#and then la traviata and don carlos

[spghtrbry]

…shit happens

[4operalove]

RENATA SCOTTO

as Vitellia in MOZART's *La Clemenza di Tito*, 1984 (ph 1&2)

IDEM

as Violetta Valery in VERDI's *La Traviata* (ph 3)

as Amina in BELLINI's *La Sonnambula* (ph 4)

as La Gioconda (PONCHIELLI) (ph 5)

as Lady Macbeth in VERDI's *Macbeth*

as Elisabetta di Valois in VERDI's *Don Carlo*

as Lucía in DONIZETTI's *Lucía di Lammermoor* Copyright ©️ Tamino Autographs

as Anna Bolena in DONIZETTI's opera of the same name.

in *Iván Susanin*

[automaticdreamlandkid]

Verdi's Operas compilation

[lliftedup]

Gonna send a call out to opera Tumblr and ask suggestions for which operas I should watch (and how? I have some resources but not all) as I've not seen one in a while and have an urge to change that. The ones I've seen so far are (in no particular order):

Parsifal

La Boheme

Don Carlo

La traviata

Il trovatore

Tristan und Isolde

Tosca

Billy Budd

Romeo et Juliet

Falstaff

Eugene Onegin

Carmen

The Barber of Seville

I'll take suggestions for new ones to see, favorite productions of ones I've already listed, I'll take em all*, so feel free to comment or repost or message me with some suggestions! Just throwing this out into the ether

*Except parsifal. I can't. I can't do that again I'm sorry Wagner (no not really) I entered into that opera unaware of the toll it would take on my psyche and I have not recovered I can't do it again-

[princesssarisa]

Where do you watch operas?

There are plenty of complete filmed opera performances available on YouTube, which you can watch for free. Unfortunately, not all of them have English subtitles, but if necessary, you can always find a translation of the libretto online to follow along with.

In fact, just for fun, as an example, I'll provide some links to complete filmed performances of the world's top 10 most popular operas, with English subtitles.

Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)

Studio film, 1971 (Nicolai Gedda, Edith Mathis, William Workman, Christina Deutekom, Hans Sotin; directed by Sir Peter Ustinov; conducted by Horst Stein)

La Traviata

Studio film, 1968 (Anna Moffo, Franco Bonisolli, Gino Bechi; directed by Mario Lanfranchi; conducted by Giuseppe Patané)

Carmen

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, 2006 (Anna Caterina Antonacci, Jonas Kaufmann, Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Norah Ansellem; staged by Francesca Zambello; conducted by Antonio Pappano)

La Bohéme

Studio film, 1965 (Mirella Freni, Gianni Raimondi, Rolando Panerai, Adriana Martino; directed by Franco Zeffirelli; conducted by Herbert von Karajan)

Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)

Teatro alla Scala, 2006 (Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Diana Damrau, Marcella Orsatti Talamanca, Pietro Spagnoli, Monica Bacelli; staged by Giorgio Strehler; conducted by Gérard Korsten)

Tosca

Teatro Real de Madrid, 2004 (Daniela Dessí, Fabio Armiliato, Ruggero Raimondi; staged by Nuria Espert; conducted by Maurizio Benini)

Madama Butterfly

Theatrical film, 1995 (Ying Huang, Richard Troxell, Ning Liang, Richard Cowan; directed by Frédéric Mitterand; conducted by James Conlon)

Don Giovanni

Zurich Opera, 2001 (Rodney Gilfry, László Polgár, Isabel Rey, Cecilia Bartoli, Liliana Nikiteanu, Roberto Saccá, Oliver Wimer, Matti Salminen; staged by Jürgen Flimm; conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt)

Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)

Metropolitan Opera, 2007 (Peter Mattei, Juan Diego Florez, Joyce diDonato, John Del Carlo, John Relyea; staged by Bartlett Sher; conducted by Maurizio Benini)

Act I, Act II

Rigoletto

Studio film, 1982 (Ingvar Wixell, Luciano Pavarotti, Edita Gruberova; directed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; conducted by Riccardo Chailly)

[verdiesque]

unpredictably. i will ask you for your favourite songs by giuseppe verdi

Oughhhhhhh. Okay I'll try

In no particular order, limiting myself to an aria per opera and bearing in mind that the list changes all the time:

