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Giuseppe Verdi was to opera in the Italian tradition what Beethoven was to the symphony. When he arrived on the scene some had suggested that effective opera after Rossini was not possible. Verdi, however, took the form to new heights of drama and musical expression. Partisans see him as at least the equal of Wagner, even though his style and musical persona were of an entirely different cast. In the end, both Verdi's popular vein -- as heard in the operas Rigoletto, Il trovatore, and La traviata -- and his deeper side -- found in Aida, Otello, and Falstaff -- demonstrate his mastery and far-reaching development of Italian opera.

Verdi showed talent by the age of seven and even played organ at a local church. Around this time he was given an old piano, which he quickly learned to play with proficiency. He moved to Busseto in 1823 and began study the following year with Ferdinando Provesi. By age 15 he had become an assistant church organist and had already started composing. Beginning in 1832, he studied privately with Vincenzo Lavigna in Milan, after the Conservatory there turned him away.

He returned to Busseto and married Margherita Barezzi in 1836. Having achieved publication of some songs, he moved to Milan in 1839 and composed his first opera, Oberto. It was a success, though his next effort, Un giorno di regno, was an abject failure. Worse, Verdi's wife died during its composition. (Their two children had died in the previous two years.) Stunned and depressed, the composer struggled on to rebound with Nabucco (1842) and I lombardi (1843). Macbeth, Luisa Miller, and other operas came in the 1840s, most with great success.

Around 1847, Verdi developed a relationship with soprano Giuseppina Strepponi and the two lived together for many years on Verdi's farm, Sant'Agata, before finally marrying in 1859. In the period 1851-1853, the composer wrote three of his most popular operas. Rigoletto (1851) and Il trovatore (1853) were instant successes, but La traviata (1853) was a disappointment at its premiere, though a year later, with minor revisions, it was warmly received. After an extended excursion to Paris in 1853, Verdi returned to Busseto and turned out Simon Boccanegra (1857) and Un ballo in maschera (1859), both embroiling him in politics, an activity in which he was already immersed, since he served in the local parliament and later in national parliament as senator. In St. Petersburg, Verdi's La forza del destino premiered in 1862 and Don Carlos in Paris in 1867.

Having relocated to Genoa, Verdi composed Aida in the years 1870-1871. Its Cairo premiere in 1871 was a success, but the composer then gave up opera, at least for a time. His String Quartet (1873) and Requiem (1874) showed his creative juices were still very much alive. His next opera, Otello, came finally in 1886, Verdi working slowly and getting sidetracked revising earlier operas. One more opera came from his pen, Falstaff, in 1893, which scored a stunning success. Critical opinion has it that his last three operas are his finest, that the elderly composer became bolder and more imaginative in his later years.

In these later years, Verdi also worked to found a hospital and, in Milan, a home for retired musicians. In 1897, Giuseppina Verdi died and the composer thereafter lived at the Grand Hotel in Milan, finding companionship with retired soprano Teresa Stolz. A year later, his Quatro pezzi sacri premiered in Paris. This would be the composer's last work. On January 21, 1901, Verdi suffered a stroke and died six days later. ~ Robert Cummings

The Italian mezzo-soprano Daniela Barcellona has become a prominent singer in the bel canto repertory, specializing in the travesti or cross-dressing roles in Rossini's operas. As her career has developed, she has added music as far forward as the verismo period to her repertory.

