Great Italian and French Composers

duced a new opera with barbaric splendor of appointments, at Grand Cairo. The spacious theatre blazed with fantastic dresses and showy uniforms, and the curtain rose on a drama which gave

te "Aida" for him, in his desire to emulate western sovereigns as a p

istic work, far surpassing that of the circumstances which gave it origin, or

young man shared the suffrages of admiring audiences with Donizetti and Bellini. Even when he diverged widely from his parent stem

d preferences were finally crystallized, produced an opera in which he clasped hands with the German enthusiast, who prea

parture, which, if not embodying all the philosophy of the "new school," is stamped with its salient traits, viz.: The subordination of all the individual effects to the perfection and symmetry of the whole; a lavish demand on all the sister arts to contrib

lled a very brilliant place in modern musical art, and hi

eir bread, after the manner of Italian peasants, at a small settlement called

c showed itself at a very early age. The elder Verdi, though very poor, gratified the child's love of music when he was about eight by buying a small spinet, and placing him under the inst

at time a constant fascination drew him to the house; for day after day he lingered and seemed unwilling to go away lest he should perchance lose some of the enchanting sounds which so enraptured him. The

blivious to all that passed around him in the practical work-a-day world. So one day he acc

boy, "and I like to come here and list

may enjoy it more at your ease, and hereafter you

of nature which have so powerful an influence in molding great susceptibilities. At his seventeenth year he had acquired as much musical knowledge as could be acquired at a place like Busseto, and he became anxious to go to Milan to continue his studies. The poverty of his family precluding any assistance from this quarter, he was obliged to find help from an eleemosyn

l on his hopes like a thunder-bolt. The pedantic and narrow-minded examiners not only scoffed at the state of his musical knowledge, but told him he was incapable of becoming a musician. To weaker souls this would have been a terrible discouragement, but to his ardor and self-confidence it was only a

benefactor to whom he owed so much. He continued to apply himself with great diligence to the study of his art, and completed an opera early in 1839. He succeeded in arranging for the production of this w

overy was followed by the successive sickening of his two children, who died, a terrible blow to the father's fond heart. Fate had the crowning stroke though still to give, for the young mother, agonized by this loss, was seized with a fatal inflammation of the brain. Thus within a brief period Verdi was bereft of all the sweet consolations of home, and his life became a burden to him. Under these conditions he was to write a comic opera, full of sparkle, gaye

rst books that could be found, rarely going out, unless occasionally in the evening, never giving his attention to study of any kind, and never touching the piano. Such was his life from October, 1840, to January, 1841. One evening, early in the new year, while

Verdi

the libretto of 'Il Proscritto,' which you procured for me, and for which

i was on the point of leaving, when Merelli slipped into his pocket the book of "Nabucco," asking him to look it over. For want of something to do, he took up the drama the next morning and read it through, reali

d Merelli,

ied; "full of dramatic pow

you, then, and writ

sted that he should undertake the work. The composer returned home with the libretto, but threw it on one side wi

l creation rushed over him with irresistible force; he seated himself at the piano, so long silent, and began composing the music. The ice was broken. Verdi soon entered into the spirit of the work, and in three mo