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Verdi's Shakespeare: Men of the Theater
A dazzling study of the operas Verdi adapted from Shakespeare- and a spellbinding account of their creation. In Verdi's Shakespeare, Pulitzer Prize winner and lifelong opera devotee Garry Wills explores the writing and staging of Verdi's three triumphant Shakespearian Macbeth, Othello, and Falstaff . An Italian composer who couldn't read a word of English but adored Shakespeare, Verdi devoted himself to operatic productions that authentically incorporated the playwright's texts. Wills delves into the fast-paced worlds of these men of the theater, focusing on the intense working relationships both Shakespeare and Verdi had with the performers and producers of their works. We see Verdi study the Shakespearean dramaturgy as he obsessively corresponds with his chosen librettists, handpicks the singers he feels are best- suited to the roles, and coaches them intensely. With fascinating portraits of these artistic giants and their entourages, sharp insights into music and theater, and telling historical details, Verdi's Shakespeare re-creates the conditions that allowed Verdi to complete his masterworks and illuminates the very nature of artistic creation.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published October 13, 2011
14 people are currently reading
129 people want to read
About the author
Garry Wills
153 books250 followersGarry Wills is an American author, journalist, political philosopher, and historian, specializing in American history, politics, and religion, especially the history of the Catholic Church. He won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1993.
Wills has written over fifty books and, since 1973, has been a frequent reviewer for The New York Review of Books. He became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is an Emeritus Professor of History.
Wills has written over fifty books and, since 1973, has been a frequent reviewer for The New York Review of Books. He became a faculty member of the history department at Northwestern University in 1980, where he is an Emeritus Professor of History.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
February 16, 2024
Really needed an editor as first person memories and Infodumping does not a book make, but there's some good stuff in here in a very readable, concise format
November 30, 2021
This is definitely not a book with a wide appeal, but I was fascinated through every page!
Wills clearly did his research on both Verdi and Shakespeare and provides in depth examinations of each play and their respective operatic interpretations. Highlighted within this book are Macbeth, Othello/Otello, and Falstaff/The Merry Wives of Windsor, etc. There have been over 180, or over 300 by some accounts, opera versions of Shakespeare's writings, with Verdi being the clear master of translating the plays into the opera format. What set the composer apart was his desire to stay true to Shakespeare's source material, making him the first Italian composer to return to the authentic text. I had no idea that each men were similarly prolific, creating two works at year at the height of their careers. They were also both incredibly hands on at every stage and described by the author as creative volcanoes! In addition to all of the information about each specific work, both in performance and thematically, I was so engrossed at the creative process of each individual artist. I had no idea that Shakespeare wrote his plays with the specifics of his acting troupe, and each member's specific strengths, in mind.
Although its been many years, I’ve read Macbeth and Othello. I’ve also seen the operas of Verdi's Macbeth (Anna Netrebko is fabulous!) and Falstaff when The Metropolitan Opera was hosting free streams during the pandemic. I’ve not seen Verdi’s Otello, or read Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor or Henry IV, parts I and II. This book made me want to see that opera and read those plays! Listening to recordings of the specific operas featured while reading their corresponding section definitely made this a more enriching reading experience! In particular, I agree with the author’s recommendation to listen to, and/or watch(if it’s available anywhere), the Macbeth recording featuring Maria Callas from 1952. It’s on Spotify and will be added to my regular music rotation for sure!
I adored the writing throughout this book. It read as scholarly, yet approachable and well researched, yet not overly academic. Admittedly, some sections went over my head as a casual fan of both plays and opera, but I have a feeling I'll be revisiting sections of this book often. I also see more works by Gary Wills in my future!
Wills clearly did his research on both Verdi and Shakespeare and provides in depth examinations of each play and their respective operatic interpretations. Highlighted within this book are Macbeth, Othello/Otello, and Falstaff/The Merry Wives of Windsor, etc. There have been over 180, or over 300 by some accounts, opera versions of Shakespeare's writings, with Verdi being the clear master of translating the plays into the opera format. What set the composer apart was his desire to stay true to Shakespeare's source material, making him the first Italian composer to return to the authentic text. I had no idea that each men were similarly prolific, creating two works at year at the height of their careers. They were also both incredibly hands on at every stage and described by the author as creative volcanoes! In addition to all of the information about each specific work, both in performance and thematically, I was so engrossed at the creative process of each individual artist. I had no idea that Shakespeare wrote his plays with the specifics of his acting troupe, and each member's specific strengths, in mind.
