Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi is known primarily as a composer of 28 operas, many of which remain staples of opera companies throughout the world. But he also composed choral works, songs, and a few instrumental works, notably his String Quartet in E minor.

At the time of Verdi’s birth, Italy comprised a loose collection of city-states, variously occupied by Spain, France, and Austria. A movement called Risorgimento, intended to drive out the occupiers and unite Italy, began around 1815 and officially succeeded in 1871, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Verdi played an important role in this “revolution,” and is regarded by Italians as a national hero to this day: he was politically active, served briefly in an official capacity, and used his wealth to support the Italian cause; several of his operas (e.g., Nabucco, Aida, Attila, La battaglia di Legnano) address the plight of oppressed nations, which Italian audiences understood to mirror their own situation. His vast correspondence with librettists, publishers, and friends reveal a detail-oriented, often curmudgeonly personality, but also a generous man with a wry and frequently off-color sense of humor.

Early Years

Verdi was born on October 10, 1813 (the same year as the German composer Richard Wagner), in Roncole, a suburb of Busseto in the Duchy of Parma. The Verdi family were, historically, landowners and taverners who valued education. Verdi had early exposure to music through itinerant musicians, as well as the local philharmonic society, which also traveled, stopping at the Verdi family inn. At the age of 18, Verdi applied to the Milan Conservatory, but was rejected because he was too old and not a resident of Lombardy (then occupied by Austrians). He remained in Busseto and boarded with the merchant Antonio Barezzi, whose daughter became Verdi’s pupil, and eventually his wife. Barezzi supported Verdi’s private lessons in Milan with Vincenzo Lavigna, who was the concertmaster at La Scala, the preeminent Italian opera house.

Verdi’s compositions after 1838 (when they began to be published) are often divided by scholars into three style periods: Early, Middle, and Late.

Early Period (1839–49)

In the first half of the 19th century, composers were expected to produce “number” operas, comprising a series of discrete pieces—ensembles and arias, many of which followed a rigid musical and poetic two-movement structure: a slow(ish) cantabile and a fiery, virtuosic cabaletta. Verdi complained vociferously about these requirements, but broke away once he had amassed enough capital to become independent. In a famous letter of May 12, 1858, to his friend Clara Maffei, Verdi looked back on his career and complained: “Since Nabucco, you may say, I have never had one hour of peace. Sixteen years in the galley.”  The “galley” was the system in which impresarios and publishers were the chief employers of librettists and opera composers, who were rather low in the hierarchy of a remarkably lucrative business.

Verdi’s first opera, Oberto, had a successful premiere at La Scala in 1839, which led to a three-year contract authorized by the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli. His second opera, Un giorno di regno (1840), however, was a miserable failure, compounded by personal tragedy: between 1838 and 1840, Verdi lost his wife and two children, and nearly gave up composing.

The work that roused him from his self-imposed embargo on composition was Nabucco, which he later immortalized (and mythologized) in his Autobiographical Sketch (1879). At Merelli’s insistence, a very stubborn and skeptical Verdi took the libretto home with him and “threw [it] on the table with an almost violent gesture, and remained standing before it. In falling, it had opened of itself; without my realizing it, my eyes clung to the open page and to one special line: ‘Va pensiero, sull’ali dorate’ [‘Fly, oh thought, on golden wings’].” Verdi set that line to one of the best-known melodies in all of Italian opera, the "Chorus of the Hebrew slaves" in Nabucco, which premiered at La Scala on March 9, 1842, with Giuseppina Strepponi singing the role of Abigaille. Strepponi and Verdi became lovers, and soon began to live together, now the subject of gossip and moral outrage. They married in 1859, and their partnership lasted until Strepponi’s death in 1897.

Middle period (1850–73)

Verdi was adamant about his independence when it came to his personal life and artistic choices. He had harsh words for those who judged him, even for his beloved ex-father-in-law Antonio Barezzi, who criticized his living arrangements: the words of Verdi’s written response to Barezzi nearly shout from the page: “I have nothing to hide. In my house there lives a lady, free and independent… Neither I nor she is obliged to account to anyone for our actions… I claim my freedom of action, because all men have a right to it, and because my nature rebels against mere conformity” (emphasis added). The independence and strength of his relationship with Strepponi seemed to intensify his growing artistic radicalism, which would soon manifest itself in his choice of unconventional subjects for three of his most famous operas: in Rigoletto (1851), a hunchback’s beautiful daughter is abducted and raped; in Il trovatore (1853), a mad gypsy’s vengeful act of throwing an infant into a fire leads to fratricide; and in La traviata (1853), a consumptive courtesan loves a man above her social class and later dies in his arms.

Verdi: Quartet in E minor for Strings

Late period (1874–1893)

After the premieres of Don Carlos (1867) and Aida (1871), Verdi became more reclusive. He tended his estate and, when possible, avoided public appearances and publicity. He was stirred out of his semi-retirement by the death of Alessandro Manzoni—eminent Italian poet, novelist, critic, and Risorgimento champion—whom Verdi memorialized in the Messa da Requiem (1874). The one person who motivated Verdi to resume opera composition, however, was poet and librettist Arrigo Boito, who in 1879 proposed the subject of Shakespeare’s Othello. This opportunity was catnip to Verdi, who valued the Bard above all writers. In 1889, Boito again “seduced” Verdi with a comic libretto, Falstaff, also based on Shakespeare. Verdi, however, insisted on keeping the project a secret, not least since his first effort at comedy nearly 50 years earlier (Un giorno di regno) had flopped. But the opera about Shakespeare’s fat knight, referred to affectionately by composer and librettist as “Potbelly,” was an enormous success at its La Scala premiere (1893).

Death

Verdi had a stroke on January 21, 1901, while staying at the Grand Hotel in Milan, and died on the 27th. He and Strepponi were eventually buried side by side in the courtyard of the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti (“Rest Home for Musicians,” one of the composer’s many philanthropic endeavors).

Verdi’s Music

Many of Verdi’s operas are about fathers and daughters (Rigoletto, Simon Boccanegra), vexed rulers (Un ballo in maschera, Don Carlos), and distraught heroines and mothers (Il trovatore, La forza del destino). They often feature the so-called “Verdi baritone” (Rigoletto, Iago, Amonasro, Count di Luna), a voice of exceptional agility, dark timbre, and a wide range of pitch and emotion. Verdi also tried to define each opera with a unique sonority or tinta (“color”)—e.g., the pervasive dance rhythms of La traviata or, in Macbeth (1847), the wind instruments that evoke a desolate landscape inhabited by witches.

Verdi composed for specific singers, but he also wrote extraordinary solos for many of the virtuoso performers employed by opera house orchestras: for Alfredo Piatti, principal cellist of the orchestra at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, a lengthy solo in the overture to I masnadieri (1847) and, for Eugenio Cavallini, the concertmaster of the La Scala orchestra, a violin concerto-like prelude to Act III, scene 3 of I Lombardi alla prima crociata (1843) which melts into an obbligato for a gorgeous vocal trio.

And, finally, every chamber music lover should become acquainted with Verdi’s String Quartet in E minor (1873), which he composed in Naples while attending rehearsals for Aida. The most common question about this piece is: does it sound like an opera? Yes, at times, especially in its lyrical moments and in the opening theme of the first movement, which profiles briefly one of the main melodies of La forza del destino. The middle two movements pay homage to the dance, and the finale is a Scherzo fuga (“playful fugue”) which looks ahead to the Falstaff finale—a vocal and instrumental fugue beginning with the words “All the world’s a fool,” ending with “He who laughs last laughs best.” 

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