Tu che le vanita from Don Carlo

Miserere from Il trovatore

Act 2 duet (Violetta and Germont) from La traviata

Act 4 duet (Alvaro and Carlo di Vargas) from La forza del destino

Vieni, t'afretta from Macbeth

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

@vera-dauriac

[opera-ghosts]

Wanda Wermińska - Libiamo ne’ lieti calici (Giuseppe Verdi, "La Traviata")

Wanda Wermińska (18 November 1900 – 30 August 1988) was a Polish operatic dramatic soprano and mezzo-soprano.

made her operatic debut in 1923 at the Grand Theatre, Warsaw as Amneris in Verdi's Aida with great success. For the role of Carmen in Bizet's opera, she took dance lessons with the flamenco dancer La Argentina. In operas such as Il trovatore, Un ballo in maschera, Don Carlos, Fidelio, Le nozze di Figaro, Andrea Chénier, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, Die Walküre and Halka she took on more than forty roles in the mezzo-soprano and soprano genres in the 1920s.

In 1929, Wermińska left Poland and made guest appearances in Vienna, Berlin, Bucharest, Prague, Riga, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Milan, Rome, Venice, Madrid and Alexandria, among other places. In Budapest she appeared alongside Feodor Chaliapin in Faust, which invited her to perform in Boris Godunov at several European theatres.

During the period of the Second World War, Wermińska lived in South America, where she had engagements in Argentina (Teatro Colón), Brazil, Chile and Mexico, under the conductors Bruno Walter Fritz Busch and Wilhelm Furtwängler and with soloists such as Kirsten Flagstad, Maria Caniglia, Fedora Barbieri, Beniamino Gigli, Lily Pons and Mario del Monaco.

She returned to Poland in 1947, where she continued to perform as an opera and concert singer, also on radio and television, and worked as a music teacher. She was highly regarded as the "Mother of Polish Opera".

[vera-dauriac]

Death Match

You voted in the first round, and these were the 4 operas left standing. Now decide which Verdi opera walks away on top!

Reminder--where there are multiple versions of the opera, you are voting for whichever one you love best.

[supercantaloupe]

alright operablr might hate me for this one but i...was not wild about don carlo, tbh. i think it's kind of a mess. before i elaborate i want to stress that a lot of my opinions are taste based and i am not saying that the opera or anyone who likes it are Bad or Wrong, i just don't think it's quite For Me. adding a cut so you can ignore all this if you want

anyway after having seen both nabucco and don carlo within a week of each other (thereby doubling my previous experience with verdi of traviata and otello), i'm starting to feel like, stylistically, early/mid verdi is much more my speed than late verdi. i remember coming away from otello thinking "that was alright" whereas with nabucco and traviata i was thinking "wow that was great!"...after finishing don carlo last night i was just...confused. i feel like i'm missing something.

actually, i definitely am; i've seen people posting about recurring motifs and beautiful arias etc in the music and i definitely missed those. again, late verdi (along with a lot of late romantic music tbh) just Is Not My Thing, i think. and considering how late don carlo is in verdi's output i'm not surprised (very much a post-wagner composition, don carlo is. same with otello). i'm planning on writing a separate post about this so i won't go into much detail here but the music really lacked a lasting memorable-ness for me; what was there was nice, yes, but it didn't feel like anything stood out much. i mean, numbers like the brindisi and amami alfredo in traviata, va pensiero in nabucco, and la donna e mobile in rigoletto -- these all Stand Out, even after only a single listen, but i am not even 12 hours off watching don carlo and i don't think i could hum for you one of its melodies. again, this has a lot to do with personal taste; in general i tend to prefer 18th and early 19th century music styles, and i plan on going into more detail about memorable music in theater in a different post.

and man, the plot is a mess. also, not to apply too modern a lens of story criticism here, but the pacing is all over the place: act ii is, like, twice the length of act i, and act iv is no quick jaunt either, then v is pretty short again. (and really who am i to complain about a 3.5 hour runtime, as a giulio cesare fan, an opera which bumps up against 4? well, at least giulio cesare has a consistent if slow pace...)

it is all over the place. one moment it's a typical operatic romance, then a political intrigue, another it's a gay psychodrama, and then it's about the catholic church. i think this is a feature rather than a bug for some people but it really did not work for me. like it's all well and good watching rodrigo and carlo swearing their loyalty for one another in the most totally heterosexual way possible or making plans to save flanders or deal with carlo's embarrassing crush on his stepmom or whatever, but when the very next scene (with no real warning) is a public parade of heretics for shaming and burning...bit of a tonal whiplash there, i think!

