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Verdi and the Gazzetta Privilegiata Di Milano: An ‘Official’ View Seen in its Cultural Background
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Abstract
Verdi was immensely popular in Italy because he brought to the accepted forms and idiom of opera just that touch of dynamic individuality which was needed; but there was a further reason only indirectly connected with the music itself. Italy during the risorgimento (1820–70) was seething with revolution, and Verdi's operas came to play an important part in the patriotic movements of the 1840s and 1850s. Though their scenes and characters ostensibly had no connection with contemporary events, the librettos were filled with conspiracies, political assassinations, appeals to liberty, and exhortations against tyranny, all of which were of course understood in the intended sense by sympathetic audiences.
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- Copyright © Royal Musical Association, 1982
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