Verdi: Overtures, Vol. 2

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Cat No: 8553089

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099408929

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: VERDI

Description
Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901) Overtures Volume 2 Ernani: Prelude Il finto Stanislao (Un giorno di regno): Sinfonia Don Carlo: Prelude to Act III Giovanna d'Arco: Sinfonia Rigoletto: Prelude Nabucco: Overture I masnadieri: Prelude Macbeth: Sinfonia La battaglia di Legnano: Sinfonia I due Foscari: Prelude La forza del destino: Sinfonia Giuseppe Verdi's career spans three quarters of the nineteenth century. He was born in 1813 at Le Roncole, near Busseto, the son of a tavern-keeper, and distinguished himself locally in music. The encouragement and patronage of his future father-in-law Antonio Barezzi, a merchant in Busseto, allowed him further study in Milan, before returning to Busseto as maestro di musica. His first venture into opera, a reasonably successful one, was in 1839 with Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio. This was followed, however, by the failure of Un giorno di regno, written at a period when the composer suffered the death of his wife, Barezzi's daughter, and their two children. His early reputation was finally established by the opera Nabucco, staged at La Scala, Milan, in 1842. Verdi's subsequent career in Italy brought him unrivalled fame, augmented by his reputation as a patriot and fervent supporter of Italian national unity. His name itself was treated as an acronym for the proposed monarch of a united Italy, Vittorio Emanuele, re d'ltalia (Victor Emanuel, King of Italy), and much of his work was susceptible to patriotic interpretation. His long association with the singer Giuseppina Strepponi led to their marriage in 1859, the year of Un ballo in maschera. He completed his last opera, Falstaff, in 1893, four years before her death, but felt himself unequal to further Shakespearean operas then proposed. He died while staying in Milan early in 1901, his death the subject of national mourning throughout Italy. Ernani, with a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave derived from Victor Hugo's play Hernani, is set in Spain in 1519. The opera was first staged at La Fenice in Venice in 1844. The bandit Ernani loves Elvira, niece and betrothed of Don Ruy Gomez de Silva, from whom she hopes Ernani will rescue her. The king, Don Carlo, declares his love for Elvira, and he and Ernani quarrel in Elvira's chamber, to be discovered there by Silva, who demands vengeance, until he discovers the identity of Don Carlo. The king pretends that Ernani is one of his followers, although the latter is anxious to take revenge for the death of his father at the hands of Don Carlo. In a story of some complication in which Spanish honour has a great part to play, Ernani and Elvira are eventually united, but Ernani is then forced to kill himself, fulfilling an earlier pledge he had made to Silva, who survives to enjoy his final triumph. The signal that tells Ernani he must die, as Silva had earlier specified, is a horn-call, and this is heard at the start of the brief slow Prelude to the opera, used here to frame an extended melody. The title Il finto Stanislao (The
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