While the most popular musician of the nineteenth century, he is, of all Italy's famous exponents of dramatic-musical art, indisputably the greatest. The land of song has produced many notable musicians, many wondrous melodists; but not one of them, not even Rossini, has so modified and influenced the national art as has Verdi. The entire extent of his impress will only be fully known when the Italians come to write their country's musical history. Verdi will be found to be the master who made Italian opera a grand national art-form, something of a social requirement in this closing nineteenth century.
To win a reputation such as belongs to Verdi, even if some discover it to be ephemeral only, is, indeed, a great achievement. Other pre-eminent musicians have laboured in every branch of their art--sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental, oratorio and opera, symphony and quartet, song and dance--with all which some of them have hardly become known during their lifetimes outside the range of their own country. There seems to be a profound musical problem here, but the solution is at hand. The greatest of the great composers were each and all before their time. Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schumann came in an age that was all unprepared for them. Verdi, on the other hand, whose phenomenal success is unlike theirs, was born at the moment. The musical world was waiting with open arms for him; for it had been satiated with opera music of a meretricious order, though written by his own countrymen, from which any deliverance could not fail to be a relief. The rescuer proved eventually to be Verdi.
Certain critics seem assured that Verdi copied, imitated, and transferred Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini, and other composers. If this be true, then, in a sense, they stand indebted to him; for Verdi is the best-heard Italian composer to-day. Verdi, however, was something more than a musical _chef_, with the knack of serving up the _rechauffés_ of brother musicians.
The public, apt to be blamed for the majority of its judgments, made no mistake concerning _Nabucco_. Verdi's countrymen were "lifted along" by the magic music, and, from _Nabucco_ to _Falstaff_--an unparalleled instance of consistent artistic unfolding--this distinct power of the master's has acted similarly upon thousands who have flocked to hear the Verdi operas. Their passion, fire, and strong dramatic character have proved irresistible.