again, taste is a factor here. known sexy oklahoma enjoyer sasha supercantaloupe is no stranger or opponent of tonal whiplash in theater, but when it comes to "no one expects the spanish inquisition!" i think there's a difference between guys with silly outfits and silly accents popping out from behind a corner and a crowd of people dressed in friar habits carrying crosses and torches around onstage...especially to a jewish viewer like me. the plot very much feels like something someone who doesn't like opera would make up to belittle the art form imo: it's like four different things at once all thrown together in a very long, kind of jumbled mess. (i mean, what does eboli even do other than show up, make things Even More Complicated, and then disappear within two acts?)

and...i get the sense that verdi/contemporary audiences might've thought this, too. obviously the fact that it got so many productions that it HAS so many different versions at all shows that people liked it enough to keep performing it -- but there being so many different versions of the opera (disregarding translations), four acts versus five, cut or revised arias, etc, i think also indicates that something about the opera was not working quite right that they kept trying to fix. now i've only seen one version (granted it came highly recommended to me by mutuals, but only one nonetheless) and can't comment on other versions of the opera; maybe another version works better for me, idk. on its own i actually think it's really interesting that there are so many different revisions out there to study -- a real lucky glimpse into the dramaturgical process that you don't normally get to see from shows of the era or earlier. (ask me about hadestown if you want to know more of my thoughts on changes made over the course of a show's development being for better or worse.) but the finished version of the opera (at least the version i saw) is a bit of a mess imo. i definitely think it has its high moments, but i don't think they completely overshadow its lows. comparing it again to otello, which was a much more consistent product in tone and pacing etc. to me, although a bit less interesting overall too.

i feel like i might be disappointing some people by saying all this lol but i have to be honest. don carlo was just not my thing. suffice to say that i think late verdi has absorbed too much wagnerism for my taste, musically and dramatically. maybe i'll rewatch it at some point -- i'd be curious to check it out in french this time -- but i don't expect to be doing that anytime soon, unless a friend or something is watching and really wants me to join (and i can spare four hours...). i can see why y'all like it (well, some of why y'all like it) and i do admit there's some good stuff in there to like. namely the carlo & rodrigo shit. i understand now lol. the opera definitely feels like it's ripe for shitpost/meme content and i am here for that. but i can't say this one is going at the top of my fave shows list. sorry everybody!

[lucygold95]

Third POTO Korea Production Cast(and informations)

- 1. Phantoms(4 Phantoms! Classic Opera Singer, Musical actors and Movie/Drama star.)

조승우(Cho/Jo Seung-woo) - Famous Korean movie/drama star(He is very famous star in Korea. Almost all Koreans know him.) He is also a musical actor. He had casted as a Raoul at 1st Korea Production(2001~2002), but the staff accidentally sent him a wrong message. So he made a contract with other movie.(Soon the staff contacted him again, but that was too late.)

최재림(Choi Jae-rim) - Famous musical actor in Korea. He studied Opera(and as far as I know he did at least one Opera) too.

* According to the news, Mr. Choi will not join in Busan production(2023 March~June), but he will join in Seoul production(2023 July~November).

김주택(Kim Ju-taek. Julian Kim) - Famous young Opera Singer(Bariton) in Korea. He did 'Il barbiere di Siviglia(Figaro)' at Italy, La Traviata, Madama Butterfly, La bohème, L'elisir d'amore, Don Carlo, Lucia di Lammermoor, Simon Boccanegra, I Puritani at Italy(Venice(Venezia), Firenze, Parma...).

전동석(Jeon Dong-suk/Dong-seok) - Famous musical actor.(He did Kopit & Yeston's Phantom(Phantom), Elisabeth das musical(Tod and Rudolf) -> You can see more informations at here 👇

). He studied Opera too.

