Britain’s Got Talent opera singer performs ‘Caruso’ and moves audience to tears

 24 May 2022, 16:42 | Updated: 25 May 2022, 14:06 

By Savannah Roberts, ClassicFM London

 

Here's the moment a young opera singer delivered a 1986 Italian love song famously performed by the likes of Luciano Pavarotti and Andrea Bocelli.

Maxwell Thorpe gave a hair-raising performance during his Britain’s Got Talent audition, surprising the crowd with the challenging number written by Lucio Dalla and dedicated to the prolific operatic tenor, Enrico Caruso.

Introducing his performance, the 32-year-old opera singer told the judging panel that he was “very nervous”.

“I’ll have to sing them [my nerves] out,” the northern singer announced to the audience.

Maxwell revealed that he had been busking in Sheffield for 10 years, and that in his experience he is “sometimes singing to people that aren’t listening.”

Read more: Incredible moment when ‘The X Factor’ vocalist sang both parts in soprano and tenor duet

Maxwell Thorpe performed 'Caruso' by Lucio Dalla during his BGT audition. Picture: ITV/YouTube

The judges and audience were left stunned when Thorpe’s shy demeanour dropped, as soon as he began to sing. A moment of silence fell upon the stage as the melancholic melody came to a close, before the theatre responded with a well-earned standing ovation.

Simon Cowell showered the BGT hopeful with praise, saying: “You’re heading for the big time. Maxwell, that was extraordinary. Seriously, you’re so shy and quiet and then that happened.

“I thought that made it incredible,” Simon continued.

The reaction among the panel was unanimous, with Alesha Dixon professing: “Wow, wow, wow! The hairs on my arms stood up, literally as soon as you started.

Read more: When a 13-year-old operatic soprano stormed America’s Got Talent finals, and ignited a huge debate

The Britains Got Talent judges were touched by Maxwell Thorpe's performance. Picture: ITV/YouTube

“It just felt romantic and powerful and meaningful and all the feels.”

Amanda Holden praised the Sheffield singer further, saying: “I hope that going forward you feel more appreciated because these people were on their feet for you. I really hope that reaction has done something for your confidence as you are better than standing on a pavement.”

Maxwell received a yes from all four judges, who turned around in their seats to see an ecstatic audience behind them. Opera on a talent show? We’ve seen it before, but this is up there with the best...

AUDIO JUNKIE: Classical kick, Julio Nakpil style

by Manila Bulletin Entertainment

The music of Julio Nakpil, a Pinoy renaissance man, is the subject of an ongoing retrospective series titled “The Music of Julio Nakpil.”

The series has already released two robust collections namely “The Music of Julio Nakpil (1867-1960) Volume 1 & 2: Works for Piano.”

 

But as music masters go, two albums just won’t cover the works of a prime artist. Hence volumes III and IV: “Works for Voice and Chamber Ensemble” and “Works for Band and Orchestra” respectively.

But who is Julio Nakpil? And why do we care? Well, Nakpil is a composer out of the past. He was a revolutionary, a Katipunero—and a general at that—who fought against the Spanish in the Philippine Revolution of 1896 and has seen firsthand the tumult of the succeeding occupations of the Americans and the Japanese in the first half of the 20th century. But throughout, Nakpil managed to carve a body of work that is still celebrated today, more than a century and a half after his birth. And these collections are standing proof to his massive contribution to Philippine classical music.

Each record focuses on a different aspect of Nakpil’s works. “Volume III” in particular spotlights Nakpil’s “Works for Voice and Chamber Ensemble.”   And “Amor Patrio! Romanza” for voice, oboe and piano” is just the ticket for those who lean toward vocal classical music. This moody piece demonstrates Nakpil’s flair for the dramatic and this century-plus old composition (written in 1893) is brought to life again by soprano Jasmin Salvo, with Mari Angeli Nicholas’ oboe and on piano, Dingdong Fiel.

And while the album opener and the segue piece “Il Ramento (The remembrance)” seem to be serious sonic excursions, the mood eventually lightens starting with the celebratory “Himno (Hymn).” The latter’s intro seems to be a nod to Mozart, but nonetheless stands on its own.