Barcellona was born in Trieste, Italy, on March 28, 1969. She studied piano at the conservatory there, but switched to opera under the teaching of conductor Alessandro Vitiello, whom she married in 1998. Unusually, he has been her only voice teacher, and he has even composed her vocal ornaments, which singers use to distinguish themselves in the early bel canto repertory. Barcellona made her debut in 1993 in La tragédie de Carmen, director Peter Brook's adaptation of Bizet's opera, but most of her other early roles were in Italian opera, including an appearance as Cinderella in Rossini's La cenerentola in Genoa in 1997. Her first major travesti role was as Tancredi in Rossini's opera of the same name at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pessaro in 1998. She has gone on to play similar roles at La Scala in Milan, the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Salzburg Festival, the Royal Opera House in London, and other top venues. By the early 2000s, Barcellona was an international star. She sang Verdi's Requiem with the Berlin Philharmonic under Claudio Abbado in 2001, and that year performed at a Metropolitan Opera season-opening gala in New York in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Another season opener in 2002, at La Scala, was the first of a number of appearances Barcellona has made under conductor Riccardo Muti; under Muti she sang in a performance of Verdi's Requiem celebrating the composer's 200th birthday with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2013. Barcellona has performed a series of roles at the Rossini Opera Festival, including Malcom (2001), Falliero (2005), Ottone (2006), Calbo (2008), and Sigismondo (2010). Her repertory since the mid-2000s has broadened, including other bel canto composers, Baroque opera (she has worked with top historical-performance conductors Fabio Biondi and Ottavio Dantone), and, increasingly often, the operas of Verdi. She has ventured back into French opera, singing Berlioz's Les Troyens in 2011 and 2012, and into verismo with the role of Santuzza in Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana, but has continued to sing the Rossini roles that made her famous. Barcellona has been recorded many times, and in 2018 she was heard as Arsace in perhaps the most difficult of Rossini's travesti roles, in his final Italian opera, Semiramide, in a groundbreaking, historically oriented performance on the Opera Rara label. ~ James Manheim

The Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov has been called "one of the most exciting Russian singers to emerge on the international scene..." by Opera News.

Abdrazakov is Russian by nationality, but not by ethnicity: he is three-quarters Bashkirian (an ethnic group in southern Russia with its own language and political subdivision) and one-quarter Tatar. He was born in Ufa, then the capital of the Republic of Bashkortostan (or Bashkiria) in the Soviet Union, on September 26, 1976. His father was a theater director, his mother an artist, and Abdrazakov followed their choices of career, enrolling at the Ufa State Institute of the Arts. His stage debut came at age four in one of his father's productions. He won several major operatic prizes in Russia in the late '90s, including the international Rimsky-Korsakov Competition and the Obraztsova Competition, and a major breakthrough came in 1998 when he appeared as Figaro in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro at St. Petersburg's famed Mariinsky Theatre.

He went on to play the role of Figaro more than 100 times, telling Vanity Fair that "There are many aspects of the role," he says. "Comedy, drama, some lyric tones." Abdrazakov made his first impact in the West singing Italian-language roles, turning to Russian parts only later. A win at Parma's Maria Callas International Television Competition in 2000 brought him to the attention of Italian talent spotters, and he gave a recital at the La Scala opera house in 2001. Abdrazakov made his American debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 2004 in Mozart's Don Giovanni, an opera in which both the title role and that of Leporello are part of his repertoire. He has also taken major bass roles in operas by Verdi (Attila, Macbeth, Luisa Miller, and Oberto), Rossini (Il Turco in Italia, Semiramide, Moïse et Pharaon), Gounod (Mephistophélès in Faust), Donizetti (Anna Bolena), and Bellini (Norma), among others. Among his major appearances in Russian opera are those in Borodin's Prince Igor at the Metropolitan Opera, where he has been a regular in the 2000s and 2010s.

Abdrazakov's first CD appearance as a soloist came in 2006 on a recording of Shostakovich's Words of Michelangelo on the Chandos label. His solo recital, Power Players, appeared on Delos in 2014, and he recorded the Shostakovich work once again in 2016 with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, along with Schoenberg's Kol Nidre. He also appeared on a Grammy-winning recording of Verdi's Requiem with the CSO. In 2017, Deutsche Grammophon issued Duets, a collection of tenor-bass (or baritone) scenes featuring Abdrazakov and tenor Rolando Villazón. ~ James Manheim

The Verbier Festival Orchestra is the resident ensemble at Switzerland's Verbier Festival, one of classical music's top summer events. The group consists of 95 musicians from ages 18 to 28.

The Verbier Festival was founded in 1994 in the mountainous resort town of Verbier, Switzerland, by music promoter Martin Engström. The Verbier Festival Orchestra was founded in 2000 as a training ensemble and is regarded as one of the top such groups in the world, with highly competitive admission standards. Each summer, the orchestra players are coached by top orchestral musicians from around the world, including members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York. The Verbier Festival Orchestra is one of three groups associated with the festival; others include the Verbier Festival Chamber Orchestra, made up of alumni of the Verbier Festival Orchestra, and the Verbier Festival Junior Orchestra, originally called the Verbier Festival Music Camp Orchestra. In 2006, the group made its recording debut on the album UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra Highlights, and it has continued to appear on similar albums throughout its existence.