[cparti-mkiki]

i don’t hate it or anything but how much verdi in a season is too much fucking verdi actually. roh have done aida, trovatore, don carlo and la traviata almost back to back 😭

[spghtrbry]

Hi! I'm quite shy to write this directly, so I hope it's okay that I'm asking this here XD

What's the best opera to start with? And also, what's your favourite Verdi's opera? (The only opera I've listened to so far is Rigoletto, so I hope the questions doesn't sound weird or dumb lol 🥲)

hi and thanks for the ask! ofc it's fine, don't worry, i'm always okay with the asks asjkaslklkjlk

hmm i think i'm not the Right Guy to answer this bc i'm just making opera memes and that's all but... um.. that's the most obvious thing ever but yeah carmen is a good opera to start with. (and also you can see that that's my favorite opera lmao) just because there's a lot of popular tunes that you've 100% heard before in another media (habanera etc) and the plot is quite simple sooo. yes. that's literally what every person would say lol

also puccini's la boheme or tosca would go good, but i personally don't really like boheme bc i find it boring ..but it's popular AND short so why not. yeah i guess the good opera for Beginners tm is a short opera, bc if you'll start with shit that lasts 4 hours you'll probably find yourself asleep at the second hour. at soprano's aria. so don't ever start with wagner.

tchaikovsky’s eugene onegin is also fine but i genuinely Don’t like both thaikovsky and pushkin. it's easy to see why

if you don't want to start with the operas where everybody dies you can check mozart's le nozze di figaro (the marriage of figaro), which also has a lot of bangers ... but requires reading subtitles if you don't know italian. also for those who's not afraid of belcanto...maybe il barbiere di siviglia (which is le nozze's prequel) or la fille du regiment would be a good choice. but i don't think that starting with belcanto is a good decision

and yeah my favorite verdi's opera is probably don carlos (totally not because i love schiller) (NOTE: A BAD OPERA TO START WITH), and funny that rigoletto was one of my first operas in general and first verdi's opera lol. i like rigoletto... and um talking about verdi i think la traviata is also a good opera for beginners (for same reasons as puccini's boheme)

yeah that's it. once again i'm not an expert.. so maybe all this post is bullshit..... but anyway the only advice i can give you is just to watch things you like, even if it's wagner. that's the only thing that matters after all...

[operaportugues]

Canal de TV “Film & Arts” em maio/2024

O canal de TV “Film & Arts” está disponível nestas operadoras:

Claro TV: Canal 148; Canal 648 (HD)

SKY: Canal 116; Canal 516 (HD)

NET: Canal 148; Canal 648 (HD)

Clique no item abaixo para ver as datas/horários em maio/2024.

Canção Secreta - Alban Berg´s Lyric Suite

Ópera do Mendigo - Robert Carsen

Anna Netrebko & Rolando Villazón- La Traviata

Concerto de Paris 2023

Montserrat Caballé canta Norma

Sonho de uma noite de Verão

Moisés - Gioachino Rossini - Duomo Di Milano

Arthur Rubinstein - Chopin

Kathleen Battle & Jessye Norman

Três tenores - de Caracalla para o mundo

Don Quixote, com Marianela Nuñez e Carlos Acosta

Lucia di Lammermoor- Piotr Beczala

O anel centenário em Bayreuth

Viscera/ Tarde de um Fauno/ Tchaikovsky Pas De Deux/ Carmen

O Barbeiro de Sevilha

[greatoperasingers]

Luciano Pavarotti

After a bit of waiting, my second blog is finally up... the name is self-explanatory, and who better a great opera singer to kick this blog off with than the late Luciano Pavarotti (1935-2007).

The first time I heard Luciano Pavarotti's voice, it was on a recording of Puccini's Madama Butterfly; this was the famous recording with Luciano's childhood friend Mirella Freni (who, incidentally, never sang the part on stage). Luciano had sung the part of Pinkerton a couple of times on record; according to the BBC Classical Music website, the very first time he did so was in 1963 in Northern Ireland's Grand Opera House. He performed this role only a few times early in his career; however, he did sing Pinkerton's short aria "Addio, fiorito" in concert in his later years.

Hailing from Modena in Italy, Luciano Pavarotti had loved singing since he was a boy, however an impromptu rendition of "Vesti la giubba" (from Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) at the age of 5, made his neighbors tell him to shut up. Luciano began his formal training as a young adult under Arrigo Pola, and he made his operatic debut as Rodolfo in Puccini's La Boheme at Reggio Emilia in 1961. This role would become one of his most renowned roles, and one with which he would make several of his opera house debuts. The story goes that during one performance of Boheme, Luciano delivered Rodolfo's act 1 aria "Che gelida manina" - which contains a famous high C near the end - and as he finished the aria, even the soprano standing next to him came completely out character, turned to him, and joined the congregation in applause!

