuoksu explained a lot for me, especially the points around the fact that it's a singer's medium. Perhaps some of the opera connoisseurs out there should address novices and outsiders more generally, and more explicitly, and forget the nuanced wine comparisons.

The responses to Tuksu's post seem "to throw out the baby with the bathwater," and quibble over unnecessary points; unnecessary to anyone but experts.


----------



## DaveM

I’ve been wondering, what does ‘existential’ have to do with the question?


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## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> I've been wondering, what does 'existential' have to do with the question?


"Man's search for meaning in Verdi"


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## DaveM

millionrainbows said:


> "Man's search for meaning in Verdi"


Hmm, OP came across more on the level of 'help me find ways to like Verdi', hardly having anything to do with 'existential' or 'Man's search for meaning in Verdi'.


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## Woodduck

Well, anyone searching for the meaning of life in Verdi can go with Iago in _Otello:_

_I believe in a cruel God
who created me in his image.
From the very vileness of a germ
or an atom, vile was I born.
I am a wretch because I am a man,
and I feel within me the primeval slime._

or with the whole cast of _Falstaff:_

_The world is a joke,
And man is born a clown.
We are all fools! And every man
Laughs at the others' folly.
But he laughs best who gets the last laugh._

If you meet up with this guy make sure you keep your hand on your wallet.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Well, anyone searching for the meaning of life in Verdi can go with Iago in _Otello:_
> 
> _I believe in a cruel God
> who created me in his image.
> From the very vileness of a germ
> or an atom, vile was I born.
> I am a wretch because I am a man,
> and I feel within me the primeval slime._
> 
> or with the whole cast of _Falstaff:_
> 
> _The world is a joke,
> And man is born a clown.
> We are all fools! And every man
> Laughs at the others' folly.
> But he laughs best who gets the last laugh._
> 
> If you meet up with this guy make sure you keep your hand on your wallet.


Hey! This sounds like Verdi is encroaching onto the 20th century's claim that "life is crap!" :lol:


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## millionrainbows

DaveM said:


> Hmm, OP came across more on the level of 'help me find ways to like Verdi', hardly having anything to do with 'existential' or 'Man's search for meaning in Verdi'.


It appears that you take your Verdi very seriously.


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## DavidA

'Verdi was a genius and I don't agree on his Italian style being labeled as "crude" or "unsophisticated".'

Agreed. How on earth anyone could listen to Falstaff and consider it crude or unsophisticated is quite beyond me!


----------



## millionrainbows

DavidA said:


> '*Verdi was a genius and I don't agree on his Italian style being labeled as "crude" or "unsophisticated".'
> *
> Agreed. How on earth anyone could listen to Falstaff and consider it crude or unsophisticated is quite beyond me!


Where did that "quote" come from that you appear to be responding to?

Anyway, Woodduck already cleared this up way back in post #46, saying that Otello and Falstaff were late exceptions.

And although he may not want me to use this, "crude" and "unsophisticated" are attributable to opera being a "popular" medium.



Woodduck said:


> ...We have to remember that when we hear 19th century opera we are hearing a "popular" art form, as opposed to the "learned" symphonic and chamber repertoire...It isn't surprising that many people who don't care for early Verdi (and/or Italian opera of the "bel canto" era) do enjoy his late works. _Otello_ and _Falstaff,_ especially, really are different and go quite a distance beyond obviously tuneful "popular" idioms....


----------



## DavidA

millionrainbows said:


> Where did that "quote" come from that you appear to be responding to?
> 
> Anyway, Woodduck already cleared this up way back in post #46, saying that Otello and Falstaff were late exceptions.
> 
> And although he may not want me to use this,* "crude" and "unsophisticated" are attributable to opera being a "popular" medium.*


Must confess you do make me laugh with these sort of statements. I mean, Mozart's operas are popular - so that automatically makes it 'crude' and 'unsophisticated'. I think you must be trying to redefine the English language! :lol:


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## DavidA

It actually strikes me that Falstaff is a real music drama, something that Wagner maybe was pining for but never really got to, being too long winded. Falstaff is non-stop, knockabout action, with a brilliant libretto and shimmering, dancing music that perfectly reflects what is going on on stage. It really is musical and dramatic perfection.


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## Itullian

Verdi was a great genius. His melodies are timeless.
I never really loved his operas.
I did like Rigoletto a lot years ago, but other than that never gravitated to him.
I didn't like his oom pah pas, his "big guitar" chord orchestration or
and hated his , bish bash, bish bash, bwaaa bwaaaaa, bash bash endings to things. I always have the feeling that once aria is over he is at a loss how to end things.
I like Otello ok, never really got Falstaff except for the last 5 minutes.
I just never listen to him any more, or Puccini for that matter. They just don't hold my interest.

