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Giuseppe Verdi Biography

Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901)
Verdi was born sometime between Oct. 9 and Oct. 11 (the records are unclear), 1813. Though he was not a peasant, he came from extremely modest circumstances -- his parents were innkeepers in Roncole. Apprenticed to the town organist, he showed enough aptitude to pursue studies in the nearby town of Busseto. His education was underwritten by a fatherly benefactor, Antonio Barezzi, a greengrocer.

Barezzi helped Verdi go to Milan, where he was refused enrollment at the conservatory on the grounds that he was 19, which was considered too old, and not proficient enough at keyboard playing. Despite this rebuff, Verdi studied privately with an accompanist at La Scala in Milan and the mentor saw to it that Verdi attended the opera regularly. In 1836 Verdi married Barezzi's daughter Margherita. Three years later, his first opera, Oberto, was staged at La Scala in 1839.

Then tragedy struck. At the beginning of April 1840 Verdi's little boy fell ill and died, followed by his young daughter two days later. In June his wife Margherita had an attack of acute encephalitis and died after a short illness. Verdi's entire life was shattered, and he returned to Busseto. The successive shocks caused Verdi to consider abandoning music.

It wasn't until two years later, when he discovered the libretto Nabucco, a tale of the plight of the Hebrews during biblical times, that his interest in opera revived. Nabucco was a great success, and its portrayal of oppression was understood as a political statement about Italy. Verdi's name became synonymous with the movement to free and unify Italy, and he took his growing public stature quite seriously. Nabucco's success encouraged Verdi, and he went on to compose some of the most important operas in all of opera history, including La Traviata, Il Trovatore, and Aida.

Though his career was by no means finished, Verdi retired to Sant'Agata, his farm-estate at the age of 58 with his second wife, the well-known soprano Giuseppina Strepponi. Over the next several years he wrote his famous Requiem Mass and a string quartet. Then, much later, in 1887 at the age of 74, Verdi surprised the opera world with Otello. It was based on the Shakespeare play and considered by many experts to be the highest achievement of Italian opera. Six years later, at the age of 80, he produced another masterpiece, again from Shakespeare - Falstaff, based on The Merry Wives of Windsor.

In the winter of 1901, his wife Giuseppina and many of his friends already dead, Verdi suffered a stroke in his hotel suite in Milan. He died at 88 and, after the simple funeral he requested, was given a public funeral of a size and kind usually reserved for chiefs of state.

- Courtesy of OPERA NEWS