Giuseppe Verdi

EARLY LIFE 

Giuseppe Verdi was born on October 10, 1813, in Le Roncole, a village near Parma in northern Italy's Po River valley.

Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi by Giacomo Brogi 

Le Roncole, is now known as Roncole Verdi. "I was, am and always will be a peasant from Roncole," Verdi said in the year of his 50th birthday.

The child of a poor inn-keeper, Giuseppe showed unusual musical talent at an early age. At age ten, he began attending school in the larger town of Busseto and boarding with a cobbler friend of his father’s. On Sundays and feast days, he would walk back to Le Roncole to play the organ for church services.

A local amateur musician named Antonio Barezzi who owned a popular store on the main street of Busseto helped Giuseppe with his education.

Verdi's childhood home at Le Roncole By Maxperot 

CAREER 

One of the leading composers of Italian operas in the 19th century, Verdi's Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore and La Traviata (both 1853), and Aida (1871) will be staged as long as operas are performed.

When Verdi was 15 he applied to study music at the Milan Conservatory but was turned down. But, at Barezzi's expense Verdi was sent to Milan when he was 18. He stayed there for three years, then served as musical director in Busseto for two years before returning to Milan.

With his early 1840s operas Nabucco and Ernani. Verdi's fame and fortune were made. The right to publish one opera brought him $4,000..

Verdi retired in the 1870s,  a rich man who owned a lot of land.. Even in retirement he was persuaded by his publishers to write two more operas Otello and Falstaff.

In the 1890s, 'Viva VERDI' was a nationalistic slogan for 'VIVA Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia' (Long live Vittorio Emanuele, King of Italy).

Painting "Viva Verdi" slogans

A press reporter once asked Verdi for his full address. "I think" replied the immodest composer "that Italy will be sufficient."

WORKS

Giuseppe Verdi wrote virtually all of his works for the stage--from the first of his 29 operas in 1839 to his last in 1893.

Before Verdi operas had beautiful tunes which were written for singers to show off their voices, even if what they sang did not suit the story. Verdi's music shaped and advances the dramatic action in his operas. He often linked musical themes and motifs with specific characters and events, especially in such late masterpieces as Otello and Falstaff. He made the drama the most important thing and the music was there to help the drama.

Giuseppe Verdi in Vanity Fair (1879)

Giuseppe Verdi's first opera Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, was premiered at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on November 17, 1839.

His second opera, the comedy Un Giorno Di Regno (King For A Day, 1840), was a failure. The public booed both the cast and the composer.

Nabucco was an opera in four acts by Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera. The opera was based on the Biblical story of the plight of the Jews as they are exiled from their homeland by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar.

Premiered on March 9, 1842 at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan Nabucco was a huge success and made Verdi world-famous.

Verdi-Nabucco-original costume sketch

The song "Va pensiero" ("Fly, My Thoughts") from Nabucco was about the Hebrew slaves who were captive in Babylon. It was much in the spirit of the Italian unification movement and when the people started chanting the work in the streets with the words suitably changed for nationalistic purposes, Verdi became a great national hero.

Giuseppe Verdi's La Traviata, based on a novel by Alexandre Dumas, premiered at Venice's La Fenice on March 6, 1853.

The opera tells the tragic tale of a courtesan who falls in love. At the first performance the audience laughed because the heroine, who is supposed to be dying of consumption, was very fat. The performance was so bad that it caused the Italian composer to revise portions of the opera. However, La Traviata soon became enormously popular.

Poster for the world premiere

The most famous song from La traviata is "The Anvil Chorus," which is the English name for the Coro di Zingari (Italian for "Gypsy chorus").The work depicts Spanish gypsies striking their anvils at dawn and singing the praises of hard work, good wine, and gypsy women.

During the early twentieth century, "The Anvil Chorus" was commonly sung by American spectators attending sporting events, or played by a band, when an opponent committed an error.

Rigoletto was first performed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851. It was based on a story called Le roi s’amuse by Victor Hugo. However the attempted murder of a king was not thought by the censors to be a suitable subject. Verdi had to change the king into a duke in his story and make some other changes before the opera could be performed.

Verdi kept his big aria for the duke in Rigoletto a secret until the last minute. Even the young tenor, Raffaele Mirate, who was to sing it at the opera's Venice debut was kept in the dark until close to curtain up. Verdi knew that, once "La donna è mobile" ("Women always change their minds") got out, every gondolier would be belting it out up and down the Grand Canal, spoiling Verdi's big moment.

Act 1, Scene 2 stage set by Giuseppe Bertoja for the world premiere of Rigoletto

Verdi's opera Aida failed to meet a deadline to open Cairo's Khedivial Opera house, because it's scenery and costumes got stuck in Paris during the Franco Prussian War.

Aida eventually premiered on December 24, 1871, to great acclaim at the Khedivial Opera House. However, Verdi was unhappy that the audience consisted of invited dignitaries and critics, but no members of the general public. He therefore considered the European premiere, held at La Scala, Milan, to be its real premiere.

The composer received $20,000 for the first night's performance of Aida.

Verdi conducting the 1880 Paris Opera premiere

Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, was produced just before his 80th birthday. Verdi's first comic opera for more than 50 years, thousands of music lovers journeyed to Milan from all parts of Italy for its first performance on February 9, 1893. The hour-long ovation the aged composer received has seldom been equalled in musical history.

Falstaff is based on William Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor. It was Verdi's third adaptation of Shakespeare following his operas, Macbeth and Otello. He adored the Bard, and kept translations of his plays by his bed.

Falstaff was a culmination of all the skills that Verdi learned. Flawless in form and structure, it was crafted with meticulous care in their melodies, harmonies, and orchestration.

First edition cover

Baritone Leonard Warren died on stage at The Met in 1960 just as he had finished singing Verdi's 'Morir, Tremenda Cosi' ('To Die, a Momentous Thing') from his 1862 opera La forza del destino.

PERSONAL LIFE 

Verdi married Barezzi's daughter Margherita, who was his former student, on May 4, 1836 in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Busseto. However, just as he had established a reputation and begun to make money, the composer was discouraged by personal tragedies. Within a three-year period between 1838 and 1840 both of his children died then Margherita passed away at the age of 26 from encephalitis.

Margherita Barezzi, Verdi's first wife

Giuseppina Strepponi was the famed soprano who sang the part of Abigaille in Nabucco. Verdi fell in love with her though she was living with another man and had three children with him. They were cohabiting by 1847 when they lived together in Paris, before moving to Busetto in 1849. Their relationship created a great scandal for the times.

In May 1848, Verdi signed a contract for land and houses at Sant'Agata in Busseto. It was there he built the Villa Verdi, where he lived with Giuseppina from 1851 until his death.

Verdi and Giuseppina eventually married on August 29, 1859 and she was a great support to him for the rest of the composer's life.

Giuseppina Strepponi (c. 1845)

When the composer needed inspiration, he had a bowl of noodle soup.

Verdi never travelled abroad to conduct his work without a good supply of champagne in his baggage.

Verdi and German composer Richard Wagner were born the same year. The two leading opera composers of the second half of the 19th century, they never met and disliked each other's music.

LAST YEARS AND DEATH 

Verdi died of a stroke in Milan on January 27, 1901, which was the 145th anniversary of Mozart's birthday.

Verdi's funeral ceremony in Milan was simple and without music, at the composer's request, but his state funeral, with many orchestras, remains the largest public assembly ever in Italy. An estimated  300,000 people lined the streets to pay homage.

A Verdi museum has been established in La Scala opera house in Milan to honor his work there.

Sources Daily Express, Classicfm.com,  Cmuse