This 2004 Companion provides a biographical, theatrical and social-cultural background for Verdi's music, examines in detail important general aspects of its style and method of composing, and synthesizes stylistic themes in discussions of representative works. Aspects of Verdi's milieu, style, creative process and critical reception are explored in essays by highly reputed specialists. Individual chapters address themes in Verdi's life, his role in transforming the theater business, and his relationship to Italian Romanticism and the Risorgimento. Chapters on four operas representative of the different stages of Verdi's career, Ernani, Rigoletto, Don Carlos and Otello synthesize analytical themes introduced in the more general chapters and illustrate the richness of Verdi's creativity. The Companion also includes chapters on Verdi's non-operatic songs and other music, his creative process, and scholarly writing about Verdi from the nineteenth-century to the present day.

This 2004 Companion provides an accessible introduction to Verdi's life and music.

About the Author
Scott L. Balthazar is Professor of Music History at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He has lectured and published on stylistic aspects of nineteenth-century Italian opera and on contemporary theories of instrumental form in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Dr Balthazar is a contributor to the revised New Grove Dictionary of Music and the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, and his articles and reviews have appeared in a number of musicological journals.

Reviews
'...offers many hours of thoroughly delectable and mostly instructive reading.' Nineteenth-Century Music Review



Book Information
ISBN 9780521635356
Author Scott L. Balthazar
Format Paperback
Page Count 366
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 635g
Dimensions(mm) 244mm * 170mm * 19mm