VERDI, GIUSEPPE FORTUNINO FRANCESCO (1813-1901), Italian composer, was born on Oct. ro, 1813, at Le near Busseto. His parents kept a little inn, combined with a kind of village shop. Verdi's musical education really began with his entrance into the house of business of Antonio Barezzi, a merchant of Busseto, who was a thorough musician.
He studied under Provesi, maestro di cappella of the cathedral and conductor of the municipal orchestra, for which Verdi wrote many marches and other instrumental pieces. His first symphony was written at the age of fifteen and performed in 1828. In 1832 Verdi went to Milan to complete his studies. He was rejected by the authorities of the Conservatorio, but remained in Milan as a pupil of Vincenzo Lavigna, with whom he worked until the death of Provesi in 1833 recalled him to Busseto. A clerical intrigue prevented him from succeeding his old master as cathe dral organist, but he was appointed conductor of the municipal orchestra, and organist of the church of San Bartolomeo. After Verdi's return to Milan, his first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, was produced in 1839. His next work, a comic opera, known variously as Un Giorno di Regno and Il Finto Stanislao, and composed in peculiarly distressing circumstances (the young composer had just lost his wife and two children) was a complete failure, and Verdi, stung by disappointment, determined to write no more for the stage. But a year later Merelli, the im presario of La Scala, persuaded him to write Nabucodonosor (1842), which placed him in the front rank of living Italian corn posers. I Lombardi (1843) and Ernani (1844) followed. With Ernani Verdi became the most popular composer in Europe, and the incessant demands made upon him reacted upon his style.
Macbeth (1847), Luisa Miller (1849) and I Masnadieri, produced at Her Majesty's Theatre in 1847, did not enhance his reputation, but in Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (1853) and La Traviata (1853) Verdi reached the culminating point of what may be called his second manner. Les V epres Siciliennes (1855), written for the Paris Opera contains some fine music, but suffers from the composer's perhaps unconscious attempt to adopt the grandiose manner of French opera. Of the works written during the next ten years only Un Ballo in Maschera (Rome, Feb. 17, 1859) has maintained a fitful hold upon public attention. La Forza del Destino (Nov. io, 1862, St. Petersburg) and Don Carlos (March II, 1867, Paris) are transitional works.
At this point in his career Verdi was preparing to emancipate himself from his early conventions, and was struggling towards a freer method of expression. In Aida (Dec. 1871, Cairo) an
opera upon an Egyptian subject, written in response to an invita tion from Ismail Pasha, Verdi entered upon the third period of his career. In this work he broke definitely with the operatic tradition inherited from Donizetti, in favour of a method of utterance, which, though perhaps affected in some degree.by the influence of Wagner, still retains the main characteristics of Italian music. In Aida the treatment of the orchestra shows a richness of resource which those who knew only Verdi's earlier works scarcely suspected him of possessing ; while its wealth of melody, massive ensembles, picturesque local colour, and other attractive qualities have long since established the work among the most successful and popular operas ever written. In the Requiem, written in 1874 to commemorate the death of Man zoni, Verdi applied his newly found system to sacred music. His Requiem was bitterly assailed by pedants and purists, partly on the ground of its defiance of obsolete rules of musical grammar and partly because of its theatrical treatment of sacred subjects, but by saner and more sympathetic critics, of whom Brahms was not the least enthusiastic, it has been accepted as a work of genius. In 1881 a thoroughly revised version of Simon Boccanegra was successfully produced at Milan.
In 1887 (Feb. 5) Otello was produced at Milan when Verdi was nearly seventy. The libretto, from Shakespeare's Othello, was the work of Boito. Otello recalls Aida in the general outlines of its structure, but voices and orchestra are treated with greater freedom than in the earlier work, and there are no set arias. Otello is, musically and dramatically, an immense advance upon anything Verdi had previously written ; and no less applies to Falstaff, which was produced at Milan on Feb. 9, 1893, when the composer was in his eightieth year, and which contains, besides the dramatic power and musical skill of Otello, a fund of delicate and fanciful humour which recalls the gayest mood of Mozart.
Falstaff was Verdi's last work for the stage but in 1898 he pro duced four beautiful sacred pieces, settings of the Ave Maria, Laudi ally Virgine (words from Dante's Paradiso), the Stabat Mater and the Te Deum, the first two for voices alone, the last two for voices and orchestra. Of his other minor and non-dra matic works, very few in number, may be mentioned a string quartet, composed in 1873, a hymn written for the opening of the International Exhibition of 1862, two sets of songs, a Paternoster for five-part chorus, and an Ave Maria for soprano solo, with string accompaniment. He died at Milan on Jan. 27, 1901.