This and hymnals such as “Marangal Dalit bg Katagalugan (Hymno Nacional)” and the kundiman-like “Pag ibig (Love) Habanera” are sonic calling cards for sopranos Jasmin Salvo, tenor Radnel Ofalsa, and the UST choir Coro Tomasino. As the joyful “Luz Poetica de la Aurora” is for Reynato Resurreccion Jr.’s oboe. Volume III hotspot? “Danse Campestre: Habanera para concierto” with its classical romanticism and joyful cadence implied by Dingdong Fiel’s excellent piano work, as Christian Tan’s violin sings on top, easily takes the cake.  

“The Music of Julio Nakpil Volume IV:  Works for Band and Orchestra” meanwhile injects new vigor into the orchestral works of this Filipino music master. With the UST Symphonic Band and the UST Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Herminigildo Ranera breathing life into pieces (ironically) to the funereal “Sueño Eterno, Marcha Funebre” and “Pahimakas! (Last Farewell) Marcha Funebre.” The latter is dedicated to the memory (and last moments) of Rizal.

“Volume IV” is also festive and jovial as heard on “Biak Na Bato: Paso-Doble,” “Expocision Regional” and “Salve Patria! (Hail Motherland) Gran Marcha.” The last one was written by Nakpil to commemorate Rizal’s 8th death anniversary that coincided with the inauguration of the Rizal monument.  

A project of the University of Santo Tomas Research Center for Culture, Arts and Humanities, and produced by Maria Alexandra Iñigo Chua, “The music of Julio Nakpil” is a definitive compendium of the works of a true Filipino music master.

Having said all that, It’s highly recommended to go back to Volumes I & II “Works For Piano” compositions written specially for the keyboard. Master pianist Raul Sunico performs all of Nakpil’s work and it is akin to hearing masters of two different era’s collaborating across time.

Truly world class all of them.  

How Do Musicians Express Their Emotions through Music?

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

Music is a powerful means of communication, by which people share emotions, intentions, and meanings, and our personal engagement with music, whether in a live concert, listening to a CD or via a streaming service, is driven by the medium’s ability to convey and communicate emotion. Music can arouse strong feelings, recall memories; it can promote extreme happiness or engender feelings of deep love or loss…

Like speech, music has an acoustic code for expressing emotion, and even if a piece of music is unfamiliar, we can “decode” its message. Because of this, while musicians perform music according to their own interpretations, we can still understand the basic acoustic code: a crescendo indicates increased intensity or drama; a minor key suggests seriousness or melancholy; pauses create suspense and anticipation.

For the performer, the ability to communicate emotion, or tell a story, in music requires more than the technical facility to process what’s on the score. A good understanding of the structure of the music is important for a convincing, and communicative, musical performance, allowing the musician to respond to aspects such as variations in tempo and dynamics, harmonic and melodic tension and release, phrasing, repetitions, etc. By responding to these elements, the listener is given a set of musical “signposts” which guide them through the music, and bring cohesion, interest and variety to the performance.

A performer must resolve the entire depth of the ideas contained there. How often carefully notated shadings, accents, tempo changes reveal not simply a positive characteristic of sound but rather the untold sides of the author’s concept. How many directions we find in Schumann, Chopin, Scriabin, even Beethoven that a pianist should follow not in a real sound but by addressing the subtlest hints to the imagination of a listener!
– Samuil Feinberg

Communicating emotion is the most elusive aspect of the performer’s skillset, and is the fundamental reason why people – performers and listeners – engage with music. At a basic level, music communicates specific emotions through simple musical devices, for example:

• Happy – fast tempo, running notes, staccato, bright sound, major key
• Sad – very slow tempo, minor key, legato, descending sequences or falling intervals, diminuendo, ritardando

But there is something else which makes a performance particularly rich in expression or communication. Performance is generally regarded as a synthesis of both technical and expressive skills. Technical skills can be taught, while expression is more instinctive: it is of course possible to act upon expression markings in the score, but in order for these to sound convincing and, more importantly, natural, the performer must draw upon other factors, including extra-musical ones.

