Musicians - Giuseppe Verdi

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	Musicians - Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (October 10, 1813 – January 27, 1901) is to date the most influential Italian composer of the 19th century's Italian School of Opera. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture - such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto. Oftentimes scoffed at by the critics, in his lifetime and today, as catering to the tastes of the common folk, overly simple in chromatic texture and shamelessly melodramatic, Verdi’s masterpieces dominate the standard repertoire a century and a half after their composition.

Biography

Early life

Verdi was born on October 10, 1813 in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza (now in the province of Parma). His father was an innkeeper. When he was still a child, Verdi's parents moved to Busseto from the province of Piacenza, where the future composer's education was greatly facilitated by visits to the large library belonging to the local Jesuit school. Also in Busseto, Verdi received his first lessons in composition from Ferdinando Provesi, who was in charge of the local philharmonic society.

Verdi went to Milan when he was twenty to continue his studies, but the Conservatory of Music rejected him, citing that he was two years over the age limit. Verdi took private lessons in counterpoint while attending operatic performances in Milan, as well as lesser concerts of, specifically, Viennese music. Association with Milan's beaumonde convinced him he should pursue a career as a theatre composer.

Returning to Busseto, he became town music master and, in 1830, gave his first public performance at the home of Antonio Barezzi, a local merchant and music lover who supported Verdi's musical ambitions in Milan and who invited him to be the music teacher of his daughter, Margherita. They married in 1836 and their two children died in infancy.

Initial recognition

The production of his first opera, Oberto, by Milan's La Scala, achieved a degree of success, after which Bartolomeo Merelli, an impresario with La Scala, offered Verdi a contract for two more works.

While working on his second opera, Un giorno di regno, Verdi's wife and children died. The opera was a flop and he fell into despair vowing to give up musical composition forever. However, Merelli persuaded him to write Nabucco in 1842 and its opening performance made Verdi famous. Legend has it that it was the words of the famous "Va pensiero" chorus of the Hebrew slaves which inspired Verdi to begin writing again.

A large number of operas followed in the decade after 1843, a period which Verdi was to describe as his "galley years". These included I Lombardi (1843) and Ernani (1844)

For some, the most important and original among Verdi's early operas is Macbeth (1847). For the first time, Verdi attempted an operistic adaptation of a work by his favorite dramatist — William Shakespeare — and by creating an opera without a love story, he broke a basic convention in Italian 19th Century opera.

In 1847, I Lombardi, revised and renamed Jerusalem, was produced by the Paris Opera and, due to a number of Parisian conventions that had to be honored (including extensive ballets), became Verdi's first work in the French grand-opera style.

Great master

At the age of thirty-eight, Verdi began an affair with Giuseppina Strepponi, a soprano in the twilight of her career. Their cohabitation before marriage was regarded as scandalous in some of the places they lived, but Verdi and Giuseppina married in 1859.

As the "galley years" were drawing to a close, Verdi created one of his greatest masterpieces, Rigoletto which premiered in Venice in 1851. Based on a play by author Victor Hugo, the libretto had to undergo substantive revisions in order to satisfy the epoch's censorship, and the composer was on the verge of giving it all up a number of times. The opera quickly became a great success.

With Rigoletto Verdi sets up his original idea of musical drama as a cocktail of heterogeneous elements embodying social and cultural complexity, and beginning from a distinctive mixture of comedy and tragedy. Rigolettos musical range includes band-music such as the first scene or the song La donna è mobile, Italian melody such as the famous quartet Bella figlia dell'amore, chamber music such as the duet between Rigoletto and Sparafucile and powerful and concise declamatos often based on key-notes like the C and C# notes in Rigoletto and Monterone's upper register.

There followed the second and third of the three major operas of Verdi's "middle period": in 1853 Il Trovatore was produced in Rome and La traviata in Venice. The latter was based on Alexandre Dumas, fils' play The Lady of the Camellias.
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