92 Facts About Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian composer best known for his operas.

Giuseppe Verdi was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron.

Giuseppe Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini, whose works significantly influenced him.

An intensely private person, Giuseppe Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements.

Giuseppe Verdi's operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata.

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Giuseppe Verdi had a younger sister, Giuseppa, who died aged 17 in 1833.

Giuseppe Verdi's is said to have been his closest friend during childhood.

Music historian Roger Parker points out that both of Giuseppe Verdi's parents "belonged to families of small landowners and traders, certainly not the illiterate peasants from which Giuseppe Verdi later liked to present himself as having emerged.

In 1823, when he was 10, Giuseppe Verdi's parents arranged for the boy to attend school in Busseto, enrolling him in a Ginnasio—an upper school for boys—run by Don Pietro Seletti, while they continued to run their inn at Le Roncole.

Giuseppe Verdi returned to Busseto regularly to play the organ on Sundays, covering the distance of several kilometres on foot.

At age 11, Giuseppe Verdi received schooling in Italian, Latin, the humanities, and rhetoric.

The young Giuseppe Verdi did not immediately become involved with the Philharmonic.

At the time, Giuseppe Verdi had been giving singing and piano lessons to Barezzi's daughter Margherita; by 1831, they were unofficially engaged.

Giuseppe Verdi set his sights on Milan, then the cultural capital of northern Italy, where he applied unsuccessfully to study at the Conservatory.

Lavigna encouraged Giuseppe Verdi to take out a subscription to La Scala, where he heard Maria Malibran in operas by Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini.

Giuseppe Verdi began making connections in the Milanese world of music that were to stand him in good stead.

In mid-1834, Giuseppe Verdi sought to acquire Provesi's former post in Busseto but without success.

Giuseppe Verdi taught, gave lessons, and conducted the Philharmonic for several months before returning to Milan in early 1835.

Giuseppe Verdi married Margherita in May 1836, and by March 1837, she had given birth to their first child, Virginia Maria Luigia on 26 March 1837.

Giuseppe Verdi adored his wife and children and was devastated by their early deaths.

Giuseppe Verdi was to claim that he gradually began to work on the music for Nabucco, the libretto of which had originally been rejected by the composer Otto Nicolai: "This verse today, tomorrow that, here a note, there a whole phrase, and little by little the opera was written", he later recalled.

Giuseppe Verdi attended the Salotto Maffei, Countess Clara Maffei's salons in Milan, becoming her lifelong friend and correspondent.

Giuseppe Verdi paid close attention to his financial contracts, making sure he was appropriately remunerated as his popularity increased.

Giuseppe Verdi began to use his growing prosperity to invest in land near his birthplace.

In May 1848, Giuseppe Verdi signed a contract for land and houses at Sant'Agata in Busseto, which had once belonged to his family.

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The older composer, recognising Giuseppe Verdi's talent, noted in a letter of January 1844: "I am very, very happy to give way to people of talent like Giuseppe Verdi.

Giuseppe Verdi remained in Parma for some weeks beyond his intended departure date.

The writer Andrew Porter notes that for the next ten years, Giuseppe Verdi's life "reads like a travel diary—a timetable of visits.

Giuseppe Verdi "never forgave the Milanese for their reception of Un giorno di regno".

Giuseppe Verdi relied on Piave again for I due Foscari, performed in Rome in November 1844, then on Solera once more for Giovanna d'Arco, at La Scala in February 1845, while in August that year he was able to work with Salvadore Cammarano on Alzira for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.

Giuseppe Verdi had known him since about 1828 as another of Barezzi's proteges.

Giuseppe Verdi reported to Barezzi that Verdi "has a breadth of spirit, of generosity, a wisdom".

Giuseppe Verdi was chosen by Verdi as one of the executors of his will, but predeceased the composer in 1890.

Giuseppe Verdi dedicated the opera to Barezzi: "I have long intended to dedicate an opera to you, as you have been a father, a benefactor and a friend for me.

Giuseppe Verdi had completed I masnadieri for London by May 1847 except for the orchestration.

Giuseppe Verdi agreed to conduct the premiere on 22 July 1847 at Her Majesty's Theatre, as well as the second performance.

