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Brilliant Ideas
Verdi's Shakespeare trilogy in Ravenna,
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI
In a recent essay, Philip Gosset of the University of Chicago advises us all that William Shakespeare's 450th birthday will be celebrated next year. Since Giuseppe Verdi's two hundredth birthday is being celebrated in 2013 with a real plethora of Verdi's operas based on the Bard's plays, the new round will most likely entail rarely produced musical works based on Shakespeare, such as Weber's Oberon, Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, Elgar's Falstaff and Castelnuovo Tedesco's Sonnets. Few composers are as intertwined with Shakespeare as Verdi. In 1970, one of the best known scholars of English language and literature (as well a translator of Shakespeare opera omnia), the late Gabriele Baldini (University of Rome), wrote that 'it is a pseudo-critical problem to speak about the "adaptation" of Verdi to Shakespeare or vice versa because Shakespeare clearly anticipated Verdi in every detail...
Copyright © 24 November 2013
Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy
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