Verdi, Giuseppe

2. Life and works, 1813–39.

Verdi was born in Roncole, a small village near Busseto in the Duchy of Parma. His exact birth date is uncertain. The baptismal register of 11 October records him as ‘born yesterday’, but as days were sometimes counted as beginning at sunset, that could mean either 9 or 10 October. The birth register describes his father Carlo (1785–1867) as an ‘innkeeper’, his mother Luigia Uttini (1787–1851) as a ‘spinner’: both belonged to families of small landowners and traders, certainly not the illiterate peasants from which Verdi later liked to present himself as having emerged.

In typically middle-class fashion, Carlo Verdi was energetic in furthering his son's education. Before the age of four, Verdi began instruction with the local priests, probably in music as well as other subjects; his father bought him an old spinet when he was seven, and he was soon substituting as organist at the local church of S Michele, taking the position permanently at the age of nine. In 1823 he moved to Busseto, and at the age of 11 he entered the ginnasio there, receiving training in Italian, Latin, humanities and rhetoric. In 1825 he began lessons with Ferdinando Provesi, maestro di cappella at S Bartolomeo, Busseto, and director of the municipal music school and local Philharmonic Society. The picture emerges of youthful precocity eagerly nurtured by an ambitious father and of a sustained, sophisticated and elaborate formal education – again something Verdi tended to hide in later life, giving the impression of a largely self-taught and obscure youth.

In 1829 Verdi applied unsuccessfully for the post of organist at nearby Soragna. He was becoming increasingly involved in Busseto's active musical life, both as a composer and as a performer. As he later recalled:

From the ages of 13 to 18 I wrote a motley assortment of pieces: marches for band by the hundred, perhaps as many little sinfonie that were used in church, in the theatre and at concerts, five or six concertos and sets of variations for pianoforte, which I played myself at concerts, many serenades, cantatas (arias, duets, very many trios) and various pieces of church music, of which I remember only a Stabat mater.

In May 1831 he moved into the house of Antonio Barezzi, a prominent merchant in Busseto and a keen amateur musician. Verdi gave singing and piano lessons to Barezzi's daughter Margherita (b 4 May 1814; d 18 June 1840) and the young couple became unofficially engaged.

At about the same time, it became clear that the musical world of Busseto was too small, and Carlo Verdi applied to a Bussetan charitable institution (the Monte di Pietà e d'Abbondanza) for a scholarship to allow his son to study in Milan, then the cultural capital of northern Italy. The application, bolstered by glowing references from Provesi and others, was successful; but no scholarship was available until late 1833. However, Barezzi guaranteed financial support for the first year and in May 1832, at the age of 18, Verdi travelled to Milan and applied for permission to study at the conservatory. He was refused entry, partly for bureaucratic reasons (he was four years above the usual entering age and was not a resident of Lombardy-Venetia), partly on account of his unorthodox piano technique; it was an ‘official’ rejection that Verdi felt until the end of his life. Barezzi agreed to the added expense of private study in Milan, and Verdi became a pupil of Vincenzo Lavigna, who had for many years been maestro concertatore at La Scala.

According to Verdi's later recollections, his lessons with Lavigna involved little but strict counterpoint: ‘in the three years spent with him I did nothing but canons and fugues, fugues and canons of all sorts. No one taught me orchestration or how to treat dramatic music’. This insistence was probably a further attempt to fashion his image as a ‘self-taught’ composer. Contemporary evidence suggests that Lavigna encouraged Verdi to attend the theatre regularly, and his letters of recommendation specify study in ‘composizione ideale’ (free composition) as well as in counterpoint. Lavigna also helped his pupil into Milanese musical society; in 1834 Verdi assisted at the keyboard in performances of Haydn's Creation given by a Milanese Philharmonic Society directed by Pietro Massini, and a year later co-directed with Massini performances of Rossini's La Cenerentola.

By the time Verdi had completed his studies with Lavigna, in mid-1835, Busseto had again claimed his attention. Provesi had died in 1833, leaving open the post of musical director there; by June 1834 one Giovanni Ferrari had been appointed organist at S Bartolomeo but, encouraged by Barezzi, Verdi was eventually appointed maestro di musica (that is, to the secular portion of Provesi's post) in March 1836, though not before a prolonged struggle between rival factions in the town. On 4 May 1836 Verdi married Margherita Barezzi and settled in Busseto, directing and composing for the local Philharmonic Society and giving private lessons. He held the post for nearly three years, during which time he and Margherita had two children, Virginia (b 26 March 1837; d 12 Aug 1838) and Icilio Romano (b 11 July 1838; d 22 Oct 1839).

Verdi's provincial existence is best seen as an irritating delay in his professional career, and there is evidence that he was actively pursuing more ambitious plans. In April 1836 he renewed contact with Massini's Milanese society by composing for them a cantata, to words by Count Renato Borromeo, in honour of the Austrian Emperor Ferdinand I. A series of letters to Massini informs us that during 1836 Verdi composed an opera entitled Rocester, to a libretto by the Milanese journalist and man of letters, Antonio Piazza. During 1837 he tried unsuccessfully to have the opera staged at the Teatro Ducale in Parma. But eventually, again with Massini's help, Verdi arranged for a revised version of the opera, now entitled Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio, to be performed at La Scala. In October 1838 he resigned as maestro di musica of Busseto and in February 1839 left for Milan. Nine months later his first opera received its première in the Lombard capital's most famous theatre.

Little remains of Verdi's music from this period, though some of the liveliest pieces were perhaps recycled in his early operas. What has come down to us are mostly pièces d'occasion, written either for the church or for the Bussetan Philharmonic Society and other local groups. The influences are predictable, with Rossini much in evidence in the pieces that approach the operatic. A collection of songs, entitled Sei romanze, was published by the Milanese house of Giovanni Canti in 1838.