Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi wrote twenty-six operas across fifty-four years and became the musical embodiment of Italian unification. Born near Busseto in the Duchy of Parma in 1813 to an innkeeper, he was rejected by the Milan Conservatory as over-age and technically deficient, and studied privately instead. His first opera succeeded in 1839. Then, within two years, his infant daughter, his infant son and his wife Margherita all died, and his second opera, a comedy he had to write during it, failed completely. He resolved to give up composing. Nabucco in 1842 restored him. Its chorus of Hebrew slaves, Va, pensiero, was taken up as an anthem of Italians under Austrian rule, and his name became a nationalist acrostic for Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia. He described the following years as his time in the galleys, producing operas at a punishing rate. The middle period brought Rigoletto in 1851, Il trovatore and La traviata in 1853. La traviata failed at its premiere and is now among the most performed operas ever written. He fought censors repeatedly over subjects involving assassinated kings and courtesans. Aida followed in 1871, commissioned for the Cairo opera house, and the Requiem in 1874 for the death of Manzoni. He then wrote no opera for sixteen years, farming his estate at Sant'Agata and serving briefly as a deputy in the new Italian parliament. Arrigo Boito coaxed him back for Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893, a comedy completed at seventy-nine. He founded and endowed a rest home for retired musicians in Milan, which he called his finest work. He died in 1901, and thousands sang Va, pensiero in the streets.

• Lived: 1813 CE – 1901 CE
• Nationality: Italian
• Roles: composer, opera_composer