French. Music In summing the effect of the libretto as "a competent framework for an opera of effects, of spectacle and theatrical surprise, and Verdi ended by accepting it as such", musicologist Julian Budden then notes two of its aspects which appear distinctive and which are visible in the music. Firstly, "he used it as a basis for a new, more ample, more rhythmically complex style of melody. Here the model of Meyerbeer was important ... Secondly, he seized the opportunity of solving a problem which had eluded him in a somewhat similar work, La battaglia di Legnano; namely that of reconciling the private and public emotions of the main characters. ... .the problem being overcome by means of a more varied musical language." Musicologist Roger Parker, writing in Grove in 1992, offers a somewhat different point of view in explaining that the sheer length and scale of this opera (as well as others in the grand opera tradition) find themselves being rarely staged by modern opera houses (since 1992 this situation has changed, see performance history section above). Parker states "with very few exceptions, its main lyrical numbers lack the melodic immediacy of the trio of Italian operas (Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata) that immediately preceded it." However, he does go on to say that Les Vêpres "marks a decisive turn away from the language of the middle-period Italian operas and the emergence of many stylistic features we associate with the later Verdi." Coda Given the frustrations which Verdi encountered in the two-year-long preparation of the opera and the several expressions of these frustrations in letters to Giuseppina Strepponi (with whom he was having a relationship which began about 1847), writer Irving Kolodin in his essay for the RCA recording, hits on a solution which Strepponi herself had provided: In your position I wouldn't tie myself in any way for the present. I should look for a libretto I liked and set it to music without any engagement and in my own time.(Italics in the original). Kolodin comments: "It was, of course, the principle by which Verdi's later career was guided when he had the land and the position he craved and the security that went with them and a wise wife." Recordings References Notes Cited sources Backman, Clifford R. (2002), The Decline and Fall of Medieval Sicily: Politics, Religion, and Economy in the Reign of Frederick III,