The author of the book, a famous Austrian writer, talks in a popular and accessible form about the life and creative path of the great Italian composer, highlighting facts of Verdi’s biography that are little known to the Soviet reader. The novel very convincingly presents the confrontation between the works of Verdi and Richard Wagner. In Verdi's music, Werfel saw the highest embodiment of humanistic ideals. And the more he listened to the works of the great Italian master, the more he felt their connection with folk origins. Werfel conveyed this “Anthean” power of Verdi’s music especially vividly in the magnificent scene of the Venetian carnival, which undoubtedly belongs to the best pages of his novel.