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Commentary: Was Verdi a "Revolutionary"?
- Journal of Interdisciplinary History
- The MIT Press
- Volume 36, Number 4, Spring 2006
- pp. 615-620
- Article
- Additional Information
The recent work of historians and musicologists on Restoration Italy illustrates the complexity of the relationship between opera and society, allowing us to leave behind simplistic claims about either the "revolutionary" role of Italian opera or its political irrelevance. From a perspective closer to that of mentality history, the question to what extent a particular composer was "revolutionary" may take new directions, and even become irrelevant altogether.