Funny thing being full blooded Italian I guess, but I like German opera most and some French and some Russian.

But to each their own.
bish bash , bish bash, biiiiiiiiiiiish!


----------



## Woodduck

Itullian said:


> Verdi was a great genius. His melodies are timeless.
> I never really loved his operas.
> I did like Rigoletto a lot years ago, but other than that never gravitated to him.
> I didn't like his oom pah pas, his "big guitar" chord orchestration or
> and hated his , bish bash, bish bash, bwaaa bwaaaaa, bash bash endings to things. I always have the feeling that once aria is over he is at a loss how to end things.
> I like Otello ok, never really got Falstaff except for the last 5 minutes.
> I just never listen to him any more, or Puccini for that matter. They just don't hold my interest.
> 
> Funny thing being full blooded Italian I guess, but I like German opera most and some French and some Russian.
> 
> But to each their own.
> bish bash , bish bash, biiiiiiiiiiiish!


Oh Yeah! I especially like the part where the beautiful princess Elviranoramelia disguised as a shepherdess and in love with a mysterious highwayman stabs herself in the decollage after being ravished by the turnip farmer who is really her evil stepfather hiding among the common people in order to capture and execute the highwayman who unknown to Elviranoramelia is really the heir to the throne (listen for the fortississimo piccolo over the cymbal crashes):

Bwaaa buh-buh bwaaa buh-buh bwaaa bwaaa bwaaa bwaaa, bish! bash! KA-BOOM!


----------



## Woodduck

DavidA said:


> It actually strikes me that Falstaff is a real music drama, something that Wagner maybe was pining for but never really got to, being too long winded. Falstaff is non-stop, knockabout action, with a brilliant libretto and shimmering, dancing music that perfectly reflects what is going on on stage. It really is musical and dramatic perfection.


When did the idea that Wagner didn't write "real" music drama "actually strike you"? When you first realized the absolute necessity of non-stop, knockabout action and dancing music? Or when you first had the idea of deprecating a composer you don't understand in every post where you could find a way to fit him in?


----------



## millionrainbows

DavidA said:


> Must confess you do make me laugh with these sort of statements. I mean, Mozart's operas are popular - so that automatically makes it 'crude' and 'unsophisticated'. I think you must be trying to redefine the English language! :lol:


You're using "popular" in a different way. In the context of my post, it means "popular as opposed to "learned" repertoire.

I thought you were over-reacting to the characterizations "crude" and "unsophisticated" *(who said that? Quote?)*

because of what Woodduck had said: "_...We have to remember that when we hear 19th century opera we are hearing a "popular" art form, as opposed to the "learned" symphonic and chamber repertoire..."
_


----------



## Woodduck

millionrainbows said:


> You're using "popular" in a different way. In the context of my post, it means "popular as opposed to "learned" repertoire.
> 
> I thought you were over-reacting to the characterizations "crude" and "unsophisticated" *(who said that? Quote?)*
> 
> because of what Woodduck had said: "_...We have to remember that when we hear 19th century opera we are hearing a "popular" art form, as opposed to the "learned" symphonic and chamber repertoire..."
> _


Thanks a million, million. After six years of DavidA misconstruing my posts, he finally gives me a blessed reprieve and appears to have put me on "ignore" - and now you give him the opportunity to misconstrue your quotations of my posts.

To paraphrase Maria in _The Sound of Music,_ "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something [bad]."


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## DavidA

millionrainbows said:


> You're using "popular" in a different way. In the context of my post, it means "popular as opposed to "learned" repertoire.
> 
> I thought you were over-reacting to the characterizations "crude" and "unsophisticated" *(who said that? Quote?)*
> 
> because of what Woodduck had said: "_...We have to remember that when we hear 19th century opera we are hearing a "popular" art form, as opposed to the "learned" symphonic and chamber repertoire..."
> _


If anyone doesn't think an opera like Falstaff or even Rigoletto is 'learned' then they need educating themselves! I can never see why people must distinguish between so-called 'popular' and 'learned'. Carmen is popular but anyone who knows anything about opera will tell you it's one of the greatest operas ever written. Same with Mozart. You can be popular and 'learned' at the same time.


