Verdi’s Bicentenary – is today the day?

Verdi was born in a small village in the Duchy of Parma where the baptismal register of  October 11th states that he was ‘born yesterday’. As days were sometimes counted as beginning at sunset, it is not clear whether he was born on the 9th or the 10th of October in 1813.

Whichever way, it would be legitimate by now to celebrate – so here’s a lush video clip from the 2013 New Year concert at La Fenice in Venice, conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner, commemorating his bicentenary