512 



OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (VERDI VICTORIA.) 



Italian public, and told the singers that they did 

 not understand his music. With a better schooled 

 company it aroused in 1853 the same furor in 

 Rome as the two other masterpieces, and later in 

 Venice too. These three works, in which Verdi's 

 merits and shortcomings, his strength and his 

 weakness, are equally apparent, typified the mu- 

 sic that the world liked when Wagner could im- 

 press only his disciples with the music of the 

 future. The Sicilian Vespers (1855); Simon Boc- 

 canegra (1857); and Aroldo (1857) had only a 

 transient success. Un Ballo in Maschera, while 

 not lacking in popular qualities and captivating 

 morsels of song, revealed a new Verdi, who sought 

 to untold the dramatic theme, to reflect the 

 phases of emotion, to fit the vocal score to the 

 moments of the drama. He could write no such 

 operas in three weeks. His next production, La 

 Forza del Destine, was finished in 1862, and then 

 Don Carlos in 1867. These transition works had 

 no great success. His later style was fully 

 formed, his new method of work quite mastered, 

 when the Khedive -Ismail Pasha desired of him 

 a piece to add glory to the magnificent opera- 

 house that he had built in Cairo. The master 

 put his soul into this work, Aida, which was 

 produced at Christmas in 1871, and went the 

 round of the earth, astonishing and puzzling the 

 adherents of the old and the new schools, the 

 admirers of the Italian and the German opera, 

 in an equal degree. Wagner had triumphed in 

 Germany and was winning ground in France 

 and Italy. In London and St. Petersburg the 

 artists of the musical stage alternated the strong 

 dramatic impersonations of Wagnerian charac- 

 ters with the old roles and their florid technique. 

 People wondered whether the sexagenarian Verdi 

 had become a Wagnerite or whether he simply 

 made sport of the music of the future, producing 

 by a tour de force a perfect Wagnerian opera in 

 order to demonstrate to the world the hollow 

 pretense of the new art. Aida is a finished mu- 

 sical drama as conscientiously elaborated as the 

 works of Wagner in method and purpose, yet the 

 music is thoroughly Italian, the style that of 

 Verdi. While adapting the music to the sense 

 and action of the piece with studious pains, and 

 working out the dramatic thought of the composi- 

 tion with careful regard for the unities, the mas- 

 ter remained true to himself and to his honest 

 principle of avoiding recondite effects and techni- 

 cal mysteries and making the music agreeable 

 and intelligible to the untutored masses. The 

 fire, the emotional force, the irresistible charm of 

 his earlier rough, disjointed pieces with which 

 he had won wealth and the admiration of the 

 world, which, still were the prime popular favor- 

 ites, were refined away. In pursuing the higher 

 art, Verdi, whose uncultured genius had con- 

 quered and still held captive the popular taste, 

 to the chagrin of the trained musicians even of 

 the Italian school, weakened himself and sacri- 

 ficed force to refinement. Nevertheless he de- 

 voted a laborious old age to cultivating the uni- 

 ties of the studied musical drama for art's sake 

 and the honor of his country, conscious that he 

 could gain no new laurels by work less impressive 

 and characteristic than the vigorous and natural 

 creations by which his reputation was already 

 secured for generations. After fifteen years of 

 silent labor he gave to the world Ottello in 1889, 

 and in 1893 Falstaff. In these he broke away 

 from all the old formulas, abstained from the 

 glittering gems with which he could have gar- 

 nished the works to make them attractive, intro- 

 duced no airs at all, molding the music to the 

 poetry, making it follow the thought, the words 



and action of the piece, and in harmony, instru- 

 mentation, and composition proving himself the 

 equal of the masters of the higher music without 

 borrowing from them a single idea, remaining 

 Italian in all respects, and Verdi, still original 

 and independent throughout. Musicians appre- 

 ciate these elaborate and polished works, into 

 each of which Verdi put toil, thought, and crea- 

 tive power sufficient to produce Rigoletto, Trova- 

 tore, and Traviata. The public does not like 

 Verdi's music so refined, restrained, and elusive. 

 Verdi produced 28 operas during his life. As one 

 of the intellectual heroes of the movement for 

 the political liberation of Italy his compatriots 

 elected him on Jan. 3, 1861, to the first Italian 

 Parliament as representative of Borgo San Don- 

 nino, the district in which his home was situated. 

 He took his seat on the Right, made no speeches, 

 and retired when the legislative period came to an 

 end. The King made him a Senator in 1874, but 

 after taking the oath he never again set foot in 

 the Palazzo Madama. Although his works 

 brought him a great fortune, he lived very sim- 

 ply in the old-fashioned way of the Italian mid- 

 dle class, often going himself to the market for 

 the household provisions. By a quiet and me- 

 thodical way of living he preserved his physical 

 and intellectual vigor to a ripe old age. A great 

 part of his wealth he devoted to founding in 

 Milan an asylum for needy musicians. 



Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland 

 and Empress of India, born in Kensington Palace, 

 London, May 24, 1819; died, in Osborne House, 

 Isle of Wight, Jan. 22, 1901. For a sketch of her 

 life and the events of her reign, see Annual Cy- 

 clopaedia for 1900, page 737. For a portrait, see 

 Annual Cyclopaedia for 1897, page 365. 



Victoria, Empress Friedrich of Germany, 

 Princess Royal of England, born in Buckingham 

 Palace, London, Nov. 21, 1840; died in Homburg, 

 Aug. 5, 1901. She was the eldest child of Queen 

 Victoria and Prince Albert of Coburg, and grew 

 up to be a princess of unusual intelligence and 

 accomplishments. Before she was fifteen years 

 old she was betrothed to Prince Friedrich Wil- 

 helm of Prussia, and when seventeen she was 

 married. The English people did not like the 

 idea of a royal alliance with a house of such 

 absolutist tendencies as the Prussian and so inti- 

 mate with the despotic Russian Emperor. As 

 time went on, a strong antipathy was felt among 

 the governing class in Prussia toward the Eng- 

 lish princess because the Crown Prince seemed 

 to have become imbued, through her influence, 

 with notions of British constitutionalism and par- 

 liamentary government that were held in Ger- 

 many only by an objectionable class of doctri- 

 naire theorists and in a Prussian Crown Prince 

 and future German Emperor were undignified 

 and mischievous. As soon as the princess - was 

 settled in her new home she took up again her 

 painting and sculpture and the habit of study 

 in which her father had trained her, and she ap- 

 plied her mind especially to abstruse political theo- 

 ries and questions of political economy? In .Jan- 

 uary, 1859, she gave birth to the present German 

 Emperor. The antagonism in the court circle to 

 her political views made itself felt after her 

 husband became Crown Prince in 1861 ; and when 

 her father-in-law, the King, abandoned the Liber- 

 alism he had professed when Prince of Prussia 

 and placed himself under the guidance of Bis- 

 marck, her position became painful. The King 

 and his son became estranged over politics, and 

 the Crown Prince blamed Bismarck for misguid- 

 ing his father, while Bismarck blamed the Crown 

 Princess for instilling foolish heresies in her hus- 



