Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 26, 2025
It has been reported that he is at work upon a new opera, "Othello," the words by Arrigo Boito, the composer of "Mephistopheles;" but nothing more than the report has been heard from it during the past three or four years. The great melodist now spends a very quiet life as a country gentleman upon his estates near Busseto.
The elder Verdi, though very poor, gratified the child's love of music when he was about eight by buying a small spinet, and placing him under the instruction of Provesi, a teacher in Busseto. The boy entered on his studies with ardor, and made more rapid progress than the slender facilities which were allowed him would ordinarily justify.
There was an institution in Busseto called the Monte di Piet
Had it not been for an old woman who was passing by the place and heard his cries, the exhausted and chilled boy would have been carried away by the current. After two years' schooling, Giuseppe's father persuaded his friend, Antonio Barezzi of Busseto, from whom he was in the habit of buying wines and supplies for his inn and shop, to take the lad into his warehouse.
Giuseppe Verdi was another great musician who felt the full richness of domestic happiness, if only for a time. Born in the little hamlet of Le Roncole in 1813, he proved himself possessed of unusual talent, and after a time went to Busseto for lessons. There he came to the notice of M. Barezzi, who became the friend and patron of the young student.
Now in the year 1546 there came to Rome the Venetian Tiziano da Cadore, a painter highly celebrated for his portraits, who, having formerly taken a portrait of Pope Paul at the time when His Holiness went to Busseto, without exacting any remuneration either for that or for some others that he had executed for Cardinal Farnese and Santa Fiore, was received by those prelates with the greatest honour in the Belvedere; at which a rumour arose in the Court, and then spread throughout Rome, to the effect that he had come in order to paint scenes with his own hand in the Hall of Kings in the Palace, where Perino was to paint them and the stucco-work was already in progress.
Verdi's parents were literally hewers of wood and drawers of water, earning their bread, after the manner of Italian peasants, at a small settlement called La Roncali, near Busseto, where the future composer was born on October 9, 1814.
Verdi engaged an excellent private teacher and pursued his studies with unflagging energy, denying himself all but the barest necessities, and going sometimes without sufficient food. A stroke of fortune now fell in his way; the place of organist fell vacant at the Busseto church, and Verdi was appointed to fill it.
This would have been quite impossible had not Carlo Verdi had a good friend living at Busseto, a shoemaker, named Pugnatta. Pugnatta agreed to give Giuseppe board and lodging and send him to the best school in the town, all for a small sum of three pence a day.
Though he wished to do greater things, he returned to Busseto to fulfill his promise to take Provesi's place as organist of the Cathedral and conductor of the Philharmonic, rather big positions to fill for a young man of twenty.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking