Some context: Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dZu'zeppe 'verdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 - 27 January 1901) was an Italian opera composer. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioachino Rossini, whose works significantly influenced him. By his 30s, he had become one of the pre-eminent opera composers in history.
The writer Friedrich Schiller (four of whose plays were adapted as operas by Verdi) distinguished two types of artist in his 1795 essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin ranked Verdi in the 'naive' category--"They are not...self-conscious. They do not...stand aside to contemplate their creations and express their own feelings....They are able...if they have genius, to embody their vision fully." (The 'sentimentals' seek to recreate nature and natural feelings on their own terms--Berlin instances Wagner--"offering not peace, but a sword.") Verdi's operas are not written according to an aesthetic theory, or with a purpose to change the tastes of their audiences. In conversation with a German visitor in 1887 he is recorded as saying that, whilst "there was much to be admired in [Wagner's operas] Tannhauser and Lohengrin...in his recent operas [Wagner] seemed to be overstepping the bounds of what can be expressed in music. For him "philosophical" music was incomprehensible." Although Verdi's works belong, as Rosselli admits "to the most artificial of genres...[they] ring emotionally true: truth and directness make them exciting, often hugely so." That is not to say his operas did not come as great innovations. What sounds to a modern listener as derivative of the bel canto, his first major success, Nabucco, came as a something entirely new. Never before had opera been so harmonically complex and direct. No longer was there the empty vocal display of the bel canto period composers. Granted, there is a significant amount of vocal fireworks, but they exist for the purpose of drama, not to show off singers. Aside from this, his use of the chorus was entirely new. Before Nabucco, an opera's chorus was limited to be only a background voice, another instrument. In Nabucco, this is abolished; he uses the chorus as character, to show the suffering and consensus of the people. The famous "Va, pensiero" is an example of this. The first of his "big three" operas, Rigoletto, followed by La Traviata, and ending with Il Trovatore, also was revolutionary. In a letter to Rigoletto's librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, he says, "I conceived Rigoletto almost without arias, without finales but only an unending string of duets." And that it is. Rigoletto is one of, if not the earliest operas to abandon the traditional distinction between the sung aria, and the more speech-like recitative. After these three operas, his works took an increasing amount of time to finish, were significantly longer, and more masterfully orchestrated.
Was his work well received?
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Some context: Louis "Louison" Bobet (pronounced [lwi.zo bo.be]; 12 March 1925 - 13 March 1983) was a French professional road racing cyclist. He was the first great French rider of the post-war period and the first rider to win the Tour de France in three successive years, from 1953 to 1955. His career included the national road championship (1950 and 1951), Milan-San Remo (1951), Giro di Lombardia (1951), Criterium International (1951 & 52), Paris-Nice (1952), Grand Prix des Nations (1952), world road championship (1954), Tour of Flanders (1955), Criterium du Dauphine Libere (1955), Tour de Luxembourg (1955), Paris-Roubaix (1956) and Bordeaux-Paris (1959).
The most striking feature of Bobet the man rather than rider was his ambition to behave like a Hollywood matinee idol, a sort of David Niven character in a dinner suit tuxedo. It brought him much ribbing from other French riders. Geminiani says Bobet's diffident and elegant manner made him less popular even in his own Brittany than the more rustic, forthright manners of other Breton people such as Jean Robic. The British professional Brian Robinson called Bobet "a private man and a little moody" and said he would sulk if things went wrong. The French journalist Rene de Latour said of Bobet in Sporting Cyclist that "he didn't look good on a bike" and that he had "the legs of a football [soccer] player". Bobet spoke out against French involvement in a war against communists in Indo-China. He said he wasn't a Marxist but a pacifist. Geminiani said Bobet lacked humility. "He really thought that, after him, there'd be no more cycling in France", he said. Bobet occasionally talked of himself in the third person. Bobet was driven by personal hygiene and refused to accept his first yellow jersey because it had not been made with the pure wool he believed the only healthy material for a sweating and dusty rider. Synthetic thread or blends were added in 1947 following the arrival of Sofil as a sponsor. Sofil made artificial yarn. The race organiser, Jacques Goddet wrote: It produced a real drama. Our contract with Sofil was crumbling away. If the news had got out, the commercial effect would have been disastrous for the manufacturer. I remember debating it with him a good part of the night. Louison was always exquisitely courteous but his principles were as hard as the granite blocks of his native Brittany coast. Goddet had to get Sofil to produce another jersey overnight, its logo still visible but artificial fabric absent. Bobet's concern with hygiene and clothing was accentuated by frequent problems with saddle sores.
What was the most interesting thing about the article?
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Louison was always exquisitely courteous but his principles were as hard as the granite blocks of his native Brittany coast.