Many performers create a vivid internal musical and artistic vision of the music they are playing. This may include an aural model; the use of metaphors or adjectives to create a narrative or picture for the music; and personal experience, including extra-musical experiences. A performer’s own emotional experiences may influence the way they convey emotion in the music. This suggests that only a performer who has actually experienced the highs and lows of romantic love can perform, for example, Schumann’s Fantasie in C with the requisite emotional insight. Of course, not every performer will have the life experience, but they can still convey emotion in their performance by awakening their imagination to bring expression and emotional depth to their playing. In addition, in a concert situation, the imagination of the listener is very much at the disposal of the performer, to be shaped and influenced through sound.

We talk about performers “communicating the composer’s intentions” (i.e. paying attention to and acting upon directions in the score such as dynamics, tempo and expression markings, articulation, rests and pauses etc) or “conveying the story of the music“, but fundamentally I think as listeners we crave a performance which touches us personally. Listening to music is a highly subjective and personal experience – we’ve all had those ‘Proustian rush’ moments when a piece of music, or a single movement or even a phrase, provokes an involuntary memory, sometimes with physical side-effects such as goosebumps or shivers (physiologically, this is the result of the release of Dopamine, the brain’s “reward” neurotransmitter). Sometimes we want to feel uplifted or transported by music, taken us out of ourselves and the mundanity of everyday life to another place, to experience something touching the spiritual or transcendent. Such moments, and the memory of them, are very special and individual.

Occasionally one is at a concert where a very palpable sense of collective concentration can be felt in the auditorium. This occurs when the performer creates an intense communication between music and listener. I experienced it, along with the rest of the Wigmore Hall audience, at a performance of Beethoven’s last three sonatas by the Russian pianist Igor Levit in June 2017. The sense of concentrated listening and suspense was extraordinary. How did Levit achieve it? I’m not sure…. a combination of exquisite tone control, musical understanding and the sheer power of the music itself.

Most people like music because it gives them certain emotions such as joy, grief, sadness, and image of nature, a subject for daydreams or – still better – oblivion from “everyday life”. They want a drug – dope -…. Music would not be worth much if it were reduced to such an end. When people have learned to love music for itself, when they listen with other ears, their enjoyment will be of a far higher and more potent order, and they will be able to judge it on a higher plane and realise its intrinsic value.
– Igor Stravinsky

Dining With Music

by Maureen Buja, Interlude

Whim W’Him Contemporary Dance company in La revue du cuisine (2015)

As you peek around the corners of the repertoire, there are a few pieces that reflect the daily concern with Dining. There are works that set recipes, works that show the activities in a kitchen, works that show the procession of the courses, and one that gives you the ambient sound of a large kitchen. Let’s explore!

Martinů’s La revue de cuisine (1927) was still a favourite of its composer some 50 years later. It was a one-act jazz ballet about a love triangle in the kitchen between Pot, Lid, and the adventurous Whisk to which Pot has become enamoured. ‘The forthcoming marriage between Pot (Le chaudron) and Lid (Le couvercle) is jeopardised by the adventurous Whisk (Le moulinet) to whose magic Pot has succumbed. Pot is so captivated that Lid falls off him and rolls into a corner of the kitchen. Now Dishcloth wants to seduce Lid but order loving Broom to challenge Dishcloth to a duel, which delights Whisk. The two irritated combatants fight to the bitter end. Whisk makes eyes at Pot once more but now Pot longs for Lid, but Lid is nowhere to be found. The shadow of an enormous foot appears suddenly and with one kick propels Lid out of his corner. Broom leads him back to Pot, while Whisk and Dishcloth break out into a wild dance of joy.’ Despite this wildly interesting synopsis, the work has rarely been performed as a ballet in its entirety but has had a much more successful life as a suite. One recent version in 2013 moved the scenario to that of a traveling circus. The ballet score was revised and reconstructed by Christopher Hogwood after the full score was found in the Paul Sacher Foundation Archives.

Darius and Madeleine Milhaud on their wedding day, 1925

French composer Darius Milhaud (1895-1974) left France in 1940 when the Germans invaded and took up a post at Mills College in California. One of the changes that the Milhaud family experienced in America was the lack of household help. Cooks and maids were no longer available in war-time America. Milhaud paid tribute to his wife in 1944 in La Muse ménagère (The Household Muse), which recognizes his wife Madeleine’s ingenuity in having to take up household tasks during their time in the United States, where, as Milhaud noted, ‘servants receive higher wages than university professors.’ Her whirlwind kitchen activities are covered in the movement entitled La cuisine.