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## MaxKellerman

Itullian said:


> Verdi was a great genius. His melodies are timeless.
> I never really loved his operas.
> I did like Rigoletto a lot years ago, but other than that never gravitated to him.
> I didn't like his oom pah pas, his "big guitar" chord orchestration or
> and hated his , bish bash, bish bash, bwaaa bwaaaaa, bash bash endings to things. I always have the feeling that once aria is over he is at a loss how to end things.
> I like Otello ok, never really got Falstaff except for the last 5 minutes.
> I just never listen to him any more, or Puccini for that matter. They just don't hold my interest.
> 
> Funny thing being full blooded Italian I guess, but I like German opera most and some French and some Russian.
> 
> But to each their own.
> bish bash , bish bash, biiiiiiiiiiiish!


I know what you mean, and my experience with Verdi's works for the stage has been similar in many respects. I'm someone who cherishes many other operas in the Italian tradition by the likes of Donizetti, Puccini, Rossini, Bellini; I also consider Verdi's Requiem to be a powerful tour de force. But although I recognize and admire the skill and technical sophistication of Verdi's best operas, I rarely am moved by them or find them compelling as musical-dramatic constructs. Verdi's operas have a pace very much his own that sets him apart from even the other Italians let alone a dramatist like Wagner. Verdi was constantly urging his librettists to condense, and his works are marked by a powerful forward movement made up of external events. Whereas in most operas a character's arias often feel like a reflection of internal states of mind that exist "outside" time, with Verdi his characters are almost always doing something and their psychology is expressed typically in action rather than reflection. I suppose those who love his operas respond to this emotional directness and vitality. For me however, this briskness and dramatic compression usually comes at the cost of character development, and his characters often seem to be acting out in a state of frantic haste to the point where I usually don't feel connected or concerned about them and their motivations.

This is a problem for me even in an opera as praised and admired as Otello. Boito is often complimented for having eliminated the first act of Shakespeare's play, but that act lays the basis of the relations between the main characters and its removal, coupled with the compression of time in which Othello's feelings change, renders the action melodramatic. In the opera Othello is practically pathological, and condensing Iago's motivation into the famous "Credo" makes for a magnificent aria but also makes the situation less credible and relatable. With Falstaff, another widely praised and admired work, the fast pace works better dramatically for me because it is adjusted to comic developments. However I find the music, radically original and fluent as it is, largely forgettable. I can't think of one time ever experiencing the opera and having a captivating motif fill my heart and brain afterwards. I've always wondered why Aida, a flawed work in its own way, has been my most cherished Verdi opera. Perhaps because set in the idiom of grand opera, Verdi allows for more of those lyrical, emotional outpourings and expressions of inner turmoils I often miss from many of his other operas, and I can soak in the wonderful sonorities and tone painting like he rarely gives me the opportunity to in other works.


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## millionrainbows

Woodduck said:


> Thanks a million, million. After six years of DavidA misconstruing my posts, he finally gives me a blessed reprieve and appears to have put me on "ignore" - and now you give him the opportunity to misconstrue your quotations of my posts.
> 
> To paraphrase Maria in _The Sound of Music,_ "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something [bad]."


As the saying goes, "no good deed goes unpunished."


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## millionrainbows

DavidA said:


> If anyone doesn't think an opera like Falstaff or even Rigoletto is 'learned' then they need educating themselves! I can never see why people must distinguish between so-called 'popular' and 'learned'. Carmen is popular but anyone who knows anything about opera will tell you it's one of the greatest operas ever written. Same with Mozart. You can be popular and 'learned' at the same time.


Falstaff and Otello are the exceptions with Verdi. It's all the earlier works that are light entertainment. I'm not buying them.


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## Enthusiast

^ To call all his work aside from his last two operas "early works" goes a bit too far. It isn't like he died young. How about Don Carlo? Or Simon Boccanegra or Aida or Rigoletto or Macbeth? To name merely a few. There is a lot of serious work in Verdi's output.


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## millionrainbows

Enthusiast said:


> ^ To call all his work aside from his last two operas "early works" goes a bit too far. It isn't like he died young. How about Don Carlo? Or Simon Boccanegra or Aida or Rigoletto or Macbeth? To name merely a few. There is a lot of serious work in Verdi's output.


Then change that to "earlier," meaning earlier than Falstaff or Otello.


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## DavidA

millionrainbows said:


> Falstaff and Otello are the exceptions with Verdi. It's all the earlier works that are light entertainment. *I'm not buying them*.


You don't have to. Leave them to those of us who appreciate the genius behind them.


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## millionrainbows

DavidA said:


> You don't have to. Leave them to those of us who appreciate the genius behind them.


I don't want you to "appreciate" them. I want you to be _entertained!_


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## DavidA

millionrainbows said:


> I don't want you to "appreciate" them. I want you to be _entertained!_


Some of us believe that appreciation and entertainment are not mutually exclusive as some apparently do!


