Verdi

By Barbara Meier

Guiseppe Verdi, the popular genius behind Rigoletto, La Traviata and Aida, continues to enthral audiences with his daring music and stories of love and death. His life was as dramatic and as passionate as his music. Verdi was always fighting: for Italy’s liberty and nationhood and for his own artistic freedom against censors, opera impressarios and the authorities.

'Verdi's extraordinary life makes for compelling reading. Barbara Meier reflects the energy of this man who, more than a century after his death, still dominates the opera repertoire, his familiar tunes whistled and hummed on the street.'

Petroc Trelawny, Presenter, Radio 3

Barbara Meier has written widely on classical composers, including Mahler, Strauss and Schoenberg. Her biography of Robert Schumann was published in the Life&Times Series (Haus Publishing) in 2004.

Professor Roger Parker of St John’s College, Cambridge, is the author of the Oxford History of Opera (1996) and the Verdi entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music. He contributed the introduction to this book.