3
‘HE IS A RUDE, UNCIVIL SCOUNDREL’
Milan in 1832 was still for the most part a medieval city. It was enclosed by a series of walls, with gates set into them, unchanged since the Middle Ages. Medieval houses stood alongside Roman ruins.
There was another side to the city, though. Austrian rule, which still continued in northern Italy, had left its mark. Ornate buildings bearing coats of arms, with wrought-iron balconies and inner courtyards with fountains, created enclaves for the wealthy. These mansions boasted salons. Newly wealthy Milanese, growing rich on the boom in trade that followed the collapse of the Napoleonic empire, patronised artists, writers, musicians, as the aristocracy in Vienna had done for decades past.
Fashion was as important to Milan two centuries ago as it is today. Wives of wealthy merchants competed to hold the best salons, dressed in the latest styles. Milan was emerging from years of war and occupation, and was beginning to rival Paris and even London.
Everywhere there was noise: street vendors shouting their wares, carriage wheels and horses’ hooves clattering on cobbles, and the sound of bells. Churches, monasteries and convents stood on almost every street.
In one important respect Milan was unrivalled throughout Italy. It housed the opera house of La Scala, which had stood for more than half a century and was able to seat upwards of three thousand people. Such was the natural love of Italian audiences for opera that La Scala had become Europe’s pre-eminent operatic venue very soon after it was built.
Six tiers of boxes accommodated the aristocrats and the wealthy. But standing below them and seated above them were the true opera aficionados, ready to make their opinions known swiftly and decisively. From that time to this, reputations have been made and lost on the stage of La Scala.
It is easy to imagine Verdi standing and gazing at the building that would go on to play such a large part in his life. But there were plenty of hurdles ahead for an eighteen-year-old boy from the provinces who had yet to impress anyone in the big city.
In order to make the journey to Milan, Verdi had been issued with his first passport. It described him as having chestnut-brown hair, grey eyes, a high forehead, black eyebrows, an aquiline nose, a small mouth, a thick beard and pock-marks.* His profession is given as ‘studente di musica’.
Lodgings had been found for him in the home of a Bussetan, Giuseppe Seletti, the nephew of Verdi’s first schoolteacher in Busseto. It was an unfortunate choice. Seletti took an instant dislike to the teenager. There was a rumour at the time that he might have lent Verdi’s father money and the debt remained outstanding. He was known as a prickly character, and the likelihood is he simply resented having this young man foisted on him.
Verdi’s first task was to apply for entry to the Milan Conservatory. Once he was established as a student, his time would be fully taken up with study – best for him, and best too for his landlord.
As soon as he could Verdi formally applied for a place at the conservatory. In his application he acknowledged that at eighteen he was four years over the age limit, but asked that his musical talent be judged sufficient to allow him a dispensation.
On a hot day in late June, Verdi appeared before a panel of four: the head of the conservatory, and professors of composition, violin and piano. He presented some of his own compositions, and performed a well-known piano piece by a Viennese composer. In the second part of the exam he composed a four-part fugue.
A week later he was told he had failed. In the first place he held his hands incorrectly over the keyboard, and at the age of nearly nineteen that would be difficult to correct. Although his compositions showed some merit, the professor of composition expressed the opinion that Verdi would turn out to be a ‘mediocrity’. The word was underlined in the report.
It was the most devastating blow. Verdi’s confidence in himself as a musician, specifically as a composer, was irreparably damaged. That is not an exaggeration, because Verdi never got over it. He kept the letter of rejection on his desk at Sant’Agata for the rest of his life. Across the envelope he had scrawled, ‘In the year 1832 22 June Giuseppe Verdi’s request to be admitted to the Milan Conservatory was rejected.’
Sixty-five years later he reacted with fury when it was proposed that the Milan Conservatory should be named after him.†
Perhaps the rejection was something of a blessing in disguise. Had Verdi been accepted, he would have had to wear a uniform, conform to rules and regulations, and spend all his time within the walls of the conservatory.
He might have emerged a thoroughly competent musician, but if he was to write opera – the creative seeds of which were soon to take root – then he needed to learn about more than just music. He needed to experience life.
That he was about to do with some gusto.
It was recommended by the conservatory that Verdi should take private music lessons, and this he began to do with a certain Vincenzo Lavigna, whose name they suggested. They at least got that right.
Lavigna was a composer of opera and had himself enjoyed recent success at La Scala. Now in his mid-fifties, he had decided to turn to teaching. Verdi could not have asked for a better teacher, nor Lavigna a better student.
