Temps Passés: Verdi died on this date in 1901
The master of Italian opera was 87. His Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves was already the unofficial national anthem of a united Italy.
On the treadmill this morning I was listening to one of the great performances of Carmen (Domingo, Troyanos) when another link flashed by and attracted my attention—today is the anniversary of Verdi’s death, one of the thunderclap moments in European classical music.
Giuseppe Verdi died January 27, 2001, from a stroke suffered in his suite at the Grand Hotel in Milan. At 87, he had outlived the composers who made up the pantheon of the day—Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky—and was a teen-ager when Beethoven died. We have not seen their like since.
It’s hard to pick out a favorite from among all the tunes Verdi composed during his long career, but Va, Pensiero, or Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves is usually near the top of any list. It’s frequently done with very large choruses, and is so firmly associated with Verdi that when his and his wife’s coffins were transferred to the new musicians’ cemetery in Milan a crowd of 300,000 followed and Toscanini conducted a chorus of 800, all singing Va, Pensiero. When the cortège reached the burial place the music was the Miserere from Il Trovatore (The Troubadour, also by Verdi.)
Verdi was a true rock star. As he lay dying, Milan laid straw on the street outside his room, so the sound of horses’ hooves would not disturb him. Trams silenced their bells. Businesses closed for three days.
He lived during the tempestuous period when Italy was morphing from a chaotic galaxy of city-states into a unified nation. Va, Pensiero became the unofficial national anthem of the new country after Victor Emanuel became King in 1861.
The music was composed for Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), the biblical story that follows the enslaved Jews conquered by Babylon. It is a story of capture, enslavement, and liberation, set in the sixth century BC. A great deal is rooted in history.
The links below give you the choice of watching the full opera or just Va, Pensiero. The Callas recording of Miserere suffers a bit from recording technology of the fifties but demonstrates her power near the end of her career, in the year before she began her decade-long affair with Onassis.
Links:
Va, Pensiero
Full Met recording, Domingo, opening with Va Pensiero and the slaves on the wall. [
An outstanding overview of the times and his death: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/death-guiseppe-verdi
List of Verdi’s published music: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_compositions\_by\_Giuseppe\_Verdi
Miserere (from Il Trovatore), a dramatic performance by Callas: [
Giuseppe Verdi, by Giovanni Boldini (public domain)