Jennie Tourel and Leonard Bernstein at a recording session, 1960

A ‘song cycle of recipes’ takes Emile Dumont’s 1899 cookbook La Bonne Cuisine Française (Tout ce qui a rapport à la table, manuel-guide pour la ville et la campagne) (Fine French Cooking “Everything That Has to Do with the Table, Manual Guide for City and Country”) as the text source for Leonard Bernstein’s 1947 work. Written for singer Jennie Tourel, it sets the recipes for Plum Pudding, Ox Tail, a Turkish dish of Tavouk Guenksis, and closes with a recipe for ‘Rabbit at Top Speed.’

Kitchen in Chateau d’Orion

In his 1961 work Grand Concerto Gastronomique for Eater, Waiter, Food and Large Orchestra, Op. 76, English composer Malcolm Arnold wrote a 6-part memorial to a great dinner. Written for the Hoffnung Festival in 1961, the work involved the actions of an off-stage chef and two on-stage actors (the Eater and the Waiter). The Prologue, with its fanfares and ‘comic gestures’ signals the beginning of the action: the Eater and the Waiter enact a ‘ceremonial napkin display’ and the meal is on. The second movement, Soup (Brown Windsor), is both ‘thickly scored and unappealing’, rather like the soup. It is in the third movement, Roast Beef, that the Englishness comes out. The movement may be short, but the performance instructions say that it must be ‘repeated and repeated slower and slower until all is finished’ and the plate of food must be ‘enormous.’ It is the Eater who determines how many repetitions of the march occur – choosing either to gulp everything down as quickly as possible or to savour every morsel, in the manner of Erik Satie’s piano piece Vexations (which 1 page of music is to be played 840 times).

This movement is followed by Cheese, and then the dessert course of Peach Melba and closes with Coffee, Brandy, Epilogue.

English composer Gavin Bryars’ work Cuisine (1993) was written for an installation at Chateau d’Orion, in Orion, France. The music was written to establish the ‘architectural acoustic’ of the space and ‘to animate the spaces in which the music was played.’

We all have our triumphs and failures in the kitchen. Each of these composers has chosen to memorialize something different for their kitchens: love affairs between the implements, the musicality of a recipe, the ceremony of a meal, or just the sound of the space.

Thinking About Returning to the Piano?

by Frances Wilson, Interlude

Here are some tips to help you on your piano journey

It may be two years or twenty since you last touched a piano, but however long the absence, taking the decision to return to playing is exciting, challenging and just a little trepidatious.

Stick with the familiar and play the music you learnt before

To get back in to the habit of playing, start by returning to music you have previously learnt. You may be surprised at how much remains in the fingers and brain, and while facility, nimbleness and technique may be rusty, it shouldn’t take too long to find the music flowing again, especially if you learnt and practised it carefully in the past.

Take time to warm up

You may like to play scales or exercises to warm up, but simple yoga or Pilates-style exercises, done away from the piano, can be very helpful in warming up fingers and arms and getting the blood flowing. This kind of warm up can also be a useful head-clearing exercise to help you focus when you go to the piano.

You don’t have to play scales or exercises!

Some people swear by scales, arpeggios and technical exercises while others run a mile from them. As a returner, you are under no obligation to play scales or exercises. While they may be helpful in improving finger dexterity and velocity, many exercises can be tedious and repetitive. Instead try and create exercises from the music you are playing – it will be far more useful and, importantly, relevant.

Invest in a decent instrument

If you are serious about returning to the piano, a good instrument is essential. It needn’t be an acoustic piano; there are many very high-quality digital instruments to choose from. Select one with a full-size keyboard and properly weighted keys which imitate the action of a real piano. The benefits of a digital instrument are that you can adjust the volume and play with headphones so as not to disturb other members of your household or neighbours, and most digital instruments allow you to record yourself or connect to apps which provide accompaniments or a rhythm section which makes playing even more fun!

Posture is important

You’ve got a good instrument, now invest in a proper adjustable piano stool or bench. Good posture enables you to play better, avoid tiredness and injury.

Little and often

Your new-found enthusiasm for the piano may lead you to play for hours on end over the weekend but hardly at all during the week. Instead of a long practice session, aim for shorter periods at the piano, every day if possible, or at least 5 days out of 7. Routine and regularity of practice are important for progress.