Lavigna belonged to a vanishing world. He had been in the music business all his adult life, had seen musicians come and go, and knew the music scene in Milan. And he enjoyed passing on his knowledge to a younger man, a younger man with obvious musical talent.
The first thing Lavigna did was to ask to see some of his pupil’s compositions. He professed himself impressed. Later he was to say he found it quite unbelievable that Verdi had been refused entry to the Milan Conservatory.
Within a short time Lavigna realised that Verdi was exceptionally gifted, and did all he could to encourage him. It was exactly what the young musician needed to restore his battered confidence.
Lavigna arranged for Verdi to have a subscription to La Scala, and enrolled him at a music library so that he could bring scores home. Together teacher and pupil would study them. Often Lavigna would invite luminaries from the musical world to come to his home, where the talk was of music and theatre.
Verdi was immersed in a world he wanted so much to become a part of, meeting a wide spectrum of personalities from musicians to singers, writers, agents and impresarios. No wonder that, to the end of his life, Verdi talked fondly of the older man whom he credited with giving him his first real introduction to the world of music.
As for his introduction to the world outside music, which as a young man on the brink of his twenties Verdi was more than ready for, he began to indulge himself in a way he would not have been able to had he been a student at the conservatory.
Artistic life revolved around La Scala, which itself was a stone’s throw from the cathedral, the other main attraction in the centre of the city. Between the two a new galleria of fashionable shops had opened. Cafés, restaurants, bookshops abounded. Musicians who befriended Verdi at Lavigna’s showed him the sights, took him out to eat and drink, accompanied him to the opera house and concerts.
The boy from the sticks, rejected by the conservatory, was being educated in big-city life, artistic and social. He was indulging himself, and loving it. In February 1834, in the galleria just a few paces from La Scala, a tumultuous masked ball was held. Six thousand people joined in, elaborately dressed and wearing masks. Thousands of lanterns lit the walkways. Men and women caroused and flirted. Venice had come to Milan. The festivities went on all night, ending at eight the next morning.
It is inconceivable that young Verdi and his musical friends did not partake of what was on offer – which was most certainly not to his landlord’s liking. It was now that Seletti allowed his resentment of the young man he was housing to bubble over. On 22 June 1834, two years to the day since Verdi’s rejection by the conservatory, Seletti sat down to write a letter to Antonio Barezzi, Verdi’s benefactor back in Busseto.
It is a quite extraordinary letter, full of venom and bile. Could Verdi really have merited Seletti’s character assassination, because that is what it is? It is worth quoting at length:
You, who live with the delusion that Verdi is another Rossini, will be mortified to hear me speak of him in these terms; but you must understand that being a good musician does not make him an honest man; and even if Verdi were to turn out a thousand times better than Rossini himself, I would still say that I found him rude, uncivil, proud, and acting like a scoundrel in my house. I write this to you because he is not yet your son-in-law; and when he becomes that, I will keep my mouth shut rather than lie to you about him … I cannot tell you how much damage he has done to my family, because it is [too indecent] to write about … Don’t ever speak to me again about Verdi, nor ask me to do anything for him. Just his name alone is too disgusting to me. I pray to God that I may forget him for ever.
Rude, uncivil, proud, a scoundrel and dishonest. Something had set Seletti off, and we can guess what it was. Seletti had a daughter, Dorina, with whom Verdi was deliberately and publicly flirting. He even went so far as to take Dorina back to Busseto with him and flaunt her, when everybody knew he was all but engaged to Margherita.
That one incident aside, there were mitigating circumstances for Verdi’s behaviour. Still smarting from the conservatory’s rejection, the following year he received dreadful news from home. His sister Giuseppa, about whom we know so little, had died at the age of just seventeen.
News also reached him from Busseto of the death of his old benefactor and teacher Provesi. He was Provesi’s natural successor as organist and music director in Busseto, but still in the midst of his musical studies he was not ready. It was too early.
I suspect, though Verdi never actually said so, that he was not overly disappointed when the post of Provesi’s successor went to someone else. He was in Milan, the cultural and musical capital of northern Italy, and just now, unexpectedly, he was about to make his mark.
Through Lavigna he learned that a local music society was planning to perform Haydn’s late oratorio The Creation. Lavigna suggested he go along to rehearsals to gain experience.
As he recounted many years later to a French biographer, the keyboard accompanist was absent on a crucial day, and he offered to step in. So successful was he that he was asked to direct the chorus and accompany on the keyboard for the actual performance. The performance itself met with such an enthusiastic reception that it was repeated, this time in one of the grand salons of the aristocracy, in front of the cream of society.10 Verdi’s name was now known in extremely high places.
