Ocean State Libraries

This miniseries, filmed in Leningrad, London, Paris, and Verdi's home region of Italy's Po Valley, required more than 100 actors, 18,000 extras, and over 4000 costumes. The program gives a complete overview of Verdi's life and is filled with music from the composer's works sung in the original Italian and taken from past rare recordings featuring such opera artists as Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Luchiano Pavarotti, and Birgit Nilsson.

Giuseppe Verdi was born in obscurity in a tiny Italian village in 1813. When he died in 1901, hundreds of thousands of people turned out to pay their respects to the man whom many people consider as the best opera composer of all time. His career spanned more than half a century and included such successes as Rigoletto, La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Otello, Falstaff, and Aida, the most often-performed work at New York s Metropolitan Opera. Yet when he...