From Babylon to Parnassus

With most of the Wagner celebrations now firmly behind us, the time has come for opera houses around the world to celebrate the 200th birthday of the nineteenth century’s other great music-dramatist. Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, in addition to resurrecting several recent stagings of perennial Verdi favourites, will be marking the occasion with two new productions, one of Falstaff, the other of Nabucco. The choice of works is significant: Falstaff is Verdi’s final opera and, famously, only his second foray into comedy; Nabucco, while not technically Verdi’s first opera, is the one that launched his career and is, in some ways, the point from which his personal style can be measured. Over the course of the next several months, we will have the chance to catch glimpses of Verdi at various stages in his career but, most importantly, we will get…