Over time Luciano would associate himself largely with the operas of Verdi and Puccini. He himself has confessed that he has performed the role of Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca more than any other role in his career. He has also done the Duke in Verdi's Rigoletto, Alfredo in Verdi's La Traviata, Radames in Verdi's Aida, the title roles in Verdi's Il Trovatore, Verdi's Don Carlo, and Giordano's Andrea Chenier, and perhaps most famously, Calaf in Puccini's Turandot.

The role of Calaf has largely been associated with Luciano because of the Act 3 aria, "Nessun dorma", which needs no introduction. Luciano sang Calaf on stage only twice in his career - in 1977 at San Francisco, with Montserrat Caballe as Turandot and Riccardo Chailly at the baton; and again 20 years later in 1997 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, with Jane Eaglen as Turandot and Maestro James Levine conducting. The latter recording is one of the most difficult to find; several audio excerpts exist online, as does a small video of him singing the "No no principessa altera" from Act 2, complete with its long, seemingly unending high C (see video below), but to date there is no known complete audio or video of this performance. The Met has yet to announce a release.

The relationship between Luciano and Levine has long been one of the best ever; many are aware that both were more than just friends or colleagues. It was "Jimmy" who encouraged Luciano to expand his repertory and take on more roles (I have discussed a lot about this in my Pride Month tribute post to James Levine in my mane blog). Under Levine's guidance, Luciano took on such demanding roles as Calaf and Chenier, as well as - yes, this is wacky but legit - the Italian Singer in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier in 1982!

And Levine didn't stop there; he encouraged Luciano to take on more, language-wise. Luciano admitted in his autobiography that he loved French opera, and two roles he always wanted to sing on stage were the title role in Massenet's Werther and Don Jose in Bizet's Carmen. Indeed, Werther's Act 3 aria "Pourquoi me reveiller?" had always been one of Luciano's favorites to perform live as a concert piece - he even did so at one of the Three Tenors concerts, as you can see in this next video.

Luciano was all set to do his first Werther in 1991 at Covent Garden; but the performance was taken over by the British conductor George Solti, who decided that the performance would be a concert performance of Verdi's Otello instead.

Then the cancelations began, those which Luciano became very infamous for in his later years. In 1996, not long after doing his first Chenier under Levine, Luciano was going to do his first Don Jose at a Xmas performance of Carmen, with Waltraud Meier in the title role (and again with Levine conducting); but - shockingly - he fell ill and canceled at the eleventh hour. In her book, Molto Agitato, reporter Johanna Fiedler recounts that when it was announced that Luciano had called in ill and was canceling Don Jose, the Met's general manager Joe Volpe allegedly said to the audience in a pre-show announcement: "The good news is that Mr Pavarotti asked me to send you all his holiday greetings. The bad news is that he sends you his greetings from Modena." Luciano was understudied in the role of Don Jose for that performance by his good friend, tenor Placido Domingo. (Luciano did, however, recover in time to perform Calaf the year after.)

Luciano never stopped trying new things out. In 1994, for the soundtrack of the Charlie Sheen movie The Three Musketeers, he recorded the theme song "All for love" with Bryan Adams, one of his first forays into modern popular music:

Of course, Luciano never lost his roots; he was no stranger to the traditional Arie Antiche, the series of 24 Italian songs and arias from the 1700s compiled by Alessandro Parisotti which today are used primarily for music pedagogy, especially vocal auditions. In fact, he adored these arias, and always opened every recital with one. Here is Luciano's rendition of "Caro mio ben", perhaps the single most infamous Arie Antiche ever, accompanied by La Scala's music director Riccardo Muti on piano, from 1995:

As the new millennium began, Luciano performed Radames in Verdi's Aida at the Met in 2001, with Deborah Voigt in the title role and again with Levine conducting. His farewell to the stage was in 2004 as Cavaradossi in Puccini's Tosca, one of his most renowned roles, with Carol Vaness in the title role, Samuel Ramey as Scarpia, and again with his beloved "Jimmy" Levine at the podium.

The world mourned Luciano's loss in September 2007, after he passed away at the age of 72, reportedly of a heart attack due to his weight, with which he struggled for much of his life. We are all the poorer for Luciano's loss. His opera performances on video and record will be his everlasting memorial.

Here, to round it up, is a full-length video of Luciano giving a masterclass at Juilliard in New York in 1979:

[alexrivoli-design]

Fu eseguito di getto a Parigi, il 9 aprile del 1886, il ritratto più famoso di Giuseppe Verdi, immagine indimenticabile di uno dei giganti della cultura musicale mondiale.

