Dagli immortali vertici (Attila)

Ezio is Rome's general, come to bargain with Attila while the empire he serves rots behind him, and the aria is his contempt made lyrical: the immortal heights from which Rome has fallen. Verdi wrote Attila for Venice in 1846, in the exhausted middle of what he called his years in the galleys, and Italian audiences took the line about leaving him Italy and keeping the universe as something addressed to Austria. The aria gives the baritone a rare thing in early Verdi — a man of state rather than a father or a rival.