Giuseppe Verdi
"Big Joe"

(Click to zoom in and out.)

Giuseppe Verdi - or Big Joe as some may prefer - was one of the last bunch of composers that wrote operas that people really like. He was certainly the last of the "classic" composers who had direct connections with the modern era¹.

Giuseppe's operas Rigoletto, Il Trovatore, and La Traviata remain some of the most popular operas ever. He also wrote three operas based on Shakespeare's plays - Falstaff, Macbeth, and Otello². And of course there's the always popular Aïda.

The question immediately arises. Just how did a poor peasant kid end up becoming the most popular opera composer in Italy and one of the most popular in the world? Well, lots of this boils down to 1) Giuseppe had a lot of talent and 2) there were a lot of opportunities in rural Italy for such talented young people.

Giuseppe (as we'll call him although his nickname was Peppino) was born in Le Roncole, a small village, which is a ways south and east of Milan. That was in 1813. The exact day has some uncertainty, but the baptismal record was recorded on October 11 and says that Giuseppe was born the day before. There is also a civil record that was dated October 12 which said the birth was October 10.

You'd think two original documents which agree perfectly would clinch the matter. But some people - including Giuseppe - said he was born on the 9th. For a long time Giuseppe wasn't even sure what year he was born in. He said he thought it was 1814 and that he didn't learn he was a year older until he was grown.

A little known - or a least little discussed - fact is that Guiseppe was in fact born a Frenchman. The birth record even lists his given names as Joseph Fortunin François. In 1813 the region of Parma - where Le Roncole is - was part of the French Empire.

But not so in 1814. That year wasn't only when Colonel Jackson took a little trip down the Mighty Mississip. It was also the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars. A coalition which included Austria, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and Sweden began sweeping around Europe and booting out any remnants of the Little Corporal and his friends.

Since Italy had been part of Napoleon's empire it was one of the places the coalition set out to - well - "liberate". So in February Russian troops came sweeping into northern Italy. With soldiers on the rampage, Giuseppe's mom, Luigia, fled her house with the infant and hid in a church tower. Although the story seems like one of those exciting but usually apocryphal tales where the course of musical history was hanging by a thread, it's probably true enough. At least Giuseppe said he heard the story from his mom.

Giuseppe was a smart kid. But figuring out who taught him what is rather a mish-mash of information. Different biographies mention different people on whether they taught him music, Latin, or Italian. Supposedly Giuseppe began studying the languages at age four. Why a kid from Italy needed to learn Italian seems a bit strange but Giuseppe's native language was Milanese. Often called a dialect of Italian, Milanese is actually a separate language from Tuscan which is where we get modern Italian. Later Giuseppe began attending the local school and received what for the time and place was a good education.

One of Giuseppe's earliest teachers was the local school master, a chap named Pietro Baistrocchi. One biography said that Pietro taught Giuseppe the languages but didn't say anything about music. Other accounts say Pietro taught him to play the organ and let him stand in for him in the church services.

In any case being a "poor peasant" doesn't really fit Giuseppe's circumstances. Keeping in mind that few people actually had much hard currency, his dad, Carlo, was of the respectable middle class. Carlo was, in fact, an innkeeper who was shocked! shocked! when the authorities claimed there was gambling going on in his establishment.

That Carlo and Luigia were having their kid learn languages when he was only four shows that they saw Giuseppe was exceptional. Although they may not have been peasants, it still took some economizing to get him the best education possible. Giuseppe always said that the old spinet that he kept in his house was the one that his folks bought him when he was a kid. It had been quite a sacrifice for them, he said, for them to purchase even a run-down and second hand instrument.

That music was a part of his education isn't a surprise. Music was (and is) a strong part of Italian culture. The average citizen, young and old, liked both popular and classical music. If you went to the music halls or dances and then hied off to the opera, no one would think you were putting on airs (no pun intended). Music was important in the church services as well.

Above all, this was an era with no radio, no television, and no recordings. If you wanted music it had to be live music. So the kids learned music early and it was a rare family that didn't have someone who could sing or play a musical instrument.

As to why an innkeeper and his wife would encourage their kid to be a musician rather than simply join the family business reflects these differences in their era and ours. Being a performing musician was a practical and even routine means of employment. Small towns often had their own orchestras and theaters and they needed performers, both full and part time. You might make a quite comfortable living at it, too, as church organists could be paid as much as a bank manager. With Giuseppe's talent being a musician made a lot of sense.

You'll read that Giuseppe was - quote - "sent away" - unquote - to study music. But he really wasn't sent away. Yes, as a kid he did spend time in the town of Busseto but that's all of 2½ miles northwest of Roncole. He could easily walk from one town to another in less than an hour.

