Page:EB1911 - Volume 27.djvu/1045

 while cotton and woollen mills and factories of artificial manure, &c., have attained importance.

Vercellae was originally the chief city of the Libici (a Ligurian tribe) and afterwards became a Roman municipium of some importance. It stood at the junction of roads to Eporedia, Novaria and Mediolanum, Laumellum (for Ticinum) and perhaps Hasta. No ancient remains exist above ground, but many inscriptions, tombs and other antiquities have been found. Remains of the theatre and amphitheatre were seen in the 16th century, and remains of ancient streets have more recently been found during drainage operations. There were apparently four principal streets all leading to the centre of the town where the Forum must have been situated. Of the walls, however, nothing is known except from medieval documents (cf. L. Bruzza, Iscrizioni antiche Vercellesi, Rome, 1874). In the neighbourhood (near Rotto on the Sesia) are the Raudii Campi where Hannibal won his first victory on Italian soil (218 ), and where in 101 Marius and Catulus routed the Cimbri. From about 1228 till 1372 Vercelli was the seat of a university.

VERCELLI BOOK (Codex Vercellensis), an Early English MS. containing, besides homilies, a number of poetical and imaginative pieces: Andreas, The Fates of the Apostles, Address of the Soul to the Body, Falseness of Men, Dream of the Rood, Elene and a prose Life of Guthlac. It was found in the cathedral library of Vercelli, Piedmont, by a German jurist Friedrich Blume, in 1822, and was first described in his Iter Italicum (Berlin and Stettin, 4 vols., 1824–36). An untenable explanation of the presence of the MS. at Vercelli suggested that it had been brought there by Johannes Scotus Erigena. But the handwriting dates from the beginning of the 11th century, long after his death. According to Dr Wülker the MS. probably belonged to the hospice for English pilgrims, founded, together with the monastery of St Andrew, by Cardinal Jacopo Guala-Bicchieri (d. 1227), a native of Vercelli and bishop of the city, in 1219, on his return from England, where he had been papal legate from 1216 to 1218. The cardinal, a man of wide learning, possessed a large library, which he left to the monastery; and the Vercelli codex may well have been included in it.

VERDEN, a town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Hanover, on the navigable Aller, 3 m. above its confluence with the Weser, 22 m. S.E. of Bremen by the railway to Hanover. Pop. (1900) 9842. The most noticeable edifices are the beautiful Gothic cathedral, the churches of St Andrew and St John, a new Roman Catholic church (1894). and the celebrated cathedral school. Its industries embrace the manufacture of agricultural machinery, cigar-making, brewing and distilling. Verden was the see of a bishopric founded in the first quarter of the 9th century, or earlier, and secularized in 1648. The duchy of Verden was then ceded to Sweden, passed in 1719 to Hanover and in 1810 to the kingdom of Westphalia. It was restored to Hanover in 1814, and was, with Hanover, annexed by Prussia in 1866.

VERDERER (O. Fr. verdier, Med. Lat. viridarius), a term used in English forest law for a judicial officer appointed to look after what was known as the "vert" (O. Fr. verd, green; Lat. viridis), i.e. the forest trees and underwood in the royal forests. It was the verderer’s duty to keep the assizes and attend to all matters relating to trespasses (see ).

VERDI, GIUSEPPE FORTUNINO FRANCESCO (1813–1901), Italian composer, was born on the 10th of October 1813 at Le Roncole, a poor village near the city of Busseto. His parents kept a little inn, combined with a kind of village shop. Verdi received some instruction from the village organist, but his musical education really began with his entrance into the house of business of Antonio Barezzi, a merchant of Busseto. Barezzi was a thorough musician, and under his auspices Verdi was speedily introduced to such musical society as Busseto could boast. He studied under Giovanni Provesi, who was maestro di cappella of the cathedral and conductor of the municipal orchestra, for which Verdi wrote many marches and other instrumental pieces. These compositions are now the principal treasures of the library of Busseto. Among them is Verdi’s first symphony, which was written at the age of fifteen and performed in 1828. In 1832 Verdi went to Milan to complete his studies. He was rejected by the authorities of the Conservatorio, but remained in Milan as a pupil of Vincenzo Lavigna, with whom he worked until the death of Provesi in 1833 recalled him to Busseto. A clerical intrigue prevented him from succeeding his old master as cathedral organist, but he was appointed conductor of the municipal orchestra, and organist of the church of San Bartolomeo. After three years in Busseto, Verdi returned to Milan, where his first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, was produced in 1839. His next work, a comic opera, known variously as Un Giorno di Regno and Il Finto Stanislao, was written in peculiarly distressing circumstances, the composer having had the misfortune to lose his wife and two children in the course of two months. Un Giorno di Regno was a complete failure, and Verdi, stung by disappointment, made up his mind to write no more for the stage. He kept his word for a year, but was then persuaded by Merelli, the impresario of La Scala, to look at a libretto by Solera. The poem took his fancy, in a short time the music was written, and in 1842 the production of Nabucodonosor placed Verdi in the front rank of living Italian composers. The success of Nabucodonosor was surpassed by that of its two successors, I Lombardi (1843) and Ernani (1844), the latter of which was the first of Verdi’s operas to find its way to England. With Ernani Verdi became the most popular composer in Europe, and the incessant demands made upon him reacted upon his style. For several years after the production of Ernani he wrote nothing which has survived to our time—nothing which deserved to survive. In Macbeth (1847) there are passages of some power, and passages too which indicate an approaching transition to a less conventional method of expression. In Luisa Miller (1849) also there is a noticeable increase of refinement in style, which contrasts favourably with the melodramatic vulgarity of his earlier manner.

It was unfortunate that I Masnadieri, which was written for the English stage and produced under Lumley’s management at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1847, should have been one of the worst of the many bad works which Verdi composed at this period of his career. Not the presence of the composer, who travelled to England to conduct the first performance, nor the genius of Jenny Lind, who sang the part of the heroine, could redeem it from failure. In 1851 Verdi won one of the greatest triumphs of his career with Rigoletto, a triumph which was fully sustained by the production two years later of Il Trovatore and La Traviata. In these works Verdi reached the culminating point of what may be called his second manner. His development had been steady though gradual, and it is only necessary to compare the treatment of voice and orchestra in Rigoletto with that in Ernani to realize how quickly his talent had developed during these seven years. The popularity of Rigoletto, Il Trovatore and La Traviata was enormous, and consolidated Verdi’s fame outside the frontiers of Italy. In 1855 he received a commission to write an opera for the Paris Opera, to be produced during the Universal Exhibition. He wrote Les Vepres Siciliennes, a work which though temporarily successful has not retained its popularity. It contains some fine music, but suffers from the composer’s perhaps unconscious attempt to adopt the grandiose manner of French opera. Of