Verdi is the most nervous, theatric, sensuous composer of the present
century. Measured by the highest standard, his style must be criticised
as often spasmodic, tawdry, and meretricious. He instinctively adopts
a bold and eccentric treatment of musical themes; and, though there are
always to be found stirring movements in his scores as well as in his
opera stories, he constantly offends refined taste by sensation and
violence.

With a redundancy of melody, too often of the cheap and shallow kind, he
rarely fails to please the masses of opera-goers, for his works enjoy
a popularity not shared at present by any other composer. In Verdi a
sudden blaze of song, brief spirited airs, duets, trios, etc., take
the place of the elaborate and beautiful music, chiseled into order and
symmetry, which characterizes most of the great composers of the past.
Energy of immediate impression is thus gained at the expense of that
deep, lingering power, full of the subtile side-lights and shadows of
suggestion, which is the crowning benison of great music. He stuns the
ear and captivates the senses, but does not subdue the soul.

Yet, despite the grievous faults of these operas, they blaze with gems,
and we catch here and there true swallow-flights of genius, that the
noblest would not disown. With all his puerilities there is a mixture
of grandeur. There are passages in "Ernani," "Rigoletto," "Traviata,"
"Trovatore," and "Aida," so strong and dignified, that it provokes a
wonder that one with such capacity for greatness should often descend
into such bathos.

To better illustrate the false art which mars so much of Verdi's
dramatic method, a comparison between his "Rigoletto," so often claimed