GIUSEPPE VERDI

A Boy, an Inn and a Very Old Organ

I was born in October 1813 in Roncole, a tiny village near Busseto, where my father Carlo ran an inn and sold wine and provisions while my mother Luigia spun thread. Nobody in the family was a musician, but from 1818 the village organist, Pietro Baistrocchi, started teaching me the organ. When he died in 1823, I took over his job, which means I was a working church organist while most boys my age were still worrying about their shoes. In 1825 I began studying counterpoint and composition with Ferdinando Provesi, the music master in Busseto, and that's where I really learned how music is built.

Rejected, Then Rewarded

A local merchant named Antonio Barezzi believed in me, took me into his household in 1831, and had me teach music to his daughter Margherita. In June 1832 I applied to the Milan Conservatory and was turned down, which stung quite a bit. So I stayed in Milan and studied privately with Vincenzo Lavigna, and I'd say that worked out well enough. After my first opera, Oberto, reached La Scala in 1839, Nabucco followed on 9 March 1842 and was a spectacular success, and from that night on people knew my name.

Life Around La Scala

Milan was where my career happened, and La Scala was the great opera house at its center. An opera house in those days was part concert hall, part social club and part courtroom, because the audience made up its mind loudly and out loud. I learned to write for that crowd, with strong melodies that people could remember and hum on the way home. Milan also became the place where I would later end my days, though I didn't know that yet.

The Works People Come For

The piece you'll find on this site is Aida, which was first performed in Cairo on 24 December 1871. It has huge, splendid scenes full of crowds and pageantry, and between them come quiet, tender moments where only a few people are singing. I like that contrast, because a big spectacle means little unless you care about the people standing in the middle of it. If you get curious about the rest, Rigoletto came out in Venice in 1851, and in 1853 came Il trovatore in Rome and La traviata in Venice.

The Hardest Years

I have to go back a little, because my early success came with a terrible price. My daughter Virginia and my son Icilio both died as babies, and in June 1840 my wife Margherita, the girl I'd once taught, died too. That same year, in September, my comic opera Un giorno di regno failed, and writing something funny while grieving is about as hard as a job can get. Happier days did come later, when the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, whom I'd known since the 1840s, and I were married in a secret religious ceremony in 1859.

Old Age, Still Working

You'd think a man would put his feet up after Aida, but in 1874 I presented my Requiem in Milan, written in memory of Alessandro Manzoni. Then came Otello at La Scala in 1887, and Falstaff in 1893, a comedy that I wrote when I was nearly eighty. In those same years I was building a rest home for retired musicians in Milan, work that began in 1889 and took until 1899. I died in Milan on 27 January 1901, aged 87, after a stroke, and the home opened in 1902.

What I Left Behind

Around 1859, people across Italy began scribbling "Viva V.E.R.D.I." on walls, and it was a clever code for "Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re d'Italia", a cheer for the king they hoped to have. My name had somehow become a banner for a whole country's hopes, which I find both flattering and slightly alarming. The rest home for musicians, my Casa di Riposo, is still there as proof that I cared about the people who make music, not just the music. And my operas are still performed on stages around the world, long after anyone who first applauded them is gone.

What I'd Like You to Take Away

I'd like you to know that you don't need to study anything to enjoy what I wrote. Put on Aida, let the big moments sweep over you, and pay attention to the quiet ones, because that's where the people in the story become real. I wrote for ordinary audiences, from innkeepers to the crowds at La Scala, and I always wanted them to feel something. If you feel it too, even for a few minutes, then the boy from Roncole has done his job.