Читать книгу The Collins Guide To Opera And Operetta - Michael White - Страница 34
Оглавление(1842–1918)
Mefistofele (1867)
Nerone (1918)
Boito was the very model of a literate, late 19th-century Italian polymath, and his lasting significance to opera is as much a matter of his words as of his music. As a young man he provided Verdi with the text for a ‘Hymn of the Nations’, and some twenty years later (after a falling-out and reconciliation between them) wrote the libretti for three of Verdi’s greatest operas: the revised Simon Boccanegra, Otello and Falstąff. It proved a collaboration almost without equal in opera history; and you could argue that Boito’s treatment of the Othello story is dramatically more effective than the original Shakespeare. As a composer he was never on such sure ground. Mefistofele occupied him for years, from when he was a student, and its premiere was a fiasco, undermined by its own ambitions. Nerone was similarly a work-in-progress for years, and left incomplete at his death.
