Biography of Giuseppe Verdi

Considered Italy's greatest composer of operas. Verdi's works are remarkable for their melodic beauty, superb dramatic construction, and rich orchestration -- evoking worlds that lived more in Verdi's mind than, for instance in Aida, in the actual Egypt of ancient times. His ability to balance the subjective, intimate lives of his characters with the objective world in which they are set is another wonder of his operas, as in the contrast in Aida between the profound, despairing quality of the love duet in the tomb and the marches and grandeur of the earlier scenes. Verdi's dramatic, operatic sensibilities are carried over directly to the Requiem Mass, which in its drive and terror is unlike any liturgical music that came before. ~ Blue Gene Tyranny