A KING OF MUSIC.

New Zealand Mail, 21 February 1901, Page 17

A KING OF MUSIC.

Ripe in the love' and esteem of all civilised peoples, because of his divine gift, Giuesppe Verdi, son of an. inn keeper of.Rancoia, arid icing in the cosmopolitan Empire of' Music, is dead. Had it not been for that greater event which has oast- a shadow over the entire British Empire, the papers doubtless would have paid, rich tribute to this, eminent

master’s memory. Even so it is certain that man ya literary garland will be woven in the great journals of Europe, and many a tribute be paid him in those great centres where the arts triumph and reign supreme. Born in 1814. Verdi the incomparable studied in that cradle of masters, Milan, and when he was m his twenty-fifth year issued his first .m----pcrtant work, the music incidental to a drama, f ‘Oherto di San Bonifasio.” Then commenced that magnificent list of operatic successes which embrace “TLombardi” (1843), “Ernani," “Rigoletto," “II Trovatore ” “La, Traviata" (1853) Un Ballo in Maschera" 1859), “Aida" (1871), and “Montezuma" (1878). In 1874 he produced the “Requiem" for Manzoni, and in 1886 “Otello, one of his greatest compositions. In 1893, when many judges would have opined that he had passed the possible age, ‘he gave to the world “Falstaff," a new opera, which represented the full ripeness of . his genius. Glue.spue Verdi, wlio Celebrated his jubilee as a composer in 1889, and his diamond jubilee in 1899, lias died one of the great men of the time, and as, too, the last- of the masters of the Nineteenth century^*