More than fifty years lie between the production of Verdi's first opera and that of his last. His latest music was an amazing advance on the earlier, but one characteristic was his through life -his great gift of typical Italian melody. It is for melody (and, one may almost say, melody alone) that we still prize Verdi's earlier operas. Of such is The Sicilian Vespers (I Vespri Siciliani), which was produced at the Paris Opera during the Exhibition of 1855, but which, for all its auspicious start, was never greatly successful as a whole. Its theme is the massacre of the French invaders of Sicily, who were murdered during Vespers at Eastertide, 1282.
The four scenes in the complete
Ballet represent respectively Winter, Spring, Summer and Autumn.