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Updated: June 18, 2025
"I'm glad of it." "Hym!" said Indiman. "Perhaps so." From the street came the sound of a hand-organ. It was playing Verdi's "Celeste Aida," and so lovely is the aria that I could have listened to it with pleasure, even when thus ground out mechanically. But, unfortunately, an atrocious mistake had been made in the preparation of the music cylinder.
For the first time in his career he discovered the true balance between singers and orchestra, and at once took his proper place among the great musicians of the world. Special attention must be directed to Verdi's use of local colour in 'Aida. This is often a dangerous stumbling-block to musicians, but Verdi triumphed most where all the world had failed.
On such a night the very spirit of Venice is abroad. We feel why she is called Bride of the Sea. Take yet another night. There had been a representation of Verdi's "Forza del Destino" at the Teatro Malibran. After midnight we walked homeward through the Merceria, crossed the Piazza, and dived into the narrow calle which leads to the traghetto of the Salute.
So strong and vigorous, in spite of his advanced age. No doubt he travels those stairs twenty times a day. He is as alert as a young man; doubtless he still has his voice, as he says. And what a career he has had. You know he was a friend of Edward the Seventh; they once lived together. Then he and Verdi were close friends; he helped coach singers for Verdi's operas.
Here he ensconced himself, placed his tin cup on the top of his organ, together with the few pairs of shoe-laces which proclaimed him a merchant within rather than a beggar without the law, and proceeded to enliven the still quiet neighborhood with the dreadfully strained measure of Verdi's "Miserère."
There's a march in Verdi's Attila and I Lombardi, I declare I'm in military step when I hear them, as in the old days, after leaving the Opera. Fredi takes little Mab Mountney to her first Opera to-night. Enough to make us old ones envious! You remember your first Opera, Fenellan? Sonnambula, with me.
Though one of the earliest of Verdi's works, "Ernani" is one of his strongest in dramatic intensity, in the brilliancy and power of its concerted finales, and in the beauty of its great chorus effects. "Rigoletto," an opera in three acts, words by Piave, the subject taken from Victor Hugo's tragedy, "Le Roi s'amuse," was first produced at Venice, March 11, 1851.
Such brutal opacities of accompaniment as we find in Rossini's Stabat or Verdi's Trovatore, where the strings play a rum-tum accompaniment whilst the entire wind band blares away, fortissimo, in unison with the unfortunate singer, are never to be found in Wagner's work.
Sit down and convert me. Only don't crush my poor little Erard with Verdi's hoofs. I brought it when I came. It is behind the times too. And, oh, my dear boy, our organ is still worse. So old, so old! To get a proper one I would sacrifice even this piano of mine in a moment only the tinkling thing is not worth a sou to anybody except its master. But there! Are you quite comfortable?"
The critics of the day at once accused Verdi of imitating Wagner, and certain passages undoubtedly suggest the influence of 'Lohengrin, but as a whole the score is thoroughly and radically Italian. In 'Aida' Verdi's vein of melody is as rich as ever, but it is controlled by a keen artistic sense, which had never had full play before.
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