Over the last six months, I’ve been entrenched in Verdi’s Nabucco, examining the work from every possible angle: It’s an opera about liberation. It’s an opera about father-daughter relationships. It’s an opera about my own family (including members who reportedly performed in its premiere). It’s a bridge from Verdi’s early-career, Risorgimento-driven optimism to the latter-day ideological letdown of that same hope embedded in Aida. It’s one great chorus embedded in a bunch of cabalettas. It’s one extended mad scene, nevermind the chorus. It’s a conversion narrative. It’s a love story. It’s a love letter to Orientalism. It’s a break-up letter with the Habsburg Empire. It’s a metaphor for Italian unification. It’s a metaphor for the Holocaust. It’s a metaphor for Berlusconi’s Italy. It’s a metaphor for Ukrainian sovereignty. It’s a metaphor for Zionism (positive). It’s a metaphor for Zionism (negative).
I can credit my renewed fasci…
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