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## millionrainbows

DavidA said:


> Some of us believe that appreciation and entertainment are not mutually exclusive as some apparently do!


Yes, I see. Would you like some more Sunny-D to wash down that bite of frozen pizza, or would that distract you from the wrestling match?


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## DavidA

millionrainbows said:


> Yes, I see. Would you like some more Sunny-D to wash down that bite of frozen pizza, or would that distract you from the wrestling match?


Ah the usual descent into gibberish! :lol:


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## Woodduck

My reaction to Verdi has always been ambivalent, and has changed over time. I found his operas exciting when opera (and most classical music) was new to me (though I knew only half a dozen of his best-known works), increasingly uninteresting after I discovered opera by other composers (especially German opera), almost completely negligible except for _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ for a couple of decades, and now once again enjoyable and sometimes moving since I've gotten that unfathomable genius Wagner under my belt (insofar as one ever can) and realized that not all of life's pleasures must take one to the mountaintop.

I find my respect for Verdi as a composer to be greater than it once was, but with few exceptions I'm not much interested in listening to his operas unless seduced by really great singers. _Otello_ and _Falstaff_ remain my favorites, as they were from the start, but I've come to have some reservations, especially about _Otello._ Iago's "Credo" is a terrific aria, but a set piece like this seems out of place in this score, and this one feels like a somewhat vulgar bit of Snidely Whiplash mustache-twirling (though partly redeemable by a great singer like Lawrence Tibbett). Nor do I find Otello and Desdemona interesting or well-realized as characters, with Otello's extreme credulity not very credible and Desdemona little more than a pathetic victim. It would all be annoying or boring but for Verdi's music, which is inspired, sophisticated and powerful enough to make me accept virtually anything, at least if the leading roles are well-sung. About _Falstaff_ I have no real reservations, though I can maybe half-agree with MaxKellerman's comment about the forgettability of much of its music, as very few of its ideas, delightful as they may be, stick around long enough to become earworms. Still, it's a virtuosic piece of composition and a tour de force of musical comedy.

As for the rest, I find a great deal of Verdi to be musically and theatrically effective melodrama, sometimes moving and even powerful, but rather obvious and earthbound, and his characters, especially his female characters, rarely interesting. That describes _Aida_ for me: I just can't get involved in the plight of these one-dimensional figures who are without distinctive personalities and are defined solely by their situation. Amneris, who at least does something to make a story happen, fares best - the opera should have been named for her (as, perhaps, _Otello_ should have been named for Iago, which at one point Verdi considered) - but on the whole _Aida_ feels like a soap opera dressed up with pyramids and hieroglyphs.

Among the earlier operas I can enjoy are _Macbeth_ and _La Traviata,_ which have good stories (thanks to Shakespeare and Dumas), memorable characters, fantastic roles for great singer-actors, and distinctive, atmospheric musical scores. _Rigoletto_ is good entertainment, somewhat more if the baritone is great (good luck with that nowadays),_ Il Trovatore_ is more or less incomprehensible and seems to be about nothing but singing, and most of the "dark" middle-period works are just too grim for my temperament, despite some excellent music.

Strictly as a musician, there have been few composers who traveled as far stylistically as Verdi from their first works to their last. This is partly attributable to his long life and career.


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## Guest

DavidA said:


> Ah the usual descent into gibberish! :lol:


How glib of you. At least MillionRainbows (and Woodduck and EdwardBast, _et al_) post things of interest and contentiousness, things that keep this forum ticking. What exactly have your conbtributions been, may I ask, apart from gainsaying?


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## Guest

Whether we're talking about Verdi or any other opera composer, my attitutde is broadly similar.

There aren't many operas, by any composer, I can happily listen to from beginning to end. They're all mainly too long for my tastes. The only exception I can think of is Purcell's _Dido & Aeneas_, but this one is both very good and not that long and I like Purcell's music generally.

I enjoy selected parts of quite a lot opera by Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini. Opera by the likes of Webern, Strauss etc doesn't interest me quite so much.

I'm afraid that recitative of the type one finds in Mozart is not to my liking. I find it tedious and frankly quite boring. There's also a lot of material in most of Wagner that doesn't enthuse me greatly. Generally speaking the story lines in opera are of no interest to me; it's just some of the music and singing that I find attractive. I certainly could not get worked up, as some people do, about the inner "meaning" of any of this stuff, character studies, etc.

In the case of opera by Rossini, Donizetti, Puccini and Verdi, I'm only interested in the main arias/duets. I find the story lines to be of no interest.

Given my tastes, I find the various "highlight" CDs, that last for an hour or so, to be perfectly adequate for my purposes in the opera area.


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