The first time he was "sent away" was when he was ten. That's because one of Carlo's business acquaintances was Antonio Barezzi who also recognized Giuseppe's ability. Giuseppe stayed in Antonio's home in Busseto and was given special music lessons. Giuseppe also met Antonio's daughter, Margherita. Evidently they got along all right since in 1836 they were married.

One of the teachers in Busseto was Ferdinando Provesi who was a well-known composer. Ferdinando was also the organist at one of the larger cathedrals and he made Giuseppe his assistant.

At seventeen Giuseppe decided to get some really authentic credentials. He traveled to Milan to try out for the conservatory. But for some reason he didn't get in, possibly because he was too old. It certainly wasn't for lack of ability and he remained in Milan and studied privately with some of the conservatory faculty who were associated with Milan's famous La Scala Opera. By the time he left Milan, Giuseppe played the organ with professional skill and was well versed in composition.

Giuseppe returned to Busseto. After marrying Margherita, he was appointed as the maestro di musica, that is, the conductor of the local orchestra and vocal ensembles.

The time in Milan had been well spent. It not only solidified his musical education but it also gave him a series of important contacts. One of his friends was the director of the Philharmonic Society, Pietro Massini. He asked Giuseppe to come to Milan and write an opera. This was in 1839 and the opera that emerged was Oberto. Another Milanese friend, Giulio Ricordi, was able to get the premiere staged at La Scala.

Having your first opera performed by one of the most prestigious companies in the world was a plus. And the good news was that Oberto was fairly well received. The bad news was his next opera produced the following year, Un giorno di regno, flopped.

Times were not easy, though. Both Giuseppe's wife, Margherita, and one of their young children had recently died. But he kept writing operas and in 1842 he completed Nabucco. That was a hit. It was followed the next year by I Lombardi which also was a success.

So not yet thirty, Giuseppe had reached the big time. He kept - to use a crass expression - "cranking them out" - for the next fifty years. Yes, fifty years. He was arguably the biggest celebrity in Italy of the 19th century and his operas, orchestral, and choral works remain among the most popular of any composer.

Unfortunately, Italy in the mid-19th century was not a place of peace and contentment. In fact, Continental Europe was scarcely a place for peace and contentment. And the big year for discontent was 1848 when the whole continent broke out in revolution.

Or rather revolutions. Virtually every country had some uprising or another. As with a lot of revolutions the reasons have been debated endlessly and there were all sorts of groups fighting each other. But a lot of what went on was because countries wanted to do away with their independence.

Yes, that's right. They wanted to do away with their independence.

To say the continent was fragmented is like saying you need a bit of arithmetic to understand Einstein's Theory of Relativity. A lot of the countries were small - scarcely big enough to hold a city or two. So you had countries like Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Hesse-Homburg, Luxembourg, Hanover, Anhalt-Köthen, Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Schwarzburg-Sondershausen, Lippe, Saxe-Hildburghausen, Saxe-Lauenburg, Baden, Vienna, Bavaria, Berlin, Reuss-Greiz, Saxe-Meiningen, Hohenzollern-Hechingen, Waldeck, Prussia, Hesse-Darmstadt, Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Holstein, Hesse-Kassel, Hamburg, Nassau, Saxe-Coburg, Limburg, Reuss-Gera, Bremen, Frankfurt, Anhalt, Lübeck, Anhalt-Dessau, Anhalt-Bernburg, Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Württemberg, Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Austria, Oldenburg, Saxe-Altenburg, Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, Brunswick, Liechtenstein, and Schaumburg-Lippe. And these were all just in one part of Germany, for crying out loud!

The point was, what's the point? I mean, c'mon. A lot of the countries used the same language, shared common cultures, and weren't that far from each other. So why not unify them into a single and efficient nation? You could still keep the older boundaries as provinces or administrative districts and each could have their own governor. Then everyone could still keep the identities of their regions but would be much better off as one nation under a king.

Italy was in the same boat. The Italian nation we know was more or less divvied up. So you had the Piedmont, Modena, Parma, Massa, Lucca, the Kingdom of Lombardy and Venezia (sometimes listed separately), San Marino, the Kingdom of Two Sicilies, the Republic of San Marco, the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the Patrimony of St. Peter, the Provisional Government of Milan, the Republic of Venice, the Kingdom of Sardinia, and the Papal States.

The trouble for Italy, though, was that Austria was pretty much in charge in the north. After the Coalition had booted out Napoleon and his buddies, the Austrian army had just moved in and took over. So there were Italians who were still subjects of a foreign power.

"Basta con questa merda!" they said. Soon rumblings were rife that the peninsula should be united under its own king as a democratic and constitutional monarchy.

