Verdi was a gifted student; wealthy citizens in his home region near Parma sent him to the Milan Conservatory. But the 18-year-old Verdi was deemed too old for admission, and so had to find another way to start his musical career.
Embroiled in a bitter factional feud in his adopted hometown and stricken by the tragic loss of his two young children, Verdi nonetheless successfully transplanted himself to Milan and scored a modest success in November 1839 with the premiere of his first opera at La Scala.
His first wife's death and his second opera's disastrous premiere almost killed Verdi's young career. Yet a year later, in 1842, he bounced back both commercially and artistically with Nabucco, a biblical tale of liberation and unity that stirred Italians deeply.
Verdi cannot be understood apart from the Italian Risorgimento; nor can it be understood apart from him, for his music was its soul and voice. The third-act duet between King Nabucco and his daughter Abigaille is a window on this remarkable cross-influence between an artist and a nation being born.
The premiere of Nabucco would prove a turning point in Verdi's personal as well as professional life, for it was then that he met the singer and actress Giuseppina Strepponi, his future wife. La Scala gave him a contract whose first fruit was I Lombardi alla prima crociata (The Lombards at the First Crusade).
With the 1842 premiere of I Lombardi, Verdi began a decade of fiercely hard work, showing himself a master of the business side of the opera game. I Lombardi, Ernani, and other operas of this period such as I due foscari would drive Italian audiences wild and the Austrian censors up the wall.
In 1846, Verdi expanded his range still further with Macbeth, reaching for extreme Romantic effects that were a departure from the norms of Italian opera. Music and voices, he had decided, must above all express the truth of the characters and their inner worlds.
In 1847, Verdi spent time in London, supervising a production of I masnadieri (The Robbers). In 1848, after revolutions broke out against regimes across Europe, an elated Verdi returned to Milan, newly liberated from the Austrians, only to see his hopes for an "Austria-free" Italy dashed.
Luisa Miller is a tale of ordinary people crushed by absolutist government, and another step on Verdi's journey away from the bel canto tradition. Rigoletto, with its libretto by Francesco Piave, comes from a play by Victor Hugo.
The first act in this lurid tale of wickedness, innocence, and a terrible curse blends music and drama in a way wholly new to Italian opera. In Rigoletto, the hunchbacked jester of the Duke of Mantua, Verdi and Piave have given us one of the great characters of the opera stage.
The Duke's aria "La donna e mobile" ("Woman is fickle") is one of the most famous in all opera. It speaks volumes about the shallow, Don-Juanish Duke, and is so tuneful that Verdi, while writing it, took elaborate steps to keep it secret lest its impact at the premiere be lessened.
Rigoletto includes some of the most stunning ensemble and orchestral writing since Mozart. The atmospherics (literally!) are extraordinary too, as Verdi uses the orchestra and a wordless chorus to suggest a coming storm as a metaphor for doom.
How could Verdi top Rigoletto, one of the most memorable characters in all opera? In 1852, less than two years after Rigoletto's premiere, Verdi wrote not one but two more immortal operas, each musically brilliant, dramatically innovative, and beloved to this day.
While the public swooned with joy over Il trovatore's January 1853 premiere, some of Verdi's critics complained that its "vulgarity" had put an end to bel canto opera. Oddly enough, they were quite close to the mark.
Verdi created this opera with remarkable speed, but then had to fight a titanic public battle with the censors in Naples and settle a number of lawsuits before it could be staged to his liking—in Rome.
In Act III, Verdi shamelessly pulls out every melodramatic stop but somehow makes it all work: a sure sign of his genius. By now middle-aged, he also tried to retire from both politics and opera, but happily would succeed only in quitting the former.
Written for the court of the Russian czar and premiered at St. Petersburg in 1862, this tale of star-crossed young lovers featured a "destiny" theme that stands as a musical landmark in Verdi's score.
Verdi spent nearly a year composing Don Carlo, based on a drama by Friedrich von Schiller, for the Paris Opéra. The work caused some critics to make wrong, maddening, and yet not entirely unreasonable comparisons between Verdi and Wagner.
Verdi hated autocracy, yet Act IV of Don Carlo pulls back the curtain of power to show the arch-autocrat Philip II of Spain in his humanity as a lonely man afraid of aging and betrayal. Princess Eboli's aria "O don fatal" in this act contains one of the greatest passages ever written for mezzo-soprano.
Set in ancient Egypt and commissioned by the Ottoman governor of that country to mark the completion of the Suez Canal, Aida is famous for spectacle, though its core is a tale of private love and loss. The opera's "first premiere," which Verdi himself did not conduct, was in Cairo.
Taking Aida's 1872 Milan premiere to be his most important ever, Verdi forced changes on La Scala that are now the rule for opera houses everywhere. It was all to good effect, for Aida is the benchmark operatic spectacle and remains Verdi's most popular work.
The 1873 death of the great author Alessandro Manzoni—the virtual inventor of modern standard Italian—spurred Verdi to score a Requiem Mass in Manzoni's honor. The result is a work that is unique in this often-tried genre.
Verdi's seven-movement Requiem expresses an awesome range of emotions. We focus on its huge, 38-minute Dies irae (Day of Wrath) section and its closing Libera me. Along with Beethoven's Missa solemnis (1822) and Brahms's German Requiem (1869), Verdi's Requiem is the greatest work of religious music written between 1800 and 1900.
This was the product of a conspiracy to get Verdi—by now the most famous living Italian—to compose again. The key was librettist Arrigo Boito, whose partnership with Verdi would become one of the finest in musical history.
Otello was an event of national importance when it premiered in 1887, and many thought it was Verdi's swan song. Desdemona's "Willow Song" scene makes a window onto this masterwork on the tragic side of the Shakespearean range.
Verdi had total control over Falstaff and crafted the whole production with great care and gusto. This was not only the summation of his life's work (and only his second comic opera), but broke new ground both dramatically and musically.
Verdi knew how crucial timing is to comedy, so he avoided arias in favor of a profusion of fluid melodic lines that overlap, spin off, and turn into something else entirely. The overall effect is remarkable.
The second scene of Act I features an amazing group-sing that combines men's and women's ensembles, each singing in a different meter. Act II begins with an explosive orchestral passage from which Verdi develops most of the scene's melodic material.
Verdi's "inner eye" for action on stage is almost as extraordinary as his inner ear for music. There is comic genius in the way he and Boito bring to life the antics of Falstaff, Ford, and the quick-witted "Merry Wives of Windsor."
Verdi's score matches the characters and their actions brilliantly: Falstaff's ostensibly seductive "love song" sounds comically dated, while later, fast-moving, overlapping vocal lines accompany complex slapstick action.
In 1900, a friend asked the 87-year-old Verdi which of his creations was his favorite. Verdi's response was extraordinary, and it tells us much about the man and where his priorities lay near the end of his life.