Consider taking lessons

A teacher can be a valuable support, offering advice on technique, productive practising, repertoire, performance practice, and more. Choose carefully: the pupil-teacher relationship is a very special one and a good relationship will foster progress and musical development. Ask for recommendations from other people and take some trial lessons to find the right teacher for you.

Pianists at Finchcocks course

Go on a piano course

Piano courses are a great way to meet other like-minded people – and you’ll be surprised how many returners there are out there! Courses also offer the opportunity to study with different teachers, hear other people playing, get tips on practising, chat to other pianists, and discover repertoire. Many courses in the UK cater for students of all levels, including those at Finchcocks in Kent and Jackdaws in Somerset.

Join a piano club

If you fancy improving your performance skills in a supportive friendly environment, consider joining a piano club. You’ll meet other adult pianists, hear lots of different repertoire, have an opportunity to exchange ideas, and enjoy a social life connected to the piano. Piano clubs offer regular performance opportunities which can help build confidence and fluency in your playing.

Listen widely

Listening, both to CDs or via streaming or going to live concerts, is a great way to discover new repertoire or be inspired by hearing the music you’re learning played by master musicians.

Buy good-quality scores

Cheap, flimsy scores don’t last long and are often littered with editorial inconsistencies. If you’re serious about your music, invest in decent sheet music and where possible buy Urtext scores (e.g. Henle, Barenreiter or Weiner editions) which have useful commentaries, annotations, fingering suggestions and clear typesetting on good-quality paper.

Play the music you want to play

One of the most satisfying aspects of being an adult pianist is that you can choose what repertoire to play. Don’t let people tell you to play certain repertoire because “it’s good for you”! If you don’t enjoy the music, you won’t want to practice. As pianists we are spoilt for choice and there really is music out there to suit every taste.

Above all, enjoy the piano!

Classic FM welcomes thousands of new classical music listeners in 2022, radio figures reveal

Alexander Armstrong, Charlotte Hawkins and Moira Stuart. Picture: Classic FM

By Classic FM

@ClassicFM

 

New audience figures show that in the first three months of 2022, the year we celebrate our 30th birthday, Classic FM welcomed thousands of new listeners.

We have welcomed 100,000 new listeners to Classic FM, according to the latest radio listening figures.

In our 30th birthday year, results by Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) show that 5.2 million people now tune into Classic FM every week.

The overall amount of time the audience tunes in has gone up too. Total listening to Classic FM every week now stands at 44.5 million hours, which is the highest it’s been for 17 years.

The figures, which come from the official body in charge of measuring radio audiences in the UK, prove that classical music continues to provide comfort, focus and joy in people’s lives.

We have seen increases in listeners for all daytime programmes beginning with Classic FM’s More Music Breakfast with Tim Lihoreau, which has seen a rise of 87,000 listeners compared to the last three months of 2021, bringing Tim’s audience to a total of 1.7 million.

Alexander Armstrong welcomes 2.4 million listeners from 9am to 12pm on weekdays, a rise of 43,000 listeners compared to the previous quarter.

Classic FM Requests also proves as popular as ever, with an additional 28,000 listeners boosting Anne-Marie Minhall’s afternoon audience to 2.5 million listeners.

Smooth Classics with Margherita Taylor has gained just shy of 100,000 listeners, with 700,000 people now listening to Classic FM from 10pm to 1am on weekdays. Similarly on weekends, Myleene Klass now welcomes 484,000 listeners to her Smooth Classics programmes on Saturday and Sunday evenings.

At the weekend, Alan Titchmarsh and Aled Jones are joined by nearly a million listeners each on Saturday and Sunday mornings, with 964,000 and 998,000 people tuning in respectively.

Source: Ipsos /RAJAR.

Die Kraft der Klänge - Musik als Medizin

Musik wirkt auf allen Ebenen des menschlichen Gehirns mit direktem Zugang zu unseren Emotionen. Sie prägt uns schon im Mutterleib, berührt uns im tiefsten Inneren und treibt zu Höchstleistungen.

    

 Und sie kann helfen, gesünder und glücklicher zu leben.

