Page 225 - ESSENTIAL LISTENING TO MUSIC

brushes aside as she emphatically repeats her pledge to remain a free woman. But, of course, our heroine does not remain free—she falls hopelessly in love with Alfredo, as Acts II and III reveal. Listen now to the ending of Act I of Verdi’s La traviata.
Listening Cue
Giuseppe Verdi, La traviata (1853), Act I, Scene 6 Characters: Violetta and Alfredo (outside her window)
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Situation: Violetta, having at first thought Alfredo might be “Mr. Right,” rejects this notion, vowing emphatically to remain free. This she accomplishes, but only briefly.
what to listen for: An accompanied recitative climaxing with “Enjoy” (0:55) which then yields to an aria (1:17), which is repeated (3:03) in an even more brilliant and showy style (more bel canto) than in the first presentation
reAD . . . a detailed Listening Guide of this selection online. LiSTeN TO . . . this selection streaming online.
WATCH . . . an Active Listening Guide of this selection online. WATCH . . . a video of this selection online.
DO . . . Listening Exercise 13.1, Verdi, La traviata, online.
Germany
Historical periods often seem to look back to other historical periods for in- spiration. The Renaissance and the Classical eras, for example, embraced ele- ments of Greek and Roman antiquity. The Romantic imagination, however, chose to model itself on the Middle Ages. A nostalgic fondness for a dimly understood “dark ages” developed early in the nineteenth century, especially north of the Alps. In these years, philologists (scholars of language) began to rediscover and publish “lost” medieval sagas and epic poems: the Anglo-Sax- on Beowulf (1815), the German Song of the Nibelungs (1820), and the Finnish Kalevala (1835) among them. These were not medieval governmental or his- torical records, but rather flights of poetic fancy in which a bard told of dark castles, fair maidens, heroic princes, and fire-breathing dragons. They were also markers of nineteenth-century nationalism, in that each was written in an early form of an indigenous national language.
Inspired by these stories, Romantic artists such as John Martin (1789–1854) en- visioned neo-medieval landscapes in paint (Figure 13.6); novelists such as Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892) fantasized in prose; and composers, most notably Richard Wagner, constructed operas with mythical backdrops. The popularity of “fantasy
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