In the long 19th century, when one’s drawing room was the performance venue of greatest popularity, musicians were desperate for material. If you were a virtuoso pianist, then your repertoire was expansive. If you were an amateur player on the

Ukrainian composer Alexey Shor (b. 1970) takes Giuseppe Verdi to South America! In his 2015 work, Verdiana, Shor took advantage of a tour of South America to recast familiar melodies from three operas by Giuseppe Verdi using three different South

Giuseppe Verdi was a master of melody, crafting some of the most unforgettable tunes in opera history. His genius lay not only in his ability to write soaring and emotionally charged arias but also in his profound understanding of how

Giuseppe Verdi’s Les vêpres siciliennes premiered at the Paris Opéra on 13 June 1855. It was well received, and even the notoriously difficult Hector Berlioz found much to admire, praising “the penetrating intensity of the melodic expressiveness, the sumptuous, wise

Soon after the successful première of Giuseppe Verdi’s first opera Oberto, Bartolomeo Merelli, the impresario at La Scala commissioned three further operas. The comic opera Un giorno di regno was a disastrous failure, and contemporary critics considered the question of

During the final years of his life, Giuseppe Verdi devoted himself to a number of philanthropic ventures. Chiefly among them was the establishment of a hospital at Villanova sull’Arda, close to Busseto. Yet, overseeing such a noble cause was not

While Giuseppe Verdi was basking in the tremendous success he enjoyed with Rigoletto in March 1851, he was also looking for a subject for his next opera. His lover Giuseppina Strepponi had recently translated a play by García Gutiérrez titled

Marie Duplessis (1824-1847) was one of the most famous and sought-after French courtesans of her time. Born on 15 January 1824, her father wasn’t a particularly pleasant man, and early on sold his daughter to a variety of men. It