Although its been many years, I’ve read Macbeth and Othello. I’ve also seen the operas of Verdi's Macbeth (Anna Netrebko is fabulous!) and Falstaff when The Metropolitan Opera was hosting free streams during the pandemic. I’ve not seen Verdi’s Otello, or read Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor or Henry IV, parts I and II. This book made me want to see that opera and read those plays! Listening to recordings of the specific operas featured while reading their corresponding section definitely made this a more enriching reading experience! In particular, I agree with the author’s recommendation to listen to, and/or watch(if it’s available anywhere), the Macbeth recording featuring Maria Callas from 1952. It’s on Spotify and will be added to my regular music rotation for sure!
I adored the writing throughout this book. It read as scholarly, yet approachable and well researched, yet not overly academic. Admittedly, some sections went over my head as a casual fan of both plays and opera, but I have a feeling I'll be revisiting sections of this book often. I also see more works by Gary Wills in my future!
October 19, 2023
Though I have read and taught and seen Shakespeare's plays for half a century, and have sung quality choral music for just as long, I know precious little about opera. In this volume Wills has done an admirable job of combing through dramatic scholarship I know well and musical scholarship I know not at all, to create an accessible, informative and helpful analysis of three major works in two genres.
He wisely begins by supporting the assertion that both Shakespeare and Verdi were "men of the theater, engaged in the companies they worked with, active at each stage of the production of the plays and operas that filled their lives" (4). He stresses that both creators knew well the performers and performance conditions and audiences for which they wrote, often writing for particular performers and theaters and occasions.
Then he tackles three key works - or rather six - when in chapters of varying lengths he compares Shakespeare's with Verdi's versions of the Macbeth (60 pages), Otello (80), and Falstaff (50) stories. He is notably good at contextualizing Verdi's operas by comparing them to their predecessors, especially Rossini's Otello.
Along the way he refers not only to critics literary and dramatic and musical, but also to favorite performances he has seen or heard, either live or recorded. He is especially helpful in analyzing specific passages, pointing to how Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito worked closely to craft their creations, how Verdi's musical phrases achieve their effects note by note, and how he instructed his singers in intonation and attack and articulation.
This is a much briefer, more narrowly focused and more user-friendly volume than the longer, wider-ranging works of Gary Schmidgall, but it has proven a wonderful starting point for me. I picked it up simply in an attempt to keep up with my two opera-loving sons. It has achieved the surprising result of whetting my appetite to listen to these works that Wills has so lovingly described.
He wisely begins by supporting the assertion that both Shakespeare and Verdi were "men of the theater, engaged in the companies they worked with, active at each stage of the production of the plays and operas that filled their lives" (4). He stresses that both creators knew well the performers and performance conditions and audiences for which they wrote, often writing for particular performers and theaters and occasions.
Then he tackles three key works - or rather six - when in chapters of varying lengths he compares Shakespeare's with Verdi's versions of the Macbeth (60 pages), Otello (80), and Falstaff (50) stories. He is notably good at contextualizing Verdi's operas by comparing them to their predecessors, especially Rossini's Otello.
Along the way he refers not only to critics literary and dramatic and musical, but also to favorite performances he has seen or heard, either live or recorded. He is especially helpful in analyzing specific passages, pointing to how Verdi and his librettist Arrigo Boito worked closely to craft their creations, how Verdi's musical phrases achieve their effects note by note, and how he instructed his singers in intonation and attack and articulation.
This is a much briefer, more narrowly focused and more user-friendly volume than the longer, wider-ranging works of Gary Schmidgall, but it has proven a wonderful starting point for me. I picked it up simply in an attempt to keep up with my two opera-loving sons. It has achieved the surprising result of whetting my appetite to listen to these works that Wills has so lovingly described.
December 10, 2024
This book is both engaging and fun for anyone interested in theater and opera. I have a modest knowledge of the plays and operas covered by Wills, and I got some excellent new dimensions to these works—musical, historical, logistical, philosophical—in this book.
As one example of what I learned, Wills did a great job explaining why Verdi's Jago needed a philosophical/theological statement, which Shakespeare never gave Iago.
As one example of what I learned, Wills did a great job explaining why Verdi's Jago needed a philosophical/theological statement, which Shakespeare never gave Iago.
