Baltimore Opera Company

Study Guide

Rigoletto

The Composer - Giuseppe Verdi

Born October 10, 1813 – Died January 27, 1901

As a child in the small town of Le Roncole in Parma, Fortunio Giuseppe Francesco Verdi showed great interest in music-making. His father bought him a used spinet and arranged for him to have lessons from the village organist. When Verdi was about ten, his father sent him to nearby Busseto for further musical training. He was apprenticed to Antonio Barezzi, a keen musician who played the flute and clarinet and was the president of the local Philharmonic Society, who saw that he received the best musical training Busseto had to offer (which wasn't much). Verdi played the organ and sometimes filled in for Ferdinando Provesi, the conductor of the local orchestra who, like Barezzi, recognized the young man's potential. He began composing and some of his compositions were played by the local band. The townspeople of Busseto, together with Barezzi, raised funds to send him to the famous Conservatory in Milan. Verdi applied to the Conservatory in 1832 at the age of eighteen, but was deemed "lacking in musical talent." The Conservatory jurors felt that not only was he too old for study (the average age of a student was fourteen), but that his "mediocre" pianism would be an "embarrassment" to the institution. He sought private instruction with Vincenzo Lavigna, who taught him the basics of counterpoint (with emphasis on the works of Giovanni Palestrina and Benedetto Marcello), fugue and dramatic composition.

Verdi's first opera, Oberto, was introduced at La Scala on November 17, 1839. It was only heard in a few performances, but sufficiently impressed the great Ricordi publishing house that they accepted it and commissioned a new opera. Verdi's personal life took a miserable turn during this time when his wife (Margherita Barezzi, the daughter of his gracious benefactor) and two young children died within a short span. The new opera, a comedy titled Un Giorno di Regno, was a fiasco. Despite its failure and his personal misfortunes, Verdi went to work on his next opera, Nabucco. Nabucco premiered on March 9, 1848 at La Scala and was such a triumph that suddenly food, clothing and toys were being named after him (like Michael Jordan and Nike Air Jordans).

By 1850, Verdi was the first man of opera in Italy and one of the most successful in all of Europe. Yet one of the most popular and frequently performed operas of our time, Verdi's La Traviata, had a disastrous opening in 1853. Some of the audience were shocked by the immorality of the story, others disliked the contemporary setting. Before the final curtain had fallen, the crowd had voiced its disapproval with hissing, shouting and catcalls. Verdi withdrew the opera for a year in order to rework it; when it played again in its new form on May 6, 1854, it was a great success.

In 1863, Verdi was elected as a deputy to the newly formed Italian Parliament. Though he was passionately patriotic, Verdi hated politics and soon withdrew. In fact, when in 1874 King Victor Emmanuel decreed him a lifetime Senator, Verdi only attended the Senate once - to take his oath! During his tenure in office he did try to push through a scheme for government subsidy of lyric theaters and conservatories.

Verdi had his second great period of creativity from 1851 (Rigoletto) to 1871 (Aïda). Aïda was the culmination of this period, the grandest of grand operas. The opera was commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt as part of the celebration of the opening of the Suez Canal. No expense was spared in the production—Radames' shield and helmet were solid silver, Amneris' crown was pure gold, and the second act triumphal march had a cast of three hundred.

After Aïda, Verdi took a sixteen year holiday from writing operas. During this period he wrote one of his rare instrumental pieces, a string quartet. He also completed his most important non-operatic work, the Manzoni Requiem. For the remaining years in this period, he devoted himself to his farm in Sant' Agata. His next opera was Otello, a phenomenal success, followed by his last opera, Falstaff. There was only one composition after Falstaff, the Quattro pezzi sacri (Four Sacred Pieces) for chorus.

He suffered a paralytic stroke on January 21, 1901 and died six days later. He was given a national hero's funeral—schools were closed, a special session of the Senate heard eulogies, thousands jammed the streets to see his funeral cortege. Of all composers of Italian opera, Giuseppe Verdi stands as the pinnacle, so great as to "practically constitute the history of Italian music."*

SUSAN GRAY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ewen, David, Ed., Great Composers 1300–1900: A Biographical and Critical Guide (NY: H.W. Wilson Company, 1966)
* Grout, Donald Jay and Palisca , Claude V., A History of Western Music (NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988)
Schonberg, Harold C., The Lives of the Great Composers (NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981)

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