Leading the call for unification was Giuseppe - Giuseppe Garibaldi, that is (we'll call him G. G. to distinguish him from our Giuseppe). G. G. had taken part in one of the rebellions against the Austrians but unfortunately he lost. Since the winners didn't look too kindly on "rebels", he figured discretion was the better part of valor and got the heck out of Italy. He wandered around the world for nearly 15 years, spent a lot of time helping other people fight revolutions, and finally returned to Italy when it looked like people were serious about the unification or the Risorgimento as they put it.

After a few battles, G. G. was able to declare himself Dictator of Sicily. Now that doesn't seem like much progress - replacing a foreign king with a dictator who had spent the last decade and a half out of the country. Fortunately G. G. himself didn't want to be king but wanted to install a fellow named Vittorio Emanuele Maria Alberto Eugenio Ferdinando Tommaso di Savoia. The story is that Vittorio and G. G. met on the bridge of Teano on 26 October 26, 1860 and G. G. hailed him as king Victor Emmanuele II. Which is a name that's a heck of a lot easier to remember.

Of course, if a general who won a revolution doesn't want to be king, what does he do? Well, G. G looked around for some more wars and seeing that the United States was engaged in a "Great Civil War" (as one politician put it), he offered his services. Honest Abe gladly sent him an offer of a commission, but since it wasn't to be the commander of the whole army, Giuseppe said no thanks.

But what, we ask, does all this have to do with Big Joe?

You see, it's become popular to point out that Giuseppe supported G. G.'s patriotic efforts. One way, we hear, is he peppered his operas with secret references to fire up the people in support of Risorgimento. For instance there's the famous "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves" in Nabucco - "Va pensiero" - where they Hebrews lament the loss of their homeland. This is a direct allusion, we are told, to the Italians losing their homeland to the many foreign invaders over the years. So as early as 1842 we see that Giuseppe was sending clear messages that Italians should free themselves of the foreign tyrants.

And sure enough in March, 1848, the Milanese rose up in revolt and ran the Austrians out of the city. Afterwards, there was a great outpouring of artistic fervor celebrating their liberty. The people partied, plays were staged celebrating the victory, and publishers issued patriotic songs which everyone sang con entusiasmo.

And Giuseppe?

Well, it seems there's virtually no mention of him during his time and no indication he provided any songs to the celebrations. Certainly at this time "Va pensiero" wasn't being used as an anthem to Italian freedom.

It was probably a good thing that Giuseppe kept a low profile. In six months, the Austrians returned and were determined to put a stop to his United Italy nonsense. But why they did that was rather strange. Although they clamped down on any overt opposition, they also made sure the people were entertained. So they staged three operas.

Three of Giuseppe's operas, that is.

And yes, one of them was Nabucco - complete with "Va pensiero".

So it seems then that if "Va pensiero" was a hidden anthem to freedom from foreign invaders, it was so well hidden that the foreign invaders didn't notice it. And far from the Austrians seeing Giuseppe as fomenting rebellion and sedition, he was pretty much left alone, and in 1849 returned to Paris where he had been living.

But lest Giuseppe's friends think we are trashing and slighting his patriotism, there's no doubt he was a full supporter of Italian unification and independence. It was in Paris he wrote another opera La battaglia di Legnano specifically to celebrate people throwing aside the chains of oppression. Its premiere in Rome was a smashing success and everyone saw the opera as a paean to patriotism.

Unfortunately, this time the Austrians did see the connection. Although Giuseppe wasn't bothered personally, the opera was pretty much squelched and wasn't performed for another ten years when the Austrians finally got the boot.

In any case, by 1860 people were ready for a United Italy and they wanted their favorite composer taking an active hand. So Giuseppe was elected a member of Italy's first Parliament and became the Onorevole Senatore Verdi.

By that time the Honorable Senator Verdi had been married for a year to Giuseppina Strepponi. She was a successful and talented soprano, a graduate of the Milan conservatory, and (if stories be true) quite a swinger. Although she married Giuseppi in 1859, she had been his girlfriend (wink, wink) for over 15 years.

Giuseppe, though, was not a politician. After four years in the government he wanted to retire to his spacious estate outside Milan and by now he was rich enough to do so. Giuseppe also happened to be one of the healthiest of composers in history and despite his increasing age, he kept coming out of retirement to write more music. Macbeth was an early work (1847) but he wrote his other Shakespearean operas Otello and Falstaff in 1886 and 1893. Giuseppe lived until 1901 and was buried in Milan.