More importantly for the history of music, Verdi was commissioned to write an opera. But what should have been a fairy-tale beginning to the illustrious career that we know was soon to come in fact fizzled out. Verdi was dissatisfied with the libretto he was given, entitled Rocester. He toyed with it for some time, eventually abandoning it.
However, he was also commissioned to compose a cantata in honour of the Austrian emperor, which received a performance in the palace of a Milanese count. Verdi now most definitely had acquired a taste for life in Milan. He saw his future there, not in the provincial town of Busseto, which he had never liked anyway.
Unfortunately for him, that was not the way Busseto saw it, and in particular his supporter and benefactor Antonio Barezzi. Barezzi had been bankrolling Verdi all the time he was in Milan, and now he put his foot down.
Barezzi wanted Verdi to return to Busseto, where he and a number of musical colleagues were prepared to challenge the appointment of Provesi’s successor, on the grounds that he had been selected without being examined, and without Verdi being allowed to compete for the post.
Verdi had no choice but to return to Busseto and do as he was told. He was nowhere near ready to support himself in Milan. He needed gainful employment. That was more likely to come in Busseto than in Milan.
Once Barezzi and his colleagues launched their challenge, all hell broke loose in Busseto. That is no exaggeration. The town was split down the middle, with one half supporting Verdi, the other his rival Giovanni Ferrari. There were arguments, vitriol was flung, and so were fists. There were actual fights in the streets between the two factions. The people of Busseto took their music seriously.
Verdi went through the motions, but it has to be said that he did little to advance his own cause. He made it clear to anyone who would listen that he disliked the town, and had no wish to stay there any longer than was necessary.
He also formalised his relationship with Margherita Barezzi, telling her that he would marry her and they would move to Milan together as soon as the opportunity presented itself. She, taking her lead from him, left her father in no doubt that her future lay with Giuseppe Verdi in Milan.
Poor Barezzi must have wondered why he ever took on young Verdi in the first place. He had harboured two clear desires for the musical prodigy: that he should bring musical glory to Busseto, and that he should become his son-in-law. It now looked as if he could not have both. Which of the two he would have preferred, had he been given the choice of only one, we cannot know. What we do know, with the benefit of hindsight, is that in the long run he would regret nothing.
Months dragged by. It was only when Verdi announced – probably with a certain element of bluff – that he was applying for a post in Monza, seventy miles north east of Milan, that things began to happen.
A classic compromise was found. Ferrari was allowed to retain the post of organist; that of music director was thrown open to competition, as had been originally agreed. Ferrari decided to save face by not even applying. Verdi duly got the job. He did not just get the job; he stunned his examiner, who declared he was a good enough musician to be a maestro in Paris or London.
At last Verdi had status in the musical world. He had secured an appointment he did not want in a town he did not like. What is more, he was tied to a nine-year contract. That was a considerable commitment, and not one he had any intention of fulfilling.
Busseto, and Barezzi, must have thought they had finally secured the long-term services of their most talented young musician. Verdi had other ideas, but for the time being he kept them to himself.
What his contract did ensure, though, was a steady, if modest, income, and that allowed him to become a married man. On 4 May 1836, Margherita’s birthday, Giuseppe Verdi, maestro di musica, married Margherita Barezzi. He was twenty-two; she was one year younger. Verdi’s father Carlo was at the ceremony, along with Margherita’s parents, but his mother was too ill to attend.
Barezzi threw a lavish party at his house opposite the town square in Busseto, attended by the entire Philharmonic Society, with the newlyweds seated at the head of the table.
A brief honeymoon (in Milan!), and it was down to work in Busseto for Verdi.
Portraits of the newly wedded couple were made, either on the wedding day itself or soon after. They were charcoal drawings done by Barezzi’s brother. Verdi has a serious demeanour, looking off to his left, with the beard he wore all his life, and full straight hair parted on the right. His face has a softness to it, and one can see a glimpse of vulnerability about him. Not so Margherita, who fixes the artist with a direct gaze. There is a touch of humour in her face, as if she might break into a smile at any moment. Her most striking feature is her luxuriant hair, piled on either side of her head, and ornately on top of it.‡
At only twenty-two years of age, Verdi was already something of a legend in Busseto, at least to his students. They were aware of the tussle that had been waged to secure him the top job, and he had earned the title of maestro that was now rightly his.
To say that Verdi was busy in his new role is an understatement. He wrote piece after piece to be performed in church – Masses, vespers and benedictions – and he taught his own music to the chorus and orchestra.
Every Sunday after Vespers, the Philharmonic Society band played his music in the town square.§ The local people flocked to these performances, proud of the young man who had spent a decade in their town, and whose prodigious talent was nurtured locally.
