The works of no great composer between the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries have undergone a more spectacular reassessment than those of Giuseppe Verdi. His death brought a crowd of several hundred thousand people to mourn not only the passing of a great artist but also a beloved national hero. It is not surprising that a figure such as Verdi should have inspired an enormous amount of books, articles, essays, and critical evaluation. Today, Verdi scholars build their work on a vast foundation of earlier research. For those who have not spent years with Verdi literature or who may just...