The website of the Verbier Festival Orchestra lists conductor Valery Gergiev as the orchestra's music director, and he spent considerable time in Verbier each summer until Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Now some documents refer to conductor Gábor Takács-Nagy as the music director, and he has conducted several concerts and given chamber music master classes. The Verbier Festival Orchestra has backed numerous top international soloists in concert, including pianists Lang Lang, Daniil Trifonov, and Yuja Wang, bass-baritone Thomas Quasthoff, and sitar player Anoushka Shankar. The Verbier Festival Orchestra has been featured on several albums other than compilations, including Michael Tilson Thomas in Verbier and a recording of Stravinsky's Les Noces and Le sacre du printemps in 2023; both appeared on the major Deutsche Grammophon label. ~ James Manheim

Gianandrea Noseda has developed a well-deserved reputation as a conductor who has mastered a wide range of both symphonic and stage music. He has conducted operas at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, as well as at other major operatic venues across the globe, and he is one of the most prolific conductors of the 21st century.

Noseda was born in Milan on April 23, 1964. He first studied piano, then later focused on composition and conducting. His teachers included Valery Gergiev, Myung-Whun Chung, and Donato Renzetti. In 1994, Noseda won two prestigious conducting competitions, the first in Douai, France, and the latter in Cadaques, Spain. Following his win in Cadaques, he was named the principal conductor of the Cadaqués Orchestra. His official debut followed shortly when he led the Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi. With this ensemble, he made his first recording (1995), a disc of Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez, and other guitar works with soloist Emanuele Segre for the Claves label.

In 1997, upon the initiative of Gergiev, Noseda was made principal guest conductor at the Mariinsky Theater, the first foreigner to be given this honor. In 2002, Noseda made his debut at the Met conducting Prokofiev's War and Peace and was appointed principal conductor of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra. One of his early recordings, featuring Dvořák's Symphony No. 8 in G major, Op. 88, came the same year with that group. He held this position until 2006 when his title was changed to chief conductor, a post he held until 2011. That year, he was named the principal guest conductor of the Israel Philharmonic.

In the late 2000s and early 2010s, Noseda emerged as one of the top operatic conductors on the British scene and beyond, with muscular, often hyper-dramatic interpretations that drew audiences. His work was amply captured on recordings, with a video of Gounod's Faust appearing in 2016, with the Orchestra e Coro Teatro Regio Torino, and one of Bizet's The Pearl Fishers at the Met in 2017. Noseda made a series of high-profile appearances conducting vocal recitals by four of the world's top singers: Ildebrando d'Arcangelo, Rolando Villazón, Anna Netrebko, and Diana Damrau. In 2016, Noseda was named the principal guest conductor of the London Symphony, and the following year, he was named the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C. In 2018, he was named the general music director of the Zurich Opera House, beginning with the 2021-2022 season.

Noseda has made numerous recordings for a variety of labels, including Deutsche Grammophon, Decca, Philips, and Chandos. His most popular recordings include the best-selling 2003 solo debut of soprano arias by Netrebko with the Vienna Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon. Most of his symphonic recordings have been made for the Chandos label and include a complete cycle of the Liszt symphonic poems (finished in 2007) and a cycle of Beethoven's nine symphonies with the BBC Symphony. In 2020, Noseda issued several albums, including Dvorák's New World Symphony and Copland's Billy the Kid with the National Symphony, Shostakovich's Symphonies Nos. 5 and 1 with the London Symphony, and Luigi Dallapiccola's Il Prigioniero with the Danish National Symphony. Recordings in his Shostakovich cycle with the London Symphony continued to appear through the COVID-19 pandemic; an album combining the Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 54, and Symphony No. 15 in A minor, Op. 141, appeared on the LSO Live label in 2023. By that time, his recording catalog comprised more than 80 items. ~ Robert Cummings & James Manheim