Explanations:
Falstaff: At eighty, Verdi arrived at musical imagination and human comedy that equalled the greatest of the great masters. Verdi's only 'poem unlimited'. Verdi was finally responding to the first music he studied as a child. If Mozart or Haydn had written at the end of the 19th century, if Mendelssohn wrote in the vain of his Midsummer music in the 1890s, they'd have written music not unlike this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_oYes2VmQ
Otello: It's not just the perfect and greatest operatic tragedy, it completely upends the tropes of Italian opera Verdi himself helped codify (Donizetti and Bellini did plenty). A dozen times, it seems as though it will go into the generalized form of opera arias, only to surprise us with something far more naturalistic. It often seems like it anticipates Janacek or Rosenkavalier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8FD9G5Sf5s
Traviata: A misunderstood opera. The vast majority of it is a pastoral slice of life, not unlike Figaro or Meistersinger. Even the villains aren't villains even if they commit villainous acts. It is so clearly Verdi writing from his own experience with his two wives. The death of one, the isolation of the other. The personal side feels real in a way so much Verdi, in my never humble opinion, does not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDmLniM2cic
Rigoletto: The momentum stops only once in the middle of Act I. It is Verdi raising the ghost of his daughter in a way that does not feel exploitative (as in Il Trovatore). Act III is absolutely perfect. It shows, as only Verdi can, that beneath the bonhomie of human fun can lie sickening evil. Rigoletto is Verdi's most complex character, and shows that opera, operating at its peak, can equal the sophistication of great theater. Riccardo Stracciari Mercedes Capsir Dino Borgioli Ernesto Dominici Rigoletto full opera (1927&1930)
Ballo: Verdi is, sadly, never funny except in Falstaff, but he is music's student of 'fun.' Like Rigoletto and Traviata, Ballo builds on the dual nature of pleasurable experience and how exploitative it can be, but it takes the investigation to the next level with tropes that come from low class arenas like the music hall, cabaret, opera comique and operetta and ties it to the high goings of royal courts (in the original...). Then it adds the tropes of Bellini and Donizetti at their most tragic to tell a much darker story that takes ironic dichotomies to an extreme never otherwise found (so far as my limited knowledge of Verdi knows). Not to mntion that the Ulrica music anticipates passages in the Ring Cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlDG8ZTz0JI
Falstaff: At eighty, Verdi arrived at musical imagination and human comedy that equalled the greatest of the great masters. Verdi's only 'poem unlimited'. Verdi was finally responding to the first music he studied as a child. If Mozart or Haydn had written at the end of the 19th century, if Mendelssohn wrote in the vain of his Midsummer music in the 1890s, they'd have written music not unlike this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_oYes2VmQ
Otello: It's not just the perfect and greatest operatic tragedy, it completely upends the tropes of Italian opera Verdi himself helped codify (Donizetti and Bellini did plenty). A dozen times, it seems as though it will go into the generalized form of opera arias, only to surprise us with something far more naturalistic. It often seems like it anticipates Janacek or Rosenkavalier. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8FD9G5Sf5s
Traviata: A misunderstood opera. The vast majority of it is a pastoral slice of life, not unlike Figaro or Meistersinger. Even the villains aren't villains even if they commit villainous acts. It is so clearly Verdi writing from his own experience with his two wives. The death of one, the isolation of the other. The personal side feels real in a way so much Verdi, in my never humble opinion, does not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDmLniM2cic
Rigoletto: The momentum stops only once in the middle of Act I. It is Verdi raising the ghost of his daughter in a way that does not feel exploitative (as in Il Trovatore). Act III is absolutely perfect. It shows, as only Verdi can, that beneath the bonhomie of human fun can lie sickening evil. Rigoletto is Verdi's most complex character, and shows that opera, operating at its peak, can equal the sophistication of great theater. Riccardo Stracciari Mercedes Capsir Dino Borgioli Ernesto Dominici Rigoletto full opera (1927&1930)
Ballo: Verdi is, sadly, never funny except in Falstaff, but he is music's student of 'fun.' Like Rigoletto and Traviata, Ballo builds on the dual nature of pleasurable experience and how exploitative it can be, but it takes the investigation to the next level with tropes that come from low class arenas like the music hall, cabaret, opera comique and operetta and ties it to the high goings of royal courts (in the original...). Then it adds the tropes of Bellini and Donizetti at their most tragic to tell a much darker story that takes ironic dichotomies to an extreme never otherwise found (so far as my limited knowledge of Verdi knows). Not to mntion that the Ulrica music anticipates passages in the Ring Cycle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlDG8ZTz0JI
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