Das Geheimnis der Rhythmen und Melodien erforschen Neurowissenschaftler wie Peter Vuust und Stefan Kölsch. Sie untersuchen die Funktion und Entwicklung unseres Gehirns. Musik helfe unserem Körper vielleicht besser als viele Medikamente, schon vorhandene Heilkräfte zu aktivieren, meint Stefan Kölsch von der Universität Bergen in Norwegen. 

Beim Kochen summen wir zu Popsongs aus dem Radio und schnippen im Takt, wenn ein besonders grooviger Song läuft. Peter Vuust vom "Music in the Brain-Institut" in Aarhus, Dänemark, hat das Geheimnis des Grooves erforscht und weiß, warum wir bei manchen Songs nicht mehr stillsitzen können. 

Beim Sport lassen wir uns von fetzigen Beats zu Hochleistungen antreiben. Tom Fritz vom Max-Planck-Institut in Leipzig hat herausgefunden: Noch leistungsstärker werden wir, wenn wir die Musik beim Training selbst erzeugen. Die Dokumentation "Die Kraft der Klänge - Musik als Medizin" untersucht den positiven Einfluss von Musik auf uns - vom Kleinkind bis zum älteren Menschen.

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Giuseppe Verdi: A True Revolutionary? A True Romantic?

by Ursula Rehn Wolfman , Interlude

Later mythologized as a true Italian, Giuseppe Verdi was born on October 10, 1813 in Busseto as a French subject, which seems to have disturbed him enough to lead him to represent that he had in fact been born in 1814, in which year the Dukedom of Parma, to which Busseto belonged, became an independent Italian state. Throughout most of the 19th century, Italy was not a political entity, but rather a cultural idea, where everyone, whether in Milano, Venice, Genoa, in the Piedmont and in the many other cities and states, could live as a member of an ancient, noble and respectable cultural community, irrespective of borders, customs and tariffs. A political union had been impossible, since the major European powers — Germany, Spain, France and Austria, as well as the Papal States — controlled the various Italian regions. The 19th century saw a re-awakening, the ‘risorgimento’ as it would later be called — a cry for political unity and independence, whose most outspoken representative was the writer Vittorio Alfieri, whom Verdi very much admired. Alfieri conceived Italian nationalism as a spiritual/political idea of liberation and freedom, a concept which became the focus of various political movements in the following years.

The Italian Root of Giuseppe Verdi

In Italy, even language divided the different Italian regions, in which everyone spoke the specific dialect of the district — Italian as such was used only as a written language and was unfamiliar to most. The only languages everyone did understand, were those of music and poetry, such as that of Ludovico Ariosto and Torquato Tasso. Music and opera made it possible for every Italian to be part of this nation of culture, a unity of the people. Music, as the true expression of feelings, of the heart, of passions, could therefore be considered the true language of the people. Already in earlier centuries, Italians knew that they were a European musical power, for example with Cherubini in Paris and Spontini in Berlin, and that Vienna, with Vivaldi, Salieri and many others, was the Italian musical capital per se. In the 19th century, even though Italy was not a single national political entity, opera brought people together. Italian masters, Rossini from Bologna, Bellini from Catania and Donizetti from Bergamo, were successful in all of Europe and brought Italian opera to the North.

Verdi was very much influenced by Italian republican ideas — he named his children Icilio and Virginia after idealized Republican Roman heroes — but he also made sure not to offend the Austrian authorities by openly supporting the regional independence movements.

While working in Milano in 1832, which at that time was still under Austrian command, he not only heard Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and major works of Viennese classical music, but broke his contract to work in Busseto in order to remain in Milano, where his first opera, ‘Oberto’, received a favorable reception.

Nationalism in Giuseppe Verdi’s Operas?

