Opera review: Verdi should be as controversial as Wagner

I’m not the first person to remark that Verdi is getting oddly little attention in this his bicentenary year, especially when compared with his contemporary Wagner who, despite the usually much greater demands his works make in almost all respects, is not only receiving plenty of performances, but is also the subject of even more books than usual, not all of them about his alleged faults of character. Yet Verdi shouldn’t be less controversial a figure than Wagner; it’s just that Wagner stimulates people to react in such intense ways, while they placidly accept Verdi as an energising tunesmith and a decent patriot, ardent for the unification of Italy in contrast to Wagner’s shameful nationalism.

The ardent patriot is apparent in Simon Boccanegra, though not so blatantly as in some of his other operas. But then one of the striking things about Boccanegra is that almost nothing is blatant, except for curses, which are always accompanied by a fortissimo dissonance and a drum roll.