Giuseppe verdi brief biography of siren
For opera singers, rest home founded by Verdi offers life after retirement
Opera star Renée Fleming drew concern last year after a New York Times profile suggested the acclaimed soprano would be retiring. Luckily for fans, it turned out to be a false alarm. But if Fleming does ever start to ponder retirement, she might consider a move to Milan — where she'd likely be welcomed with open arms at Casa Verdi, a retirement home for opera singers and musicians founded by the famed Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi more than 100 years ago.
Soprano Lina Vasta spent her career performing in Italian operas around the world. Twenty years ago, she settled at Casa Verdi. The tiny singer, who uses a cane to get around, won't reveal her age (through a translator she admits to being "over 65"), but she still enjoys singing bits of The Barber of Seville around the home.
Vasta came to Casa Verdi with her husband when they both retired from singing. Since he died this is all she has. But with "a beautiful house, a piano, a very nice garden, nothing is missing here — it's perfect. Grazie, Verdi," she says.
Verdi founded the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, simply known as Casa Verdi, in the late 19th century. He's buried here, along with Giuseppina Strepponi, his second wife, says Biancamaria Longoni, the assistant director of Casa Verdi.
"In Italy, Verdi isn't considered only a composer, only a musician, but kind of a national hero," she says. "He used his operas to give voice to people — to humble people, to modest people, to poor people."
Many of Verdi's own former colleagues found themselves living in poverty toward the end of their lives. At that time, there were no pensions for musicians in Italy.
"Verdi perfectly knew this situation," Longoni says. "And when he was about 82 he wanted to use his patrimony to make a rest home for his colleagues and the less favored by fortune."
The Project Gutenberg eBook, Verdi: Man and Musician, by Frederick James Crowest
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 46316 ***
Transcriber's Note
There are 5 illustrations, placed where they appear in the book. A list of these illustrations with a link to each of them can be found below the table of contents.
There are many footnotes, numbered consecutively from 1 to 83; each of them is placed at the end of the chapter where it is referenced.
VERDI:
man and musician
| BY THE SAME AUTHOR. |
| "THE STORY OF BRITISH MUSIC." |
| "CHERUBINI" ("GREAT MUSICIANS" SERIES). |
| "PHASES OF MUSICAL ENGLAND." |
| "ADVICE TO SINGERS." (12th Thousand.) |
| Etc. Etc. |
A signed photograph of Giuseppe Verdi.
The inscription reads
"Genova 18 feb[braio]. 1897. G Verdi"
His Biography with Especial
Reference to his English
Experiences
By
Frederick J. Crowest
Author of
"The Great Tone Poets," etc.
john milne
12 norfolk street, strand
london
mdcccxcvii
To
MADAME ADELINA PATTI NICOLINI
EMPRESS OF SONG
Whose Transcendent Vocal and Histrionic Powers
HAVE
Contributed so largely to an adequate appreciation
of the genius of
VERDI
This Monograph of the Master is
by Expressed Permission
DEDICATED
[Pg vii]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.
BIRTH, PARENTAGE, AND CHILD-LIFE
Verdi's birth and birth-place—Dispute as to his township—Baptismal certificate—His parentage—The parents' circumstances—The osteria kept by them—A regular market-man—A mixed business—Verdi's early surroundings and influences—Verdi not a musical wonder or show-child—His natural child-life—Enchanted with street organ—Quiet manner as a child—Acolyte at Roncole Church—Enraptured with the organ music—Is bought a spinet—Practises incessantly—Gratuitous spinet repairs—To school at Busseto—Slender board and curriculum—First music
A bit technical this week. Sorry. Necessary. Giuseppe Verdi’s genius shines through the jewel-like structure of his La forza del destino score. In the opening three chords, repeated after an extended one bar rest, Verdi sets the scene for a tragedy that unfolds over the next four hours.
What’s more, he creates an earworm that lives in the listener’s mind forever. Hear those three chords any pace, any time and you are immediately transported to the world of Forza. If ever proof was needed that music is a language that can move us more powerfully than the spoken word, this is it.
Or proof that Giuseppe Verdi was a master. Those chords, read on the score, seem so simple. Two notes only, not even a triad to fill out the sound – all blasted out as a brassy warning call to the audience. There is trouble ahead.
And brass only, the notes spanning two octaves. One instrument, the melancholy Cimbasso, sometimes replaced by a tuba or contrabass trombone, stretches down to the octave below the bass stave, injecting a deep sense of menace.
So what? Surely anyone could write that. No, they couldn’t. Why? Avoiding a triad, which would give clear affirmation that we were setting out in a major key, immediately sets the audience on edge. What’s happening? That’s why most police sirens use only two notes, except American waily ones. Listen up, we are being told. Trouble ahead.
And we dive into trouble in the very next bar as the symphonic start rushes off – Allegro agitato e presto – in hectic 3/8 time on its way to hell and, sadly, not back. For in Verdi’s epic, the heroine, Donna Leonora, her father, Marquess of Calatrava and brother, Don Carlo de Vargas, are all dead at curtain fall.
Composers filch from each other. Verdi borrowed from Beethoven, who opens his famous 5 symphony in much the same way. Three notes of equal length, but in his case rapid quavers – not mournful drawn-out minims – followed by a down note. Repeated, but a semitone lower. Then, off
La forza del destino
Opera by Giuseppe Verdi
La forza del destino (Italian pronunciation:[laˈfɔrtsadeldeˈstiːno]; The Power of Fate, often translated The Force of Destiny) is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835), by Ángel de Saavedra, 3rd Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's Wallensteins Lager (Wallenstein's Camp). It was first performed in the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 29 October 1862 O.S. (N.S. 10 November).
La forza del destino is frequently performed, and there have been a number of complete recordings. In addition, the overture (to the revised version of the opera) is part of the standard repertoire for orchestras, often played as the opening piece at concerts.
Performance history
Revisions
After its premiere in Russia, La forza underwent some revisions and made its debut abroad with performances in Rome in 1863 under the title Don Alvaro. Performances followed in Madrid (with the Duke of Rivas, the play's author, in attendance) and the opera subsequently travelled to New York, Vienna (1865), Buenos Aires (1866), and London (1867).
Following these productions, Verdi made further, more extensive revisions to the opera with additions to the libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. This version, which premiered at La Scala, Milan, on 27 February 1869, has become the standard performance version. The most important changes were a new overture (replacing a brief prelude); the addition of a final scene to act 3, following the duel between Carlo and Alvaro; and a new ending, in which Alvaro remains alive, instead of throwing himself off a cliff to his death. The opera in this version is frequently performed in the world's opera houses today.
Recent critical editions
Critical editions[3]