On top of this, he taught students in the music school, setting them exams and testing them. He was fortunate that his wife was a trained singer and teacher, allowing her to take on some of the duties.
Margherita soon fell pregnant, and ten months after the marriage, on 26 March 1837, she gave birth to a baby girl. The couple named their daughter Virginia Maria Luigia.
As if his duties as music director were not enough, every spare moment that Verdi had he spent answering his true calling. Perhaps Margherita – Ghita to her husband and family – was the only one who knew. Verdi was working on a new opera.
It is not clear to this day at what point he abandoned work on Rocester and began to write an entirely new opera, entitled Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio.¶ But he was soon making serious progress.
Serious enough to approach the opera house in Parma, the Teatro Regio di Parma, to try to persuade the director there to stage it. With characteristic but unjustified brio, Verdi announced a performance of his new opera in Parma for September 1837. He had to do some serious back-pedalling when the director of the opera house declared he could not risk putting on a new opera by an unknown composer.
Verdi turned instead to Milan and La Scala, with even less success. These were slights that Verdi would not forget. His relations with these two great opera houses remained strained for the rest of his life, even at one point leading to a total break. Verdi did not forgive easily.
Margherita was pregnant again within seven months of Virginia’s birth, and a son was born to the couple on 11 July 1838. They named him Icilio Romano. The names of both their children, Virginia and Icilio, were taken from the glory days of ancient Rome, belonging to Roman martyrs, in a deliberate show of nationalism by Verdi and his wife.
The couple’s joy was short lived. Just a month after Icilio’s birth, Virginia died. She was only sixteen months.
Even in an era when infant mortality was commonplace, this was a devastating blow to the young couple. Maybe it was Virginia’s death that galvanised Verdi. He was due two months’ leave. He lost no time in taking his wife to Milan, leaving Icilio in the care of a wet nurse.
It was an unproductive stay. Try as he might, Verdi was unable to interest La Scala in his new opera. It was a forlorn hope in any case; the autumn season had long since been announced, and everybody connected with the theatre was fully taken up with preparations.
To worsen Verdi’s mood, Milan was in the throes of celebrating a visit by the Emperor and Empress of Austria, paying an official visit to the diamond in their northern Italian crown. Soldiers in ceremonial uniform were on parade; there were plays, ballets and grand balls, and everywhere was hung with the scarlet and gold of the Habsburgs.
Verdi and Margherita were unimpressed. Their shared nationalism had already inspired the naming of their children, and they were certainly not about to participate in festivities that they found profoundly distasteful.
One thing Verdi did do during the stay, however, was renew his musical contacts. There were plenty of musicians he could call on, friends and colleagues from his days studying with Lavigna, and some of these had contacts in high places.
For Verdi the contact in the highest place of all was Bartolomeo Merelli, impresario and director of Europe’s most prestigious opera house, La Scala. He was also director of the Kärntnertor theatre in Vienna, where Beethoven had frequently performed his compositions. Merelli was possibly the single most important impresario in Europe’s musical world.
Through his contacts, Verdi’s name was brought to the attention of Merelli. Verdi had by now many published compositions to his name, and it was more than likely Merelli was shown some of these, or might even have known about them already.
Word was brought back to Verdi that Merelli was impressed, though for the moment there was nothing he could do to help the young composer. La Scala’s schedule was planned and under way.
Verdi needed no further encouragement. He was by now convinced he could make a career, earn a living, in Milan. He and Margherita returned to Busseto. His mind was made up. On 28 October 1838 Verdi handed in his notice and resigned as music director.
He was twenty-five, with a wife and child to support, in debt to his father-in-law (who once again had financed his latest trip to Milan), and in full-time employment with a steady, if small, income. That had now gone.
What gave him this unassailable confidence? He had completed his first opera, Oberto. He knew it was good. He was certain he would be able to get it staged at La Scala. And so, on 6 February 1839, Verdi, with his wife and son Icilio, who was just seven months old, left Busseto for the last time.
In Milan he was in no doubt that he would be able to establish himself as a composer of opera, the natural successor to Rossini; he would earn an ample living; his wife and son would live comfortably in the sophisticated city; they might even expand their family; and the future was assured.
He was wrong on all counts.
* It is not known at what age Verdi had contracted smallpox.
† Which it was, and remains so to this day.
‡ The drawing of Margherita is now lost. A portrait was painted from it after her death, highlighting her vivid red hair.
§ As happens to this day, now with Verdi’s seated statue looking down on the audience.
¶ Nor is it known whether any of the music he used for Oberto is remodelled from Rocester, since nothing of the earlier work has survived.