Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Verdi: The Great Composers
    Unavailable
    Verdi: The Great Composers
    Unavailable
    Verdi: The Great Composers
    Ebook68 pages1 hour

    Verdi: The Great Composers

    By Michael Steen

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Welcome to The Independent’s new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.

    Extracted from Michael Steen’s book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent’s editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.

    With Verdi, Italian opera reached its zenith, where music and drama are fused into an indissoluble whole. Although he wrote 28 operas, less than half remain regularly performed. Yet those which are remain a gold standard of characterisation, stagecraft and musical vocabulary. Rigoletto, La Traviata, Un Ballo in Maschera, Aïda – the roll call is long, but it is especially with his final two operas, Otello and Falstaff, that he becomes the unassailable master.

    But it was not just the excellence of Verdi's artistry which propelled him to fame. Verdi was writing just as Italy was becoming increasingly resentful of Austria's domination, and there was a growing movement to unite the patchwork of territories of which Italy was composed at the time into a unified country. He became identified with the ambitions of reunification, and many of his operas, with their political subtexts, became rallying calls for the nationalists. Michael Steen unpicks how this most unsociable of men, a reluctant politician but a brilliant composer, became the figurehead for the birth of a nation.

    Born into a modest background, Verdi, with his sound business sense, grew rich and famous; rich enough to ignore the scandalised disapproval of his neighbours at his living openly with his mistress for many years before marrying her. At his death 200,000 people lined the streets to bid farewell to their hero.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherIcon Books
    Release dateJul 17, 2014
    ISBN9781848318052
    Unavailable
    Verdi: The Great Composers

    Read more from Michael Steen

    Related to Verdi

    Related ebooks

    Music For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Franz Lehár

      Jun 11, 2020

      Franz Lehár
      5 min read

    • Article

      Felix Mendelssohn

      Mar 19, 2020

      Felix Mendelssohn
      6 min read

    • Article

      Richard Morrison

      Sep 30, 2021

      It’s surely not just fussy critics who get fed up with the same 20-odd operas being endlessly recycled. Opera houses lapse into that lazy form of programming, of course, because they regard Carmen, Bohème, Figaro, Traviata and the others in that magi

      3 min read

    • Article

      Antonín Dvorák

      Aug 5, 2021

      Antonín Dvorák
      6 min read

    • Article

      Benjamin Britten

      Aug 9, 2022

      Benjamin Britten
      6 min read

    • Article

      Nikolai Medtner

      Sep 6, 2022

      Nikolai Medtner
      5 min read

    • Article

      Correct Casting

      Mar 21, 2022

      As a Latino in Canada, I soon became aware of the unique potential of my position as General Director of two performing arts organizations to help steward progress for other Latinos and facilitate opportunities for friends in the lyric theatre who la

      5 min read

    • Article

      Views From The Podium

      Apr 14, 2022

      ‘In my view, Vaughan Williams is unquestionably one of the great symphonists of the 20th century,’ says Sir Mark Elder. ‘I mean, really important. I would put his symphonies absolutely alongside those of Sibelius and Shostakovich.’ Elder’s journey th

      5 min read

    • Article

      Welcome

      Oct 28, 2021

      To get an idea of the astonishing longevity of Stravinsky’s career, it’s worth setting it within the context of global events. When the Russian composer hit the Parisian headlines with the premiere of his ballet The Firebird in June 1910, Robert Scot

      1 min read

    • Article

      Beneath The Surface

      Jan 22, 2021

      Beneath The Surface
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Passionate Pilgrim

      Apr 14, 2022

      To be writing about Ralph Vaughan Williams feels particularly apt now, not simply because it’s his anniversary year, but because throughout his long life, the composer struggled to make sense of the very kind of mysteries and horrors that assail many

      11 min read

    • Article

      Provocateur Of The Opera

      Oct 2, 2018

      Provocateur Of The Opera
      8 min read

    • Article

      Barbara Hannigan

      Apr 16, 2020

      Barbara Hannigan
      6 min read

    • Article

      Carrie-Ann Matheson

      Mar 13, 2020

      Carrie-Ann Matheson
      9 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: Why Satie? Why Now? How One Composer Embodies Our Time Of Loneliness And Angst

      Jun 19, 2020

      Safe at home has not necessarily meant sane at home. One antidote is a mega-dose of Erik Satie. The French composer's most beguiling and languidly becalming piano pieces, particularly the inescapable "Gymnopedies," began showing up in April and May o

      5 min read

    • Article

      10 Logic Pro For IPad Tips

      Aug 22, 2023

      If you’re totally new to Logic Pro on the iPad, we’ll get started with a few quick tips in one go to help get you going. The first advice would be to make sure you take advantage of the supplied Lessons; they’re really good, so use them! If you’re a

      4 min read

    • Article

      Key Moments

      Jul 8, 2021

      by Susan Tomes Yale, 400 pages, £16.99 When Bartolomeo Cristofori developed his prototype pianoforte in the early 18th century, it seems unlikely he could have imagined what a success his instrument would become. The piano is now a staple of concert

      1 min read

    • Article

      Baroque Music

      Jan 27, 2022

      Can you summarise what Baroque music is? Unlike many historical terms that have been invented by scholars long after the fact, the term Baroque was applied to music as early as 1733 in a review of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s opera Hippolyte et Aricie. Her

      4 min read

    • Article

      Choral & Song

      May 14, 2020

      Choral & Song
      8 min read

    • Article

      MENDELSSOHN Life &Times

      Mar 19, 2020

      LIFE: Felix Mendelssohn is born on 3 February in Hamburg, the second child – after sister Fanny – of Abraham Mendelssohn, a prominent banker, and Lea Salomon. TIMES: The bloody Battle of Wagram brings a decisive success for Napoleon’s French Empire a

      1 min read

    • Article

      The Ballet MASTER

      Oct 28, 2021

      The Ballet MASTER
      12 min read

    • Article

      The Keys To Success

      Mar 17, 2022

      The Keys To Success
      1 min read

    • Article

      Review: From The Nazis To RBG, How Richard Wagner Changed The World

      Sep 30, 2020

      You cannot escape Richard Wagner. If this review has reached you, anywhere in the world and by whatever means, you have already had your life affected in some way by a 19th-century megalomaniacal composer of mythic German operas. It doesn't matter th

      5 min read

    • Article

      Orchestral

      Mar 18, 2021

      Orchestral
      9 min read

    Reviews for Verdi

    4/5

    10 ratings1 review

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A very worthy book, although it's not really the kind of thing you'd read straight through; it's more of a reference text. Steen covers everything from historical and social contexts of the composers to the nitty-gritty of their daily lives.

      I think some reviewers overreact to the idea that Steen is just being sensationalist: it's genuinely interesting to read about the more salacious aspects of these men's lives (very akin to 'The Twelve Caesars' in that sense), but he also approaches the stories from a musicologist and historical angle.

      Steen's voice is sort of like an aged history teacher, trying to tell a story even if he often wanders off the point. I'm not sure you could read this reference-heavy text all the way through in one sitting, but it's a good starting point for someone with some music knowledge, interested in these stories. From here, you can peruse the endless footnotes for more expansive reading on any individual composer.