To celebrate the great composer's bicentenary today, the Guardian's music writers pick their favourite Verdi moment from the vast treasure trove on YouTube. Tell us what yours are in the comments below

La Traviata is the only opera Verdi set in his own lifetime; Violetta is one of the defining roles not just in Verdi but in all opera. This seven-minute black-and-white clip from Lisbon in 1958 seems to be the only surviving film of Maria Callas in a role she made her own. As such it is quite simply precious beyond price. You only need to listen to a single phrase from Callas to know why.

Verdi's opera choruses are uniquely and irresistibly rousing, from Nabucco's great humanitarian Va, pensiero to Aida's thumping Triumphal March. Among my favourite live Verdian experiences was watching Birmingham Opera Company's groundbreaking Otello staged in a cold, empty hangar in 2009. It was the first time that a black man (Ronald Samm) had sung the title role in the UK, but the production was also unforgettable for the huge, gutsy sound made by its community chorus.

Verdi's final opera is such a miraculously crafted score, effortlessly seamless, that teasing out a self-contained aria or duet is never easy. But the young lovers' - sung here by Nucia Focile and Laurence Dale in Welsh National Opera's 1988 Peter Stein production - snatched moment together amid the to-ing and fro-ing of the first act is a rare oasis of calm, which ends with the ravishing call-and-response to a phrase from Boccaccio's Decameron.

In purely musical terms I would probably plump for something rather obvious - the overture to La Traviata or the Agnus Dei from the Requiem. But on that desert island principle that you must choose a piece that has some personal meaning, I opt for Macbeth. It's the first opera I remember seeing - in a 1981 production at Covent Garden with Renato Bruson and Renata Scotto. There were pro- and anti-Scotto elements in the audience who made their presence felt, and the atmosphere was like a bear-pit. I was hooked for life. The musical part that made the greatest impression that evening were the great choruses, especially Patria oppressa, in which the wretched Scots people rousingly bemoan their benighted lot.

Desdemona realises that The Willow Song she can't get out of her mind is a premonition of death and Verdi and his librettist Boïto telescope the scene into something almost more potent than Shakespeare. Margaret Price's anguish in the role was unforgettable, but Mirella Freni's soaring cries, here, also stab the heart.

I choose this TV recording of the Amneris/Radames duet in the Judgement scene in Act IV of Aida with Giulietta Simionato and Jon Vickers. Aida doesn't look like this any more, but then again it doesn't usually sound like this any more either....

In this extraordinary aria from Act I of Il Trovatore, the heroine Leonora recalls how she fell in love with the troubadour Manrico as she listened to him sing. It says everything there is to say about both romantic yearning and the seductive power of music itself. It's here sung by Leontyne Price, in the opinion of many, the greatest Verdi soprano of all time.

Verdi's great scene for King Philip II of Spain comes in Act IV of Don Carlo, and as the king muses obsessively on his twin lonelinesses (here's a translation), we realise he's the most interesting character in the opera. Not just "she doesn't love me" - "she NEVER loved me": it's unbearable! It's a superb vehicle for a really dark, cavernous bass – Boris Christoff is one of the greatest.

He looks nervous, curls his lip, beats the empty bar, and unleashes the crack, thunder, and oblivion of the storm that threatens to destroy Otello's boat as it makes for the shore. Carlos Kleiber's conducting of Otello at La Scala in 1976 propels this performance – with Placido Domingo and Mirella Freni as Otello and Desdemona – with a relentless energy that makes it, and the opening scene particularly, the most thrilling Verdi experience on YouTube.

Verdi's La Traviata is of course the greatest of operatic love stories, but for me its most affecting part is when Giorgio Germont - Alfredo's appalled, stuffy father - begins to fall for his son's lover, in spite of himself. Remarkable for its fluid momentum, the musical depiction of moral against social nobility is extraordinarily powerful.