Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi was born in Roncole, near Busseto in 1813 and died in Milan in 1901
Giuseppe Verdi spent his childhood studying the organ. He later moved to Busseto where he attended the music school run by Antonio Provesi.
After studying composition in Milan from 1832 to 1835, Verdi applied for admission to the Conservatory but he was rejected.
In 1836 he was named organist at the Collegiata of Busseto and maestro at the local music school and he married Margherita Barezzi, daugheter of his greatest benefactor and supporter. After two years he returned with his family to Milan, where his first opera Oberto conte di San Bonifacio was brought to stage.
In the following years Verdi, after loosing his son, daughter and wife to illness and the complete failure of his next opera Un Giorno di regno decided never to compose again, until the director of La Scala theatre convinced him to work at Nabucco, whose singer Giuseppina Strepponi would become his second wife.
Over the next years, Verdi composed twenty operas such as I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Ernani, I due foscari, Macbeth, Alzira, I masnadieri, La traviata, Il trovatore, Simon Boccanegra.
La forza del destino, Don Carlos, Requiem mass and L’Aida date back to the years after 1861, when Verdi met the young poet and musician Arrigo Boito.
He eventually retreated with Giuseppina to his country home in Sant’ Agata and after her death in 1897 he moved to Milan, where he died of a stroke in a room of the Grand Hotel in Milan after four years.The tombs of Verdi and Giuseppina Strepponi are in the crypt of Casa di riposo per musicisti in Milan.
