Traviata is a great opera, but my all time favorite is Nabucco.
Va', pensiero, sull'ali dorate.
Va', ti posa sui clivi, sui coll.
Played by that little band when Michael shows up at Bagheria in Sicily in GFIII.
I get chills when I hear it. There's a DVD of the Met performing this....Levine conducting...audience goes totally nuts and they do an encore of it....
Yes, I always love it when that band strikes up the tune.
Supposedly, Nabucco was a veiled protest against the control the Austrian Empire had over Italy at the time, and the Jews in Nabucco were suffering the same opression as the Italians. It was Vittorio Emmanuale who united Italy as a country and Verdi was supposedly quite a partisan. It is amazing, but Italy did not become a "country" until the mid 1800's. Italian partisans would write "VERDI" on walls, which they would tell authorities was a tribute to the composer, but it was also an acronym for
Vittorio Emmanuale Re d' Italia (Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy).
