Visiting Budapest

Politics and the private sphere collide fatally in Verdi's opera Simon Boccanegra: The title character, elected by the people as Doge of Genoa, pays with his life for the bitter game of love and power. Thanks in part to his librettist, Arrigo Boito, Verdi succeeded in creating a predominantly somber yet highly fascinating tableau of light and shadow in his 1881 revision of the work. Boccanegra's desperate cry for peace, echoing the words of the p...