Giuseppe Verdi agreed to adapt I Lombardi to a new French libretto; the result was Jerusalem, which contained significant changes to the music and structure of the work to meet Parisian expectations.

Giuseppe Verdi was awarded the Order of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.

Budden comments "In no other opera of his does Giuseppe Verdi appear to have taken so little interest before it was staged.

Giuseppe Verdi discovered that Piave was now "Citizen Piave" of the newly proclaimed Republic of San Marco.

Giuseppe Verdi found that city on the verge of becoming a republic, which commenced within days of La battaglia di Legnano's enthusiastically received premiere.

Giuseppe Verdi had intended to return to Italy in early 1848, but was prevented by work and illness, as well as, most probably, by his increasing attachment to Strepponi.

Giuseppe Verdi was committed to the publisher Giovanni Ricordi for an opera—which became Stiffelio—for Trieste in the Spring of 1850; and, subsequently, following negotiations with La Fenice, developed a libretto with Piave and wrote the music for Rigoletto for Venice in March 1851.

The failure of Stiffelio incited Giuseppe Verdi to take pains to rework it, although even in the completely recycled version of Aroldo (1857) it still failed to please.

Giuseppe Verdi substituted a Duke for the King, and the public response and subsequent success of the opera all over Italy and Europe fully vindicated the composer.

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Aware that the melody of the Duke's song "La donna e mobile" would become a popular hit, Giuseppe Verdi excluded it from orchestral rehearsals for the opera, and rehearsed the tenor separately.

Giuseppe Verdi's was shunned in the town and at church, and while Verdi appeared indifferent, she was certainly not.

Furthermore, Giuseppe Verdi was concerned about the administration of his newly acquired property at Sant'Agata.

In January 1851, Giuseppe Verdi broke off relations with his parents, and in April they were ordered to leave Sant'Agata; Giuseppe Verdi found new premises for them and helped them financially to settle into their new home.

Giuseppe Verdi now had sufficient earnings to retire, had he wished to.

Giuseppe Verdi had reached a stage where he could develop his operas as he wished, rather than be dependent on commissions from third parties.

Giuseppe Verdi began work on Il trovatore after the death of his mother in June 1851.

The fact that this is "the one opera of Giuseppe Verdi's which focuses on a mother rather than a father" is perhaps related to her death.

In February 1852, the couple attended a performance of Alexander Dumas filss play The Lady of the Camellias; Giuseppe Verdi immediately began to compose music for what would later become La traviata.

Giuseppe Verdi was happy to return to Sant'Agata and, in February 1856, was reporting a "total abandonment of music; a little reading; some light occupation with agriculture and horses; that's all".

Giuseppe Verdi gets up almost with the dawn, to go and examine the wheat, the maize, the vines, etc.

Giuseppe Verdi raged against the stringent requirements of the Neapolitan censor stating: "I'm drowning in a sea of troubles.

In 1848, the nationalist leader Giuseppe Mazzini requested Verdi (who complied) to write a patriotic hymn.

In 1859, Giuseppe Verdi was elected as a member of the new provincial council, and was appointed to head a group of five who would meet with King Vittorio Emanuele II in Turin.

Later, in 1874, Giuseppe Verdi was appointed a member of the Italian Senate, but did not participate in its activities.

Giuseppe Verdi came up with the idea of adapting the 1835 Spanish play Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino by Angel Saavedra, which became La forza del destino, with Piave writing the libretto.

Giuseppe Verdi had been invited to write a piece of music for the 1862 International Exhibition in London, and charged Boito with writing a text, which became the Inno delle nazioni.

Giuseppe Verdi's was to marry in 1878 the son of Verdi's friend and lawyer Angelo Carrara and her family became eventually the heirs of Verdi's estate.

Giuseppe Verdi was offered the enormous sum of 150, 000 francs for the opera, and it was first performed in Cairo in 1871.

Giuseppe Verdi spent much of 1872 and 1873 supervising the Italian productions of Aida at Milan, Parma and Naples, effectively acting as producer and demanding high standards and adequate rehearsal time.

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In 1869, Giuseppe Verdi had been asked to compose a section for a requiem mass in memory of Rossini.

