Giuseppe Verdi was an Italian composer. Verdi’s musical legacy – 26 operas – presents one of the summits of operatic at in the world and the culmination of the development of opera in Italy. His early operas “Nabucco” (1841), “I Lombardi” (1842) and “Ernani” (1844) are permeated with heroic ideas of the Risorgimento (Italian for “revival”) – the movement of national liberation of the Italian people from foreign rule and unification of divided Italy. Verdi’s operas from the 1850s (“Rigoletto,” 1851; “Il Trovatore,” 1852; “Uno ballo in Maschera,” 1859) are basically psychological dramas; “La Traviata” (1853), which evoked the theme of social inequality, anticipated the genre of lyrical opera in France. In 1860s Verdi composed a number of monumental heroic dramas, following the French traditions of “Grand opera” (“La Forza del Destino,” 1862, written for the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg; “Don Carlos,” 1866). Verdi’s last operas, “Aida” (1870, written upon commission of the Egyptian government to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal), “Otello” (1886, a musical drama based on William Shakespeare’s play) and “Falstaff” (1892, a comic opera based on Shakespeare’s play) are among the finest examples of opera dramaturgy. Among his few compositions written in other genres the monumental Requiem (1874) stands out most prominently.
