In any big election year, the United States crawls with ideologically opposed creatures labeled either ``Democrat'' or ``Republican.''
In late 19th-century European opera circles, the artistic campaigning never stopped. But instead of Democrats and Republicans, opera lovers were either Wagnerites or Verdians.
Richard Wagner attracted the progressives, who favored musical complexity, stunning orchestration and dramatic subtlety.
Giuseppe Verdi attracted the conservatives, who yearned for the old days of simple melody, singers who didn't have to compete for attention with an overwhelming orchestra, and direct stories featuring clear-cut characters.
Most of the stories Verdi chose for his operas were, in truth, brutal melodramas. Simplistic good guys and bad guys, equally thick and hot of head, bellowed at each other, never pausing to make the few intelligent decisions that would resolve their differences.
Verdi plays very well in Washington, D.C. Musically, Verdi tweaked up the operatic melody machine he'd inherited from his most notable predecessor, Gaetano Donizetti, the composer of ``Lucia di Lammermoor.''
Donizetti was well-known for his long, delicate melodies. Verdi, too, concentrated on opera's lyric potential, but his singers became less like poets and more like soapbox orators. Verdi's characters declaimed with a power that was new to opera, although they did not quite have the ballistic force that Wagner would demand.
Verdi's choral scenes also became quite vigorous and grand. It's difficult not to get caught up in ``Gloria all'Egitto,'' the famous triumphal march scene from ``Aida.'' As the victorious Egyptian army returns from war against the Ethiopians, it is greeted by music for massed voices far more effective than anything that ever accompanied an American ticker-tape parade.
An equally well-known Verdi chorus is less spectacular, but provides a clue to the composer's popularity during his lifetime. ``Va pensiero'' is the chorus from ``Nabucco'' in which Hebrew slaves lament their captivity in Babylon.
This music became an anthem for Verdi's revolutionary compatriots, who were dedicated to uniting Italy under the control of Italians. The struggle intensified in the 1840s and '50s, the most productive time of Verdi's career.
When Verdi wrote music about Hebrew slaves or Scottish refugees longing for their homeland, his audience took it to represent the Italian people chafing under Austrian domination.
When he wrote an opera - ``Un ballo in maschero'' - decrying the assassination of a Swedish king (which the state censors insisted be changed to the governor of Colonial Boston), his audience took it as a call to rally around Victor Emmanuel, the would-be king of nationalist Italy.
So Verdi was regarded as Italy's great patriotic composer. As long as he concentrated on stories that could be interpreted as pro-nationalist, and as long as he kept churning out good clean tunes, his musical weaknesses were gladly overlooked.
For it must be said that Verdi's early and middle works suffer flaws that would have banished any other composer to obscurity. His rhythmic patterns are so annoyingly regular (either oom-pah-pah-oom-pah-pah or de-dum-de-dum-de-dum-de-dum) and his melodies are so symmetrical that the music nearly evaporates in sing-song triviality.
The ballet music incorporated into some of the operas is frivolous and trite, as was most ballet music of the time. And Verdi agreed to set stories that even today's television hack writers would be ashamed to claim.
The characters are passionate, but their motivations and actions are not believable. The plots can be utterly senseless, the most notorious being that of ``Il trovatore,'' the source of the famous ``Anvil Chorus.''
Until late in his career, Verdi made unimaginative use of the orchestra. One problem he faced was the lack of decent instrumentalists in Italian opera houses. Another was his total devotion to the voice, which caused him to relegate the orchestra to a bland supporting role, except in the shrill, cymbal-crashing overtures.
Such were the characteristics of Verdi's early ``assault'' operas - stories of siege and conspiracy, like ``I Lombardi'' (set during the Crusades), ``La battaglia di Legnano'' (``battaglia'' means ``battle'') and ``Attila'' (as in the Hun).
But once Verdi had the Italian people on his side, he dared to grow as an artist. Starting in the mid-1840s, he produced a series of character studies, culminating in a version of Shakespeare's ``Macbeth.'' The characters still had little more depth than a saltine cracker, and their psychological believability crumbled almost as easily, but Verdi was making progress.
In 1851 he wrote a highly experimental opera, considering his time and place. That work, ``Rigoletto,'' is full of unsavory characters, including its two main personalities. In this anti-heroic atmosphere, Verdi mostly dispensed with solo arias and relied on moody ensemble pieces - duets, trios, quartets, all allowing several participants to reveal their quirks of character simultaneously.
Immediately following the supremely trashy and dramatically incoherent ''1l trovatore'' came, in 1853, ``La traviata.'' Now, ``Traviata'' isn't much as a story - it's a soap opera about a rich boy falling in love with a consumptive courtesan. But Verdi's score is intimate, delicate and touching. Musically and dramatically, things generally improved from there.
By 1870, when he began working on ``Aida,'' Verdi had learned how to deploy his forces to greatest effect. This opera's vocal writing is both expressively lyrical and firm, and music is fitted to words more adeptly than ever. Its choral scenes - including ``Gloria all'Egitto'' - boast a splendor that comes across even without fancy stage trappings.
Its orchestration is sensitive and mildly exotic. Its harmonies are more daring, less utilitarian than before. Even the mercifully brief ballet sequence avoids embarassment.
Soon after ``Aida,'' Verdi set to work on a highly dramatic Requiem - so dramatic that this liturgical work has been called Verdi's most effective ``opera.'' But not until 1887 would the composer write another stage work.
At length came ``Otello,'' a faithful setting of Shakespeare's ``Othello.'' For the most part, ``Otello'' is full of Verdi's same old techniques employed with new 81an. And for once this is not an opera full of separate numbers, with an opportunity for applause after every aria and duet. The music of ``Otello'' flows continuously - much as it does in Wagner.
Finally, in 1893, came ``Falstaff,'' Verdi's one mature comedy, based on Shakespeare's ``Merry Wives of Windsor.'' While an earlier composer like Rossini could get more individual guffaws out of a comic opera, Verdi here aimed for a continuity of brightness and vivacity.
He also demonstrated a complete mastery of the orchestra, though never at the expense of the vocalists.
Verdi listening suggestions
As an introduction to Verdi, the most typical work with the fewest flaws is ``La traviata.'' Choice of a recording depends on one's taste in heroines. Maria Callas is represented in several live performances from the 1950s on a variety of labels, usually in stuffy sound. Renata Scotto's version may be had on Angel/EMI, Montserrat Caballe turns up on RCA, and Joan Sutherland - really too robust for the role, but an attractive singer if one can get around her mushy diction - is on London.
Equally popular is ``Aida,'' which recently got a fine recording by Aprile Millo, PIacido Domingo and Metropolitan Opera forces on Sony Classical. Two estimable pre-1960 versions to consider are those by Renata Tebaldi/Carlo Bergonzi and Leontyne Price/Jon Vickers, both on London.
Opera fiends may then move on to ``Rigoletto,'' ``Otello'' and even the disreputable ``Trovatore.'' But along the way, investigate the Requiem, preferably in the splendid Robert Shaw recording on Telarc, filled out with some favorite opera choruses.