1. Giuseppe Verdi was born in Roncole, Italy, October 10, 1813.
2. He began to learn the Spinet when he was seven years old.
3. The Spinet is an early form of the piano.
4. Among the great composers who were alive when Verdi was a little boy were: Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz and Schumann.
5. He became organist at Roncole when he was ten years old (1823).
6. He went to school in Busseto and lived with a cobbler.
7. After a time he studied in Milan.
8. But not at the famous Milan Conservatory, for he was told there that he had no special talent for music.
9. Verdi wrote thirty operas.
10. The first was performed in 1839, when he was twenty-six years old.