Verdi was moving toward musical drama, melodrama, in which raw emotion is presented on stage ‘in great primary colours: love, hate, revenge, lust for power’.118 It was led by melody rather than the harmony of the orchestra and so has a humanism that is lacking in Wagner.119 Even so, it was quite different from anything that had gone before, and meant that while his operas were hugely popular with audiences (the doors for the first performance had to be opened four hours in advance, the crush was so great), they received an unprecedented critical onslaught. For one performance of Rigoletto, in
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