Giuseppe Verdi compiled and completed the requiem, but its performance was abandoned.

Five years later, Giuseppe Verdi reworked his "Libera Me" section of the Rossini Requiem and made it a part of his Requiem honouring Alessandro Manzoni, who had died in 1873.

Giuseppe Verdi's became closely associated personally with Verdi, to Giuseppina Verdi's initial disquiet; but the women were reconciled and Stolz remained a companion of Verdi after Giuseppina's death in 1897 until his own death.

Giuseppe Verdi conducted his Requiem in Paris, London and Vienna in 1875 and in Cologne in 1876.

Giuseppe Verdi deliberately shied away from opportunities to publicise himself or to become involved with new productions of his works, but secretly he began work on Otello, which Boito had proposed to him privately in 1879.

The composition was delayed by a revision of Simon Boccanegra which Giuseppe Verdi undertook with Boito, produced in 1881, and a revision of Don Carlos.

Giuseppe Verdi witnessed the performance from the Royal Box at the side of King Umberto and the Queen.

Giuseppe Verdi was initially buried in a private ceremony at Milan's Cimitero Monumentale.

Giuseppe Verdi regarded journalists and would-be biographers, as well as his neighbors in Busseto and the operatic public at large, as an intrusive lot, against whose prying attentions he needed constantly to defend himself.

Strepponi wrote in 1871 "I won't say [Giuseppe Verdi] is an atheist, but he is not much of a believer.

Giuseppe Verdi was to claim in his Sketch that during his early training with Lavigna "I did nothing but canons and fugues.

Giuseppe Verdi uses in his early operas the standard elements of Italian opera content of the period, referred to by the opera writer Julian Budden as the 'Code Rossini', after the composer who established through his work and popularity the accepted templates of these forms; they were used by the composers dominant during Giuseppe Verdi's early career, Bellini, Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante.

Giuseppe Verdi was to develop these and the other formulae of the generation preceding him with increasing sophistication during his career.

Operas of the early period show Giuseppe Verdi learning by doing and gradually establishing mastery over the different elements of opera.

In I due Foscari Giuseppe Verdi first uses recurring themes identified with main characters; here and in future operas the accent moves away from the 'oratorio' characteristics of the first operas towards individual action and intrigue.

From this period onwards Giuseppe Verdi develops his instinct for "tinta", a term which he used for characterising elements of an individual opera score—Parker gives as an example "the rising 6th that begins so many lyric pieces in Ernani".

Giuseppe Verdi was to comment in 1868 that Rossini and his followers missed "the golden thread that binds all the parts together and, rather than a set of numbers without coherence, makes an opera".

Giuseppe Verdi will continue to draw on certain of its forms for the next few operas, but in a totally new spirit.

Chusid notes Giuseppe Verdi's increasing tendency to replace full-scale overtures with shorter orchestral introductions.

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Nonetheless there is still much originality, building on the strengths which Giuseppe Verdi had already demonstrated; the powerful storm which opens the opera in medias res, the recollection of the love duet of Act I in Otello's dying words, imaginative touches of harmony in Iago's "Era la notte" (Act II).

Giuseppe Verdi had no pupils apart from Muzio and no school of composers sought to follow his style which, however much it reflected his own musical direction, was rooted in the period of his own youth.

Pizzo claims that Giuseppe Verdi was part of this movement, for his operas were inspired by the love of country, the struggle for Italian independence, and speak to the sacrifice of patriots and exiles.

Likewise, Roger Parker argues that the political dimension of Giuseppe Verdi's operas was exaggerated by nationalistic historians looking for a hero in the late 19th century.

Giuseppe Verdi later became disillusioned by politics, but he was personally active part in the political world of events of the Risorgimento and was elected to the first Italian parliament in 1861.

Giuseppe Verdi has been the subject of a number of film and stage works.

These include the 1938 film directed by Carmine Gallone, Giuseppe Verdi, starring Fosco Giachetti; the 1982 miniseries, The Life of Verdi, directed by Renato Castellani, where Verdi was played by Ronald Pickup, with narration by Burt Lancaster in the English version; and the 1985 play After Aida, by Julian Mitchell.