Verdi

"Verdi - the Man and his Music" is published as part of the Metropolitan Opera Guild Composer Series, which presents concise introductions to major opera composers. It also happens to be part of the loot I won when one of my questions was accepted for the Metropolitan Opera Quiz radio broadcast.The late Paul Hume, a highly respected music critic who once drew the ire of President Harry Truman after he panned his daughter's song recital, published this book in 1977. It can be read comfortably in an afternoon as it only runs to 173 pages, and is padded out with over 100 photographs and illustrations, and rounded out with one- or two-page summaries of all of Verdi's operas.As may well be imagined, many of the photographs are taken from Met productions of Verdi's operas.In his introduction, Hume exhorts his reader to, "Above all, remember the heart of Verdi, which beats in [his] operas and the Requiem." It is obvious that he loves his subject and is very knowledgeable about his life. Verdi shines through these pages as a young prodigy who loved deeply and was supported by the life-long loyalty of his friends. When his musical career was almost terminated by the early deaths of his wife and children, the impresario Merelli did not abandon "his new composer," who after all had only written two operas, one of them a failure. He hounded Verdi until the composer agreed to examine a new libretto by Solera that was based on the Old Testament story of the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchanezzar (Nabucco).The rest is history. As Verdi himself once wrote, "I can say with a certainty that this opera marked the beginning of my career as a composer."The author intimates that there are some who would say that Verdi's "Otello" is greater than Shakespeare's, and Victor Hugo, whose play "Le Roi s'Amuse" formed the libretto of "Rigoletto," was jealous of this opera's great Act III quartet: "If I could only make four characters in my plays speak at the same time...I would obtain the very same effect." Only Verdi's music allows us to look simultaneously into the hearts of his four characters, while Hume's book allows us to look into the heart of a great composer, who was also a great man.