July 10, 2020
Verdi's Shakespeare
This is really fascinating, full of information about performance practice in Shakespeare's time, and an absolute wealth of information about references in MACBETH to contemporary events and attitudes to withcraft. The author is as expert on Verdi as on Shakepeare....thoroughly well-researched.
This is really fascinating, full of information about performance practice in Shakespeare's time, and an absolute wealth of information about references in MACBETH to contemporary events and attitudes to withcraft. The author is as expert on Verdi as on Shakepeare....thoroughly well-researched.
July 13, 2025
Especially informative and fascinating about the composer’s and librettist’s behind the scenes creative work and performer management. The substantive discussion regarding how the music fits specific parts of the story requires more knowledge about the opera than I could certainly understand the themes.
August 11, 2025
Yea I mean it's great. Made me cry lol; what a great friendship w/ Boito
I only read the Otello and intro but yea it was great. Wills is a great reader who handles the critical history ably, but I was surprised to see him downplay the christian elements. Verdi influence?
Super well-written; it's time to watch Otello
I only read the Otello and intro but yea it was great. Wills is a great reader who handles the critical history ably, but I was surprised to see him downplay the christian elements. Verdi influence?
Super well-written; it's time to watch Otello
October 3, 2021
Interesting & enjoyable.
October 22, 2012
Garry Wills - I haven't read a book by him since freshman year, when our whole class was assigned "Lincoln at Gettysburg." (Which I thought was pretty dull, in case you're wondering.)
The subject of this book was infinitely more interesting to me - in theory, at least. Unfortunately, the treatment was bone dry and very academic. I found it difficult to follow the analysis even though I know Shakespeare's Macbeth and Othello quite well, and have seen both onstage as plays (multiple times each) and as operas (once each*). The Falstaff section was pretty much a lost cause, as I was familiar with neither the opera nor the source plays.
You'd probably get more out of this book if your background is in music rather than lit crit, and particularly if you've studied opera. You might, for example, be able to make sense of passages like this:
So, yeah, not for the general public. I'm surprised this was published as a book and not as a paper in a scholarly journal.
*Saw Otello at the Met this season. It really shows off a soprano. Renee Fleming was exquisite.
The subject of this book was infinitely more interesting to me - in theory, at least. Unfortunately, the treatment was bone dry and very academic. I found it difficult to follow the analysis even though I know Shakespeare's Macbeth and Othello quite well, and have seen both onstage as plays (multiple times each) and as operas (once each*). The Falstaff section was pretty much a lost cause, as I was familiar with neither the opera nor the source plays.
You'd probably get more out of this book if your background is in music rather than lit crit, and particularly if you've studied opera. You might, for example, be able to make sense of passages like this:
There is first the tonality, the rare and remote key of A flat minor; when there are more than four flats in the signature, one may be certain that Verdi means tragic business. Then, there is the rhythm of the descending scale, which proceeds steadily enough, indeed, but has each note prefaced by a sharply accented triplet of semiquavers on the off beat. Add to this a syncopated accompaniment in the bass, and introduce the whole by a double-dotted descending chromatic scale from dominant to tonic, and you have this complex piece of simplicity.
So, yeah, not for the general public. I'm surprised this was published as a book and not as a paper in a scholarly journal.
*Saw Otello at the Met this season. It really shows off a soprano. Renee Fleming was exquisite.
May 3, 2015
Wills exams two masters of their fields - arguably the two best to write in their field and influential years after their deaths. Verdi wrote three operas based on Shakespeare - Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff. Despite the plays having been written hundreds of years earlier and in a language he did not speak, Verdi loved Shakespeare's plays. Wills examines the Shakespeare based operas one-by-one, noting the circumstances under which Shakespeare and then Verdi wrote them. His thesis is, roughly, that both men were constrained by and yet flourished under the limitations of the theatres in which they worked. Wills is quite well researched - I learned many new and interesting details. I haven't read Shakespeare in a long time, so this is no surprise but I was not expecting to gain new insights into Verdi. I only wish Wills had looked more into Verdi's life-long obsession with and ultimate failure to compose Re Lear. There is scholarship in the area and I'd be curious to know Wills' insights given the intelligent things he writes here.
