Customer Reviews

Verdi - His Music, Life and Times (Softcover)

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This book is a nice overview of Italian politics during the life of Verdi with a subplot regarding European politics.

The author spends pages describing the literary source of the operas, more pages describing the libretti and then after describing the Theater and singers intrigues, there is the most flimsy description of the music. Arias duets etc are hardly ever discussed in musical terms and details. Plot weaknesses and strengths are usually discussed. This is repeated for every opera.

Poor Verdi and his music are reduced to comprimario status in this "Literary Opera".

It is a pity because the author writes very lucidly. I just think he is off topic too often.

This is a very good book, covering the whole of Verdi's life, and it gives a great overview of the Italian political scene throughout Verdi's life (which is a lot of politics!). The discussion of his relationship with Strepponi is judicious and not salacious. It is very clearly and finely written. I was captured by it.

It is true, as another reviewer noted, that there isn't much on the music. There's a lot on the creation of the operas and the machinations around them, but no real music analysis. But there are other books for that.