Callas and Di Stefano in La Traviata, at La Scala, 1955; Don Carlos at the Vienna State Opera in 2004, as directed by Peter Konwitschny. In 2001 I wrote an essay on Verdi, which is reprinted in revised form in Listen to This. It ends thus:
The greatness of Verdi is a simple
thing. Solitary by nature, he found a way of speaking to limitless
crowds, and his method was to sink himself completely into his characters. He
never composed music for music’s sake; every phrase helps to tell a story.
The most astounding scenes in his work are those in which all the voices
come together in a visceral mass— like a human wave that could carry
anything before it. The voices at the end of Simon Boccanegra, crying out in grief; the voices at the end of Un ballo, overcome by the spiritual
magnificence of a dying man; and, of course, the voices of “Va pensiero,”
remembering, in a unison line, the destruction of Jerusalem. In the modern world,
we seldom find ourselves in the grip of a single emotion, and this is
what Verdi restores to us— the sense of belonging.