Giuseppe Verdi

One of the greatest composers of Italian opera, Giuseppe Verdi revolutionized the genre and left behind many popular arias from Rigoletto, La traviata, Nabucco and Aida, becoming through his commitment a symbol of national reunification. Born in the hamlet of Roncole (now Roncole Verdi), near Busseto in Emilia-Romagna, on October 10, 1813, Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born in a French department taken over from Austria four months later. The first child of a couple of innkeepers, he received his first musical lessons from schoolmaster and organist Pietro Baistrocchi, and practiced on a spinet. After becoming church organist, he continued in this role during his studies in Busseto, where he took lessons from Ferdinando Provesi, director of the Philharmonic Society. He gave his first piano concerts, conducted the orchestra and composed his first pieces, before failing the entrance exam to the Milan Conservatory in 1832. He resumed his studies with Vincenzo Lavigna for three years, and was appointed Kapellmeister in Busseto after conducting Haydn's Creation and Rossini's opera La Cenerentola. In the year of his appointment, May 4, 1836, Verdi married one of his patron's daughters, Margherita Barezzi, who died four years later, after their two young children. From this period date the religious pieces Tantum ergo (1836) and Messa di Gloria (1837), as well as Six romances profanes. In 1839, after unsuccessful attempts by Lord Hamilton and Rocester, the composer completed the opera Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio, which premiered at La Scala in Milan on November 17. Its success led him to sign contracts for other works, including the opera buffa Un giorno di regno (1840), which was withdrawn after its premiere. Faced with this failure, La Scala impresario Bartolomeo Merelli offered him a libretto by Temistocle Solera, Nabucco, based on an episode from the Bible about the enslavement of the Hebrews in Babylon. The premiere on March 9, 1842 was a triumph, and its chorus of "Va pensiero" became a symbol of emancipation, chanted by supporters of Italian unity led by Garibaldi, whose rallying cry was "Viva V.E.R.D.I." ("Viva V.E.R.D.I."). ("Long live Victor Emanuele King of Italy"). The role of Abigaile was entrusted to his future wife, Giuseppina Strepponi. In line with the realist and romantic aspirations of the audience, the opera was applauded in Parma in front of his father and... Marie-Louise of Austria. This marked the beginning of what Verdi called his "galley years", during which he had to produce an opera for sixteen years. Success followed with the patriotic I Lombardi alla prima Crociata (February 11, 1843), then Ernani, his first collaboration with librettist Francesco Maria Pave, based on Victor Hugo's drama, premiered in Venice on March 9, 1844, before I due Foscari in Rome on November 3 of the same year. Having become the undisputed master of the Italian opera stage, Verdi, who had to negotiate bitterly for commissions and numerous publishing proposals, became a shrewd businessman and further accelerated his production pace with the historical dramas Giovanna d'Arco (Milan, February 15, 1845), Alzira (Naples, August 12, 1845) and Attila (Venice, March 17, 1846), followed by Macbeth after Shakespeare (Florence, March 14, 1847) and I Masnadieri, commissioned by Benjamin Lumley, director of Her Majesty's Theatre in London, where it premiered on July 22, 1847, with Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. In Paris, where he stayed intermittently for two years and formalized his affair with "la Strepponi", the composer adapted I lombardi, which became Jerusalem in French, then set to work on Il corsaro, premiered in Trieste (October 25, 1848), as did Stiffelio (November 16, 1850). In the meantime, as the revolution set Italy ablaze, La battaglia di Legnano inflamed Roman audiences at the height of the Risorgimento, and his hymn Suona la tromba was adopted at the request of Giuseppe Mazzini. In 1849, he adapted a Schiller drama for Luisa Miller, which premiered in Naples, marking an evolution in the more subtle psychological treatment of the characters and the more refined musical form. Now settled as a couple on the Sant'Agata estate, Verdi opened his "popular trilogy" with Rigoletto, based on Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse, which received a standing ovation at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851, with its famous aria "La donna è mobile". The same was true in Rome, on January 19, 1853, for Il trovatore and its "Gypsy Chorus", before the continuous vocal fireworks of La traviata, based on Alexandre Dumas' La dame aux camélias, premiered in Venice on March 6, 1853. "La Grande Boutique", the name Verdi gave to the Paris Opera, commissioned him to write Les Vêpres siciliennes, which premiered on June 13, 1855 for the Universal Exhibition. Back in Italy, he presented Simon Boccanegra in Venice (March 12, 1857), which suffered a setback, then took up the subject of Stiffelio for Aroldo, which opened Rimini's Teatro Nuovo on August 16. Premiered in Rome on February 17, 1859, Un ballo in maschera takes as its subject the assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden during a masked ball. After marrying Strepponi on April 29, Verdi agrees to represent the province of Parma at the Turin Parliament, where he remains for five years. He travels to St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, where he is commissioned to create La force du destin, premiered on November 10, 1862 in the presence of Alexander II. The following years were devoted to his duties as a member of parliament and to managing his artistic and property assets. He revised several operas, including Macbeth, his last collaboration with Piave, who had worked with him on nine works, before making his comeback with Don Carlos, premiered in French in Paris on March 11, 1867 before Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. Several Italian versions followed under the title Don Carlo, notably with Teresa Stolz, who became the composer's mistress and interpreter of his last works. Although she was not chosen for the premiere ofAïda, commissioned by the Khedive Ismaïl Pacha for the opening of the Cairo Opera on December 24, 1871, she nevertheless sang the role of the Ethiopian slave at the Italian premiere in Milan on February 8, 1872, then in the imposing Requiem premiered on May 22, 1874. In 1873, Verdi composed a unique and little-known String Quartet. Although he failed to complete his adaptation of King Lear, a project that had been nurtured for decades, the master embarked on two other operas inspired by Shakespeare's plays, Otello, premiered in Milan on February 5, 1887, and Falstaff, on February 9, 1893, between religious works: Quattro pezzi sacri (1889), Tre pezzi sacri (1898), a Stabat Mater (1897) and a Te Deum (1895). After the death of "Peppina" Strepponi on November 14, 1897, Verdi died of a cerebral hemorrhage on January 27, 1901, at the age of 87.