Pur nutrendo per lui un’autentica venerazione, il noto pittore ferrarese Giovanni Boldini dovette ricorrere ai buoni uffici di un comune amico per convincere il Maestro a posare, anche soltanto per poche ore, nel suo atelier parigino.

In verità, Boldini lo aveva già ritratto in precedenza, con un esito però giudicato non del tutto soddisfacente perché, come avrebbe affermato in seguito, disturbato durante il lavoro dalle continue chiacchiere di Giuseppina Strepponi, seconda moglie di Verdi.

Il nuovo ritratto a pastello ci presenta invece l’immagine forse più intima e vera del Maestro, raffigurato senza ufficialità, senza fronzoli e orpelli, come se fosse stato colto di scatto, in maniera inaspettata.

A Verdi in effetti quel quadro piacque, tanto da suggerire a Ricordi d’inserirne la riproduzione nell’edizione dell’Otello.

Di qualche momento di calma e relax, ora che gli anni iniziavano a pesare, ne aveva bisogno pure lui, anche perché, come dichiarò ad un amico, “dal Nabucco in poi non ho avuto un’ora di quiete. Sedici anni di galera!”.

A partire infatti dal 1842, quando alla Scala a 29 anni d’età ottenne il suo primo clamoroso successo col Nabucco, fra continue richieste e contratti da rispettare il Maestro di Roncole di Busseto compose, praticamente a getto continuo, numerosissime opere fra le quali, dal 1851 al 1853, la celeberrima “Trilogia popolare” con “Rigoletto”, “il Trovatore” e “la Traviata”.

Continuamente sballottato fra Milano, Parigi e Genova, dove amava svernare, se tuttavia voleva davvero riposare e trovare la concentrazione necessaria per il suo lavoro Verdi un’oasi di quiete ce l’aveva.

Si trattava della splendida tenuta di Sant’Agata, frazione a pochi chilometri di distanza da Busseto seppure già in territorio piacentino, dove il Maestro avrebbe vissuto quasi ininterrottamente, a partire dal 1851, per gli ultimi cinquant’anni di vita.

Solo in questo luogo il suo atavico amore per la campagna riusciva a trovare sfogo, tanto che “la Peppina” scrisse ad un’amica: “il mio Verdi si alza allo spuntar del giorno per andare a esaminare il grano, il mais, la vigna, le stalle, etc. Rientra rotto dalla fatica”.

Era anche ossessionato dalla cura del suo giardino, cioè dell’immenso parco che caratterizzava la tenuta, dove piantò alberi rarissimi e che abbellì di statue, grotte e persino un laghetto.

Qui lui, scrisse sempre la moglie, “czareggia or tanto, ch’io sono ridotta a pochi palmi di terreno, sui quali Egli non ha, per condizioni stabilite, il diritto di ficcarvi il naso”, sotto minaccia - in caso contrario - di piantarvi cavoli al posto dei fiori.

Oltre che giardiniere ed agronomo, Verdi si piccava però di essere anche un bravo “magut”, termine che in dialetto lombardo-emiliano significa muratore, dispensando consigli ed ordini persino quando si doveva rabberciare un muretto.

Così infatti scrisse di se stesso al conte Arrivabene nel 1867: “Se tu gli dici che il Don Carlos non vale niente, non gliene importa un fico, ma se tu gli contrasti la sua abilità di fare il magut, se n’ha a male”.

Era però di notte che “il magut” tornava ad essere il Maestro di sempre, quando cioè si levava di scatto dal letto per precipitarsi allo scrittoio piazzato in posizione strategica, a portata di mano, per scrivervi di getto le arie che aveva “sentito” nel dormiveglia, prima di scordarle.

Il mattino seguente, senza bisogno di rettificare una sola nota, le provava al pianoforte poggiato al muro della stessa stanza, sul quale pendevano appese le immagini del suo “pantheon” personale, fra le quali quelle dell’amico Alessandro Manzoni e del suocero Antonio Barezzi, suo primo scopritore e finanziatore, per il quale Verdi nutrì sempre un’autentica venerazione.

Il genio si manifesta anche così.

Accompagna questo scritto il “Ritratto di Giuseppe Verdi”, di Giovanni Boldini, 1886, Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna, Roma.

(Testo di Anselmo Pagani)