April 29, 2015
Well, this is odd. I have read (or at least looked at the pages of) much of what Garry Wills lists in his brief bibliography for "Verdi's Shakespeare". The three volume "Operas of Verdi" by Julian Budden, check. All four volumes of the hoary "The Elizabethan Stage" by Chambers, on that shelf right over there. Both volumes of "Verdi's 'Otello' and 'Simon Boccanegra' in Letters and Documents", yep. Plus "The Verdi-Boito Correspondence", the usual stack of biographies: Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Budden again, Charles Osborne, etc.
Wills' strength is putting the two giants of the theater together--Verdi loved Shakespeare although he didn't read English and would have done "King Lear" and possibly even "Hamlet" for the lyric stage if time and his health permitted.
Recommended for those who know either the plays or the operas and are interested in Wills' always useful and sometimes brilliant reflections on creativity.
Wills' strength is putting the two giants of the theater together--Verdi loved Shakespeare although he didn't read English and would have done "King Lear" and possibly even "Hamlet" for the lyric stage if time and his health permitted.
Recommended for those who know either the plays or the operas and are interested in Wills' always useful and sometimes brilliant reflections on creativity.
July 17, 2012
It's instructive to compare this book, in which Wills calmly and cogently examines the conditions in which three of Verdi's major operas were composed and performed, and the manner in which they reflected and diverged from their original source material in Shakespeare's Macbeth, Othello, and Merry Wives of Windsor, with the previous book I read, When That Rough God Goes Riding, in which Greil Marcus attempts to...well frankly, I'm still not sure what Marcus was trying to do, but it had something to do with Van Morrison.
While I am well versed in Shakespeare criticism, or at least in the lesser discipline of "Bardolitry", I know virtually nothing of opera. And yet, even when Wills threw in obscure (to me) technical terms, I was still able to follow his points.
While I am well versed in Shakespeare criticism, or at least in the lesser discipline of "Bardolitry", I know virtually nothing of opera. And yet, even when Wills threw in obscure (to me) technical terms, I was still able to follow his points.
February 8, 2013
Did not finish. It's really hard to read a book about opera that is not written by a musicologist. When a historian and "Verdi Enthusiast" starts writing a survey of three operas and their Shakespeare counterparts, and there is very little about the music, it can become very dry. Especially if you care more about the music than the libretto. All of the cultural history and the actual history of the operas' development from a Shakespeare play into the opera is interesting, but I needed....more. The way that Verdi orchestrated so much of Otello and Macbetto (and Falstaff, but I sort of hate that opera and didn't get that far) is SOOOOO IMPORTANT! And it just wasn't there.
Blech. I can't talk too badly, I wouldn't be able to write such an undertaking.
Blech. I can't talk too badly, I wouldn't be able to write such an undertaking.
January 5, 2017
An extremely good analysis if you're an opera buff who wants to broaden their knowledge of why Verdi interpreted Shakespeare the way he did. If you're more of a Shakespeare fan than you are an opera fan, the book may be more opera-focused than what you're looking for.
Discussions of music theory are less technical than that of other books I've read on the same subject--he assumes you're a music fan, but not holder of a music degree. It was simple enough to be understood by a mere dabbler in the subjects, but the conclusions reached about Verdi's works were scholarly and illuminating even to a long-time fan.
I can't recommend it enough to a Verdi fan who loves Macbeth, Otello, or Falstaff!
Discussions of music theory are less technical than that of other books I've read on the same subject--he assumes you're a music fan, but not holder of a music degree. It was simple enough to be understood by a mere dabbler in the subjects, but the conclusions reached about Verdi's works were scholarly and illuminating even to a long-time fan.
I can't recommend it enough to a Verdi fan who loves Macbeth, Otello, or Falstaff!
April 23, 2016
A fascinating short review and appreciation of Verdi's three Shakespeare operas--Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff. It gives me much to consider and appreciate next week when I hear Riccardo Muti conduct soloists and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Chorus in a concert version of Falstaff. Viva Verdi!
January 10, 2012
Best suited for readers who are already familiar with both the plays and the operas.
February 19, 2012
The material on the Opera was difficult for me.
December 5, 2012
A really fun book.
December 3, 2013
Well written and very interesting. I knew enough about Othello, MacBeth and Wives of Windsor to enjoy the book even though I haven't seen Verdi's operas.
September 8, 2014
Ready to teach Macbeth.
December 27, 2014
an interesting view in verdi and shakespeare
February 10, 2013
a must-read for any aspiring singer of verdi
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May 28, 2015Find it at JMRL: http://aries.jmrl.org/record=b1271777~S9
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews