Julian Budden, now deceased, served as the Chief Producer for Opera at BBC Radio as the President of the Centro Studi Giacomo Puccini, Lucca, Italy. In addition to his Master Musicians volume on Verdi, he is also the author of the Master Musicians biography of Puccini (OUP, 2002) as well as the three-volume The Operas of Verdi (OUP, 1978-1981, revised edition 1992).
Preface
Illustrations
Key to sigla
1: Early life at Busseto
2: Success and failure in Milan
3: The journeyman
4: Florence, London and Paris
5: Return to Busseto
6: Viva V.E.R.D.I.
7: The new order
8: The dark decade
9: Indian summer
10: The last years
11: Verdi as man and artist
12: The Music
13: The background
14: From Oberto to Ernani
15: The prison years
16: The high noon
17: Towards grand opera
18: The final masterpieces
19: Miscellaneous operatic compositions
20: Chamber compositions
21: Choral and religious works
Appendices
A: Calendar
B: List of works
C: Personalia
D: Select bibiliograph
E: Glossary of nineteenth-century operatic terms
Index
