Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) was the son of an innkeeper and, as a little boy, showed marked musical talent. He was a good obedient little fellow, but always rather melancholy in character and never joined the village boys in their noisy amusements. “One thing only could rouse him from his habitual indifference, and that was the occasional passing through the village of an organ grinder. To the child, who in after years was to afford an inexhaustible repertory to those instruments for half a century all over the world, this was an irresistible attraction. He could not be kept indoors, and would follow the strolling player as far as his little legs could carry him.” (Grove’s Dictionary.)
Who has not heard the Miserere from Il Trovatore played, all out of tune, by an Italian organ grinder who sends a little monkey around with a cup to gather in the pennies? We remember an organ grinder in San Francisco who ground out the Miserere. Each year or two that we returned there were more of the notes missing. Ten years later, the performance was quite “toothless” and sounded very funny.
All his life, Verdi kept a little spinet that his father bought for him in 1820. We see him then, at seven, deep in musical study and at ten he was the organist of Roncole, going to school in Busseto, a nearby town. One night when he was walking the three miles to go back to Busseto after church, the poor little fellow was so weary that he missed the road and fell into a canal, narrowly escaping death! Is it not splendid that his village appreciated his talent and gave him a scholarship which made it possible for him to go to Milan to continue his musical studies!
His Operas
He did not compose an opera until 1839 when his Oberto in the style of Bellini was produced in Milan with such success that he received orders to write three more from which he gained much good-will and fame.
It must have been a thrilling time for opera writers, because Wagner was composing, too, and you know the great excitement he caused. Amidst this interesting whirl of opinion, Verdi wrote one of the operas ordered by the Milan director, and during this time he was sorely stricken by the deaths of his wife and two lovely children. Besides this, his opera failed and in his discouragement the poor young man made up his mind to give up composition. However, a rare good friend coaxed him back to his work after a little rest, and he produced his successful Nebucco (Nebuchadnezzar) (1842), I Lombardi the next year and his well known Ernani (1844). In this, his first period, he used as models, Bellini and men of his type, not writing anything startlingly new.
In his second period he wrote operas nearly as fast as we write school compositions, and among the famous things are Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore, La Traviata (story from Dumas’ Camille or Dame aux Camelias), (1853), and The Masked Ball (1859). Ernani and Rigoletto are founded on stories by Victor Hugo. The first performance of La Traviata in Venice was a failure due more to the performers, than to the opera itself which still crowds opera houses of the world.
The greatest opera of his third period is Aida (1871), one of Verdi’s masterpieces. An opera on an Egyptian subject was ordered by the Khedive of Egypt for the opening of the Italian Opera House in Cairo, for which Verdi received $20,000. Mariette Bey a famous Egyptologist made the first sketch in order to give the right local atmosphere to the libretto. Curiosity ran so high that every seat was sold before the first night and it was a great success. Think how electrified the audience must have been by the tenor solo, “Celeste Aida,” one of Caruso’s greatest successes; by the realistic Nile scene; the voice of the priestess in the mammoth Egyptian temple, and the famous march with trumpets made specially for it!
Dear old lovable Verdi was a wise man as well as an accomplished composer. He used more modern methods in Aida to hold audiences who were hearing about Wagner and his startling innovations.
Other operas of this third period were La Forza del Destino and one given at the Paris Grand Opera, Don Carlos, which was not up to his standard. Until this time he showed great mechanical skill and a sense of color and melody. The great singers have revelled in the operas of his second period. In our day Marcella Sembrich, Nellie Melba, Frieda Hempel, Luisa Tetrazzini, Amelita Galli-Curci, Florence Macbeth and many others have sung the coloratura,—frilly, soaring, gymnastic-singing, still very popular. However in Aida, Verdi departed much from the usual, and people said that he was copying Wagner, because they didn’t know the difference between the influences which change a person’s ways, and imitation.