Verdi’s style

Challenging conventions Verdi became frustrated with the two-part aria/duet form around which Italian operatic scenes were routinely structured, with a slow first section, linking passage and fast, showy ‘cabaletta’. He increasingly tweaked the formula, structuring scenes in a more fluid way to respond to the ebb and flow of emotions.

Orchestration Verdi’s earlier works are sometimes disparaged for their ‘guitar-like’ accompaniment. In his mature operas, the orchestral writing is more sophisticated, expressive and to the fore. This paralleled Wagner’s innovations, though Verdi denied a direct influence and worried about younger composers abandoning the primacy of the voice. Characterisation Many Verdi operas revolve around a doomed love affair between a young soprano and tenor but Verdi subverted the norm as the drama required. In Macbeth the central couple are dysfunctional and romance is absent. Here, as in Rigoletto (as played by Plácido Domingo, below), Simon Boccanegra and Falstaff, the title role becomes a baritone.

Religion Verdi was not devout and sometimes addressed anti-clerical themes, yet his Requiem is a pillar of the choral repertory. Verdi’s response to the Requiem text offers little comfort: he omits the consoling In Paradisum and emphasises the terror of the last judgement in his setting of the Dies Irae.