In 1842, again in Milano, Verdi achieved real fame with his opera, ‘Nabucco’, which also saw tremendous success in Vienna in 1843. All of the famous salons in Milano now became open to him, in particular the salon of Clarina and Andrea Maffai (descendants of the Italian/German aristocracy with familial connections to Munich and Salzburg), who introduced Verdi to ‘world literature’, in particular the works of Klopstock, Schlegel, Goethe, Schiller, Grillparzer and particularly Madame de Staël’s book on Germany (‘De l’Allemagne’). Andrea Maffai was also a member of the ‘Societá dei filodrammatici’, whose focus was to unite opera and drama – an idea Verdi would apply to all of his future operas – just as Wagner was seeking to do. Under the influence of Maffai and his friends, Verdi became one of the Italian composers most knowledgeable about European dramatic literature. The northern ‘high’ aristocratic families, such as the Strassoldo, Colloredo, Pallavicini, Thurn und Taxis as well as many others, had international focus and background — they provided support to artists without consideration of language or nationality. For them, music, and in particular opera, had to be good, with themes that could be presented anywhere — not patriotic political pieces, but great Italian music. Verdi did not think of an Italian nationalistic piece when he composed ‘Nabucco’, but in later years, the choir of prisoners, ‘Va pensiero’, anchored the myth that Verdi had given voice to Italian demands for freedom, unity and independence. Interestingly, nowhere other than in Italy, whether in Vienna, Berlin or Weimar, was the famous choir of prisoners considered as political provocation, and the opera was a great success.

Elements of many of his other works, such as parts of Ernani, I Lombardi, Don Carlos and Macbeth, were also later seen by Italians as the voice of the people protesting foreign dominance, although Verdi himself made no such connection. Unlike Wagner, who had actively participated in the 1848 revolution in Dresden, Verdi saw the various Italian political attempts at liberation and reunification from afar –(i.e., the revolutions of 1830, 1848, 1861, 1866 and finally, the unification of Italy in 1871) — from Paris or from his luxurious country estate in Roncole. In his personal letters, he expressed his interest in Italian political matters, but what most interested him was the financial success of his operas and his friendships throughout Europe. Italy was and remained for him a cultural idea, an idea of Italian art, music and way of life.

Can Giuseppe Verdi Be Considered a True Romantic?

As I have mentioned before, Verdi was very familiar with the ‘classical’ works of Shakespeare, the ‘romantic’ works of Victor Hugo, Lord Byron and Alexandre Dumas and based many of his operas on their works. Interestingly, Shakespeare had been rediscovered by the French Romantic painters and writers in the 19th century, who saw him as a revolutionary playwright. In his plays, Shakespeare had never adhered to, and had broken, with the classical French dictum of the ‘unity of time, action and space’, where all stage performance had to adhere to the 24-hour rule, i.e. that all the action on stage had to be started and completed within a 24 hour day. In opera, one such example of the rule is Mozart’s ‘Abduction from the Seraglio’, where the action starts with the abduction and ends with the resolution and celebratory meal 24 hours later. Another example is Puccini’s ‘Tosca’, which starts with the meeting of the protagonists in church and ends with the execution the next morning, again 24 hours. Virtually all classical plays and operas would follow these rules.

Verdi used Victor Hugo’s play ‘Hernani’ as the basis for his opera by the same name. In 1830, Hugo’s ‘Hernani’ had its first Paris performance as the first Romantic play, and had met with fierce opposition from the French audience, although valiantly defended by Hector Berlioz, Théophile Gautier and many of the French Romantic writers and painters. Hugo had broken all of the classical rules — the locale and action in his play changed often and they exceeded the 24 hour day. Composed in 1844, Verdi insisted that his opera libretto follow Hugo’s play as closely as possible, and so, in Act I, the action is situated in the mountains of Aragon; in Act II, in Don Ruy Gomez Castle; in Act III, in Charlemagne’s tomb in Aachen; and in act IV, back to Spain, in Saragossa. The opera also shows the young Verdi honing his operatic skills in creating dramatic tension (three men pay court to one woman), with the conspiracy scene, its evocative orchestral coloring, and in general, the lyrical fervor of his arias (‘Ernani… Ernani involami’; ‘Vieni meco, sol di rose’, etc.), setting the new standards for Romantic operas — Italian style.

In the 19th century, we not only see the change from the Classical to the Romantic canon in theatre and music, but also in painting. Verdi continued his successes with ‘Rigoletto’ (based on Victor Hugo’s, ‘Le Roi s’amuse’), ‘Il Trovatore’, and ‘La Traviatia’ (based on Alexandre Dumas’ play ‘La dame aux camélias’). All three operas can be seen as Verdi’s supreme achievement of the Romantic Italian melodrama, and we can consider him a true Romantic — but not a true Revolutionary.