The Cambridge Companion to Verdi

Music lovers and especially critics have long disagreed about the reputations of those two great opera composers of the nineteenth century, Wagner and his contemporary, Verdi, and no doubt they always will. This companion, however, while acknowledging parallels and contrasts, concentrates on Verdi's own achievements. After a brief biography, there are essays on the Italian theatre in the 1840s and 1850s, and on the often‐turbulent political climate of that time. (There is, incidentally, no evidence that the chorus Va pensiero from Nabucco was instantly adopted as a patriotic hymn by the Risorgimento movement.)

The section on the style of Verdi's...