Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi was born in Le Roncole, a hamlet in the Duchy of Parma, in October 1813, the son of a village innkeeper. He studied locally and in Busseto, then was rejected by the Milan Conservatory in 1832 for being too old (he was eighteen) and outside the catchment. He studied privately in Milan with Vincenzo Lavigna for three years, returned to Busseto as town musical director from 1836, and then produced his first opera, *Oberto*, for La Scala in 1839.

His mature output is one of the central bodies of the operatic canon. The early successes from *Nabucco* (1842) through *Macbeth* (1847) and *Luisa Miller* (1849) led to the middle period — *Rigoletto* (1851), *Il trovatore* and *La traviata* (both 1853), and the grand operas *Les vêpres siciliennes*, *Simon Boccanegra* (1857, revised 1881), *Un ballo in maschera* and *La forza del destino*. *Aida* (1871) closed that period; *Otello* (1887) and *Falstaff* (1893), both on libretti by Arrigo Boito, returned him to the stage in his seventies and eighties for the final two operas, which redefined what Italian opera could do at the end of the century. He also wrote the *Requiem* (1874) and the late *Quattro pezzi sacri* (1898).

Verdi served briefly in the first national Italian parliament after Unification, an institution he had supported through both his name and (more privately) his money. He founded the Casa di Riposo, a residence for retired musicians, in Milan, where he was buried after his death in January 1901. Music Preserved’s archive includes a substantial range of his operatic work.