Verdi S Middle Period

During the middle phase of his career, 1849-1859, Verdi created some of his best-loved and most frequently performed operas, including Luisa Miller, Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, and Un ballo in maschera. This was also the period in which he wrote his first completely original French grand opera, Les Vepres siciliennes; the first version of Simon Boccanegra; and the intensely dramatic Stiffelio, until recent years the most neglected of all Verdi's mature works for the operatic stage. Featuring contributions from many of the most active Verdi scholars in the United States and Europe, Verdi's Middle Period explores the operas composed during this period from three interlinked perspectives: studies of the original source material, cross-disciplinary analyses of musical and textual issues, and the relationship of performance practice to Verdi's musical and dramatic conception. Both musicologists and serious opera buffs will enjoy this distinguished collection.

The information in the Historical Dictionary of Opera will help the reader identify central figures, works, concepts, and trends in the history of opera through selectively chosen entries that provide essential information and integrate that content within broad social or stylistic narratives. This is done through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 300 cross-referenced dictionary entries on important persons, composers, individual keystone operas, cities and terms. This book is a vital reference tool for students, teachers, and to all opera lovers, performers, and composers who seek information about the development of the genre.

This investigation offers new perspectives on Giuseppe Verdi’s attitudes to women and the functions which they fulfilled for him. The book explores Verdi’s professional and personal relationship with women who were exceptional within the traditional socio-sexual structure of patria potestà, in the context of women’s changing status in nineteenth-century Italian society. It focusses on two women; the singers Giuseppina Strepponi, who supported and enhanced Verdi’s creativity at the beginning of his professional life and Teresa Stolz, who sustained his sense of self-worth at its end. Each was an essential emotional benefactor without whom Verdi’s career would not have been the same. The subject of the Strepponi-Verdi marriage and the impact of Strepponi’s past deserve further detailed and nuanced discussion. This book demonstrates Verdi’s shifting power-balance with Strepponi as she sought to retain intellectual self-respect while his success and control increased. The negative stereotypes concerning operatic ‘divas’ do not withstand scrutiny when applied either to Strepponi or to Stolz. This book presents a revisionist appraisal of Stolz through close examination of her letters. Revealing Stolz’s value to Verdi, they also provide contemporary operatic criticism and behind-the-scenes comment, some excerpts of which are published here in English for the first time.

"Verdi's art emerged from a rich array of dramatic and musical practices operative in the Italy of his day. Drawing the reader into his creative world, this study (translated from the French original by the author himself) begins where Verdi began when it came time to set notes to paper: the libretto. Designed for the non-Italophone reader, Steven Huebner's Verdi and the Art of Italian Opera explains key principles of Italian poetry that shaped his music. From there, Huebner outlines the various musical textures available to the composer, including an exploration of the characteristics of recitative and aria. Working outward, subsequent chapters explore the syntax of Verdi's melodic writing and the larger-level forms that he used. A concluding chapter considers ways of conceiving musical unity in his operas. Huebner's long-needed study provides significant insights into Verdi's musico-dramatic strategies, pulling together-and making more easily accessible-principles and insights that are spread widely across the scholarly literature. Verdi remains by far the most performed opera composer on world stages today: singers, vocal coaches, stage directors, and opera lovers more generally will welcome this compact perspective on his art"--

This comprehensive research guide surveys the most significant published materials relating to Giuseppe Verdi. This new edition includes research since the publication of the first edition in 1998.

This Companion provides a biographical, theatrical, and social-cultural background for Verdi's operas, examines in detail important general aspects of its style and method of composing, and synthesizes stylistic themes in discussions of representative works. Aspects of Verdi's milieu, style, creative process, and critical reception are explored in essays by highly reputed specialists. Like others in the series this Companion is aimed primarily at students and opera lovers.

But in the musical drama reality begins to blur, the musical forms lose their excessively neat patterns, and doubt and ambiguity undermine characters and situations, reflecting the crisis of character typical of modernity. Indeed, much of the interest and originality of Verdi's operas lie in his adherence to both these contradictory systems, allowing the composer/dramatist to be simultaneously classical and modern, traditionalist and innovator.

First Published in 1998. Giuseppe Verdi already stood out as a distinctive and unusually significant composer by the time his career was barely underway. Today, Verdi scholars build their work on a vast foundation of earlier research. For researchers who have not spent years with the Verdi literature or who may just be starting to explore some aspect of this giant’s fife and works, this foundation may seem daunting indeed. It is primarily for these researchers that this guide is intended. Its purpose is to index and describe some of the most significant studies about the composer, presenting enough material in annotations that researchers may survey the many myriad directions Verdi research has gone, ascertain the relevance of individual items to their individual interests, and pursue significant patterns and threads in which they are interested.