I WAS born precisely 150 years after Giuseppe Verdi - if precision allows for a variance of up to 24 hours - and he is undoubtedly my favourite among those with whom I share a birthday. This October, he would have been 200; so even the most challenged mathematically can calculate a significant milestone approaching for me, too.

Opera-lovers, among whom I unashamedly count myself, have a choice to make about relative importance as far as commemoration goes, seeing that Richard Wagner was also born in 1813, and Benjamin Britten in 1913. As far as I am concerned, there seems increasingly to be no competition: I am, willy-nilly, stuck with Verdi.

My Westcott House contemporary Canon Michael Fuller, now long of the Scottish Episcopal Church, has artfully planned an opera-going schedule that comprehends all of Wagner's mature opus, for which I enviously salute him. Recently, when I have organised myself enough to accept the invitations of others, or book myself a ticket for a show, it has always been to a Verdi opera.

And so, far behind the efficiency of Dr Fuller's Wagnerfest, here is a list of what I have casually chalked up in celebrating my own hero: Macbeth, Attila, and Simon Boccanegra, all conducted by Riccardo Muti at the Rome Opera; Otello at the Met; Falstaff at the Opéra Bastille; and Rigoletto at the Vienna Volksoper (weirdly, if predictably, in German). Of these, Boccanegra was the most satisfying; Otello the least. Not bad going, you might think, but far from comprehensive.

But should appreciation in commemorative terms be expressed by a marathon, as it so often is? Certainly broadcasters are so committed, gleefully filling up those gaping hours of programming. Thus all of Britten's operatic output is to appear in BBC Radio 3's 2013 schedule, and a fitting tribute it will be. Nevertheless, surely it could be argued that, as with so much else in life, less might just be that little bit more? 

JOHN ROSSELLI's The Life of Verdi (2000), in the Cambridge Musical Lives series, is the model of conciseness that one would expect from a writer who cut his teeth in the stringent editorial environment of The Manchester Guardian in the '50s. Perhaps dedicated to placing his subject in an artistic rather than a generally historical context (not surprising from such an expert in 19th-century Italian operatic performance practice), Rosselli's Verdi appears as the practical man of musical business.

Commenting on the richness of the documentary sources for his subject's life, including an extensive correspondence, Rosselli makes the rather surprising biographical leap of comparing Verdi with his near contemporary William Gladstone, another well-documented figure: "happily . . . Verdi was laconic where Gladstone was prolix."

I met Rosselli when he was still worshipping at St Mark's Anglican Church in Florence, and his personal appearance lived up to the legend that he had already become for me: impeccably dressed in a modestly old-fashioned way, he looked every inch the refined Anglo-Italian.

Brought up in England after the spectacular arrest, imprisonment, and execution of his father and uncle by Mussolini (there are many streets the length and breadth of Italy named in honour of the Fratelli Rosselli, heroes of the '30s political resistance), John chose Anglicanism as his faith, perhaps identifying therein an inherent reticence. His concise but piquant prose illustrates how he prized this virtue. May he rest in peace; we who knew him miss him. 

IT LOOKS as though Pope Francis is going to be a man of fewer words than some of his predecessors. I, like so many others, was charmed by the directness of his address to the crowds on the night of his election, employing the entirely conventional forms of greeting and farewell "Buona sera", and "Notte".

A group from the Anglican Centre staying at the so-called "Casa del Clero", Domus Paolo VI, were incredulous when, at breakfast the day after the white smoke, the word went round that the Pope was about to arrive. And then, suddenly, the doors of the refectory swung open, and in he walked, attended relatively sparsely. He had come to settle his bill; for he had been staying there before the conclave.

His rejection of the former papal lodgings as "much too big" has also set the tone for what is undoubtedly going to be a papacy on a smaller, personal scale. His plan seems to be to pare down the inessentials to focus on his big objectives. It is a plan that is causing no little stir. 

OTHER STORIES

Diary

John Pridmore:  IT IS 2014, and we cannot but remember. Each of us will be observing the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in his or her own way. I dwell on a diary, the tiny 1916 Boy Scouts Diary that, 16 years ago, I picked up from a stall at a Salvation Army fête.

I WAS fascinated to read in Rosselli's Verdi that the laconic maestro regularly used as many as three exclamation marks, as well as "…", "?!", and even "??!!!" to close written sentences. The biographer urges us, however, not to interpret such lavish punctuation as an attempt to convey the extremes of surprise, horror, etc., that it would suggest in an English-speaking writer. Rather, it sets out to render what gesture would convey in spoken conversation. All that I can add to that clarification is "?!?!".

My friends have always known me as one for the big gesture. 

The Ven. Jonathan Boardman is the Archdeacon of Italy and Malta, and Chaplain of All Saints', Rome.