Bernard Levin once wrote an article in the Times called ‘But seriously, how can anyone compare Verdi with Wagner?’ (or something very like that). I can’t remember the article in detail, but its drift was ‘No one can seriously compare them’, something that I had and have always felt. Yet there is the temptation: they were born within a few months of one another in 1813, they were indisputably the two greatest opera composers of the 19th century, and each of them is thought to embody some of the most striking characteristics of their country. It fascinates people, too, how different they were, in their art and in life: allegedly Wagner was grand, grandiose, indeed megalomaniacal, ruthless, manipulative, vindictive, predatory, writing works of apocalyptic grandeur; Verdi modest, uninterested in fame, characteristically leaving his fortune to the establishment of a retirement home in Milan for musicians, writing operas for a popular audience, without pretension.
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