We mentioned a connection of Giuseppe himself with the modern era. That was mainly because one of Giuseppe's friends - or at least a congenial professional acquaintance - was conductor Arturo Toscanini. Arturo thought Verdi was one of the greatest composers ever and even managed to sit in as the second cello in the world premiere of Otello. That was in 1887, a year after he began conducting. And of course Arturo conducted a number of Giuseppe's operas while the composer was still alive as well as the massive chorus and orchestra at his funeral. His last orchestral gig was as the conductor of the NBC Symphony. So we were able to see someone who personally knew Verdi perform on television.

Giuseppe's output was quite extensive. His operas were Oberto (1839), Un giorno di regno (1840), Nabuccodonosor (1842), I lombardi alla prima crociata (1843), Ernani (1844), I due Foscari (1844), Giovanna d'Arco (1845), Alzira (1845), Attila (1846), Macbeth (1847), I masnadieri (1847), Jérusalem (1847), Il corsaro (1848), La battaglia di Legnano (1849), Luisa Miller (1849), Stiffelio (1850), Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore (1853), La traviata (1853), Les vepres siciliennes (1855), Simon Boccanegra (1857), Un ballo in maschera (1859), La forza del destino (1862), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887), and Falstaff (1893). He also wrote a number of other works for orchestra and chorus of which the most popular is the Requiem. As proof of their popularity, you'll hear a good selection of his music in sound tracks of cartoons.

Giuseppe also has the distinction of having written a song that he felt needed a new version of an old instrument. The song was the March in Aïda - often called the Grand March or the Triumphal March.

The instrument was the Aïda trumpet or as Giuseppe called it in the score the trombe Egiziana which means (obviously) Egyptian trumpets. Giuseppe didn't think the usual valved trumpet with the many bends in the tubes to conserve space produced a bright enough sound suitable for the majesty of the tune³. So he needed a trumpet without bends.

On the other hand since Giuseppe wanted an instrument that would play something other than the harmonic series of a non-valved "natural" trumpet, the Aïda trumpet was a straight trumpet with one valve. But unfortunately a single valve also reduced the number of keys the instrument could play in. Since Giuseppe also wanted to have a dramatic key change⁴ about half way through the march (from B-flat to E-flat) he had three of the trumpets pitched to the key of A-flat (or as Giuseppe said, La-flat), and three others in B-natural (Si-natural). That way the trumpet players could swap off the melody while playing the same notes (on paper) but with the actual notes coming out differently.

If you see a performance of Aïda today, they'll probably have the Aïda trumpets but they may have three valves. This way they can be used for playing other songs. But some fancy pants opera companies still prefer the traditional one-valve jobs⁵.

It's kind of fun listening to the march and see if the trumpet players will miss a note - sort of like listening for flubs on the trombone solo of Ravel's Bolero⁶. It's fairly common to hear the trumpeters bloop a note as it seems that Aïda trumpets are a bit temperamental.

References

Verdi: A Biography, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, Oxford University Press, 1993.

"Giuseppe Verdi", Robert Cummings, All Music.

"Giuseppe Verdi", The Greatest Music Leaders.

"Verdi and Milan Transcript", Roger Parker, Gresham College, Oxford University, May 14, 2007.

"The Sixth Coalition", The Napoleonic Wars: The Complete History.

"Giuseppe Verdi: The Italian Born a Frenchman", Carmen Lobo, Art & Thoughts, October 20, 2013.

"How Giuseppe Verdi’s Music Helped Bring Italy Together", BBC, October 2, 2013.

"Best Verdi Works: 10 Essential Pieces By The Great Composer", uDiscoverMusic, October 9, 2019.

"The Greatest Music Verdi Ever Wrote", Garrett Harris, San Diego Reader, February 1, 2018.

"Giuseppe Verdi (1813 - 1901)", Classical Net.

Radames is Coming! Radames is Coming!, Roy Hempley, Vincet Back's World, 2004.

"Science Can Tell Us Only So Much About Stradivarius Violins", Richard Haughton, Science, May 8, 2017.

"Million-dollar Strads Fall to Modern Violins in Blind 'Sound Check'" Adrian Cho, Science, May. 9, 2017

"The Milanese Dialect: A Concise Grammar", Andrea Tettamanzi, Sitt Miílanese su la Red.

"A Harmonic Drone Subsides in Britain", Michael White, The New York Times, April 25, 2014

Garibaldi: Citizen of the World, Alfonso Scirocco, Princeton University Press, 2007.

"Aida", Giusseppe Verdi, Free Scores.

"Verdi - La Traviata", Arturo Toscanini, Music & Arts Programs of America, 1987.

"Triumphal March", Roger Andersson (conductor), Lunds Stadsorkester, 2010.

"Verdi the Revolutionary? Let's Separate Fact from Fiction", Roger Parker, The Guardian, October 7, 2013.