The Operas of Giuseppe VerdiNINETEENTH CENTURYThe Operas of Giuseppe Verdi. By Abramo Basevi. Translated by Edward Schneider with Stefano Castelvecchi. Edited by Stefano Castelvecchi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. [xlii, 268 p. ISBN 9780226094915 (hardcover), $55; ISBN 9780226095073 (e-book), $7 to $44.] Glossary, bibliographic references, index.Verdian studies are enriched by recent translation of Abramo Basevi's Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi (Firenze: Tofani, 1859) into English by Edward Schneider and Stefano Castelvecchi as The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi. The Schneider-Castelvecchi edition, first complete translation from Italian since Basevi first published his 154 years ago, brings a most important source on Verdi's operas to English-speaking readers-scholars and aficionados alike.The Operas of Giuseppe Verdi offers twentyfirst- century readers analyses of Verdi's operas by a passionate and articulate music critic and aesthetician in nineteenthcentury Florence, Abramo Basevi. Basevi chronologically organizes his opera analyses as twenty book chapters, with one chapter per opera, beginning with Nabu - codonosor and concluding with Aroldo, and then bookends them with a preface and a conclusion. Stefano Castelvecchi illuminates Basevi's life and work in his editor's introduction, which includes a short biography, a guide to Studio, an analysis of his critical approach, and a glossary of terms known to nineteenth-century readers (along with a few terms unique to Basevi's idiolect) (p. xxv) that are perhaps less familiar to today's students of Verdi.In his introduction, Castelvecchi presents three compelling features of Studio: (1) an author who possesses exemplary credentials as a music critic, (2) analyses that pioneered a high degree of technical detail (p. x), and (3) cultural insight, both general and operatic, supported by Basevi's extensive knowledge of operatic repertoire. Castelvecchi gives a short biographical sketch that portrays Basevi as a comprehen- sive comprehensive scholar, with intellectual interests that ran gamut from medicine to philosophy, and an impresario and music entrepreneur whose varied roles included music critic, music journal founder and editor, event organizer, musical society founder, and founder of and advisor to Liceo Musicale (which became present Conservatorio di Musica Luigi Cherubini and to which he donated his extensive library, called Fondo Basevi).Perhaps highlight of Castelvecchi's introduction is his explanation of Basevi's analytical method, called critica analitica (analytic criticism) (pp. xx and 8). This method is based upon a practical relationship with music, writes Castelvecchi (p. xx). The editor continues by asserting that Basevi is far more technical than other critics of his time, breaking down a whole work into its parts in something of a play-by-play approach. Re - constructing these pieces is akin to a para - tactic process, in which parts are organized into larger sections. Here Castelvecchi explains that Basevi's method, defined by the nature of musical material (p. xxi), has its limits. Its success lies in its organic approach to sections of opera, but it is less effective at global level. This is because thing that unifies each individual opera is not a musical idea but rather an overarching dramatic character, or tinta.Basevi himself addresses his analytical approach to Verdi's operas in preface to his Studio: Because music comes into being in a concrete, individual way each time it takes form in a composition, and in this individual form functions as an organism, type of criticism I deem necessary above all is analytic criticism-the only type that, as a form of inquiry into music's 'anatomy,' can lead us to study of its 'physiology' (pp. 8-9). Basevi appropriated terms and concepts from his medical training- anatomy and physiology-to describe his analytical approach to each individual opera. …