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Verdi, however, has no need of a lobby or special pleading. His genius is universal, beyond fashion or opinion, and his music needs no promotion or defence. He would harrumph at the thought of posterity erecting statues and spouting speeches in his memory: remember me by performing the operas as well as you can, he would say, and don't forget the royalty cheque. Celebrity – his own or anyone else's – was not something that impressed him.

Yet what a model of integrity he offers today's creative artists, with their febrile quest for novelty and sensation. Verdi, in contrast, ploughed his professional furrow for three score and 10 years, steadily improving his technique and broadening his vision: almost every opera he wrote, from Un Giorno di Regno in 1840 to Falstaff in 1893 improves or advances in some dogged way on its predecessor, underpinned by a fundamentally noble view of humanity that balances compassion with justice. He may have been gruffly sceptical, disdaining lickspittle politicians and pretentious frauds, but he was without cynicism: his moral values were rock-solid and unassailable, rooted in the soil of Emilia-Romagna and an entirely realistic sense of his own abilities and worth.

Robert Carsen - Giuseppe Verdi - Rigoletto - Festival d'Aix-en-Provence on MUZU.TV.

One lament of opera-lovers today is that there are so few singers with the grandeur of voice, style and presence to do Verdi's music justice – a sad chorus in which I have myself often joined. But this bicentenary year has brought some satisfaction on this front: I have been profoundly moved at Covent Garden and the Salzburg Festival by performances of Don Carlo, which in some respects I consider Verdi's supreme masterpiece.

In neither case did the production come close to an adequate visual realisation of the magnificent drama, but with Antonio Pappano in the pit, Jonas Kaufmann and Anja Harteros brought to their interpretations of the leading roles rapturous arcs of phrasing and refulgence of tone that we have not heard for a generation. Verdi's music can weather mediocrity and still provide audiences with enjoyment (in a way that Wagner can't), but here he was truly honoured as he would have wished.

Now I am keenly awaiting two further productions of operas from his middle period which have been neglected or misprised. Next week, Les Vêpres Siciliennes will receive its first performance at Covent Garden, conducted by Pappano; and in December, the golden couple of Kaufmann and Harteros will be reunited for La Forza del destino in Munich. Viva Verdi!