Giuseppe Verdi

4 Stories

'Intolerable' Verdi Situation About to Be Righted

5K pages of composer's drafts and sketches will go public

(Newser) - A 19th-century trunk filled with 5,000 pages of Giuseppe Verdi's "musical musings, stage directions, afterthoughts, and reconsiderations" has long been considered a "holy grail" of sorts, inaccessible to all but the most elite scholars. Per the New York Times , however, that trunk is now about to...

Conductor Downes, Wife End Lives in Swiss Suicide Clinic

Couple faced failing health

(Newser) - British conductor Edward Downes and his wife, Joan, have died at a Swiss suicide clinic, ending their lives “under circumstances of their own choosing,” the couple’s children said today. Downes, 85, was largely blind and Joan, 74, had cancer, the Times of London reports, which their children...

High-Concept Sonnambula Misses at Met

 High-Concept 
 Sonnambula 
 Misses at Met 
opera review
Mar 23, 2009 2:35 PM CDT

High-Concept Sonnambula Misses at Met

(Newser) - Most operas weave pretty far-fetched tales, but that isn't license for directors to retell them in ironic or mocking ways, Alex Ross writes in the New Yorker. Reviewing two recent productions at the Met, Ross hails a faithful staging of Verdi's Il Trovatore—but dismisses a high-concept version of Bellini's...

Verdi, Naked and Anti-American
 Verdi, Naked and Anti-American 
Apr 12, 2008 6:51 AM CDT

Verdi, Naked and Anti-American

Austrian Marxist uses opera to slam US capitalism

(Newser) - A German staging of Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” leaves Uncle Sam wearing little but a mask, Der Spiegel reports. In a rebuke of US capitalism, the production parades naked retirees on a set of the World Trade Center's ruins, and offers a female singer with a Hitler mustache...

4 Stories