4
INTOLERABLE LOSSES
Giuseppe Verdi loved the company of women, and he had an undoubted eye for a pretty face. We have already seen how he flirted with his landlord’s daughter in Milan, even taking her back to Busseto with him, causing her father to heap all manner of uncomplimentary epithets on his head.
To imagine that after marriage his roving eye might cease roving would be a presumption too far. He moved in musical circles, crowded with female musicians. In particular he now found himself drawn to writing for the voice – both songs and larger-scale works – and so his milieu was the world of opera, with its abundance of sopranos and mezzos.
One in particular had caught his attention. It was hardly surprising. She was the soprano of the moment, the most renowned in Italy. In the city of Milan, the home of Italian opera, she was feted, her name on the lips of all opera lovers. Her voice had a purity and beauty no one else’s could match.
That was not all she was renowned for. The singing came first, of course. Giuseppina Strepponi had triumphed in Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and L’elisir d’amore, as well as Bellini’s I puritani. But she also had a remarkably colourful private life.
In February 1839 Giuseppina was twenty-three years of age, at the height of her fame and with a glittering career ahead of her. She was also the lover of several male opera singers and the mother of two illegitimate children. Her behaviour towards these infants – at least from a twenty-first-century perspective – seems extraordinary.
The first she had given birth to just a year earlier, in January 1838. It was a son, baptised Camillo Luigi Antonio. The birth register records the father as ‘unidentified’. She was known to have had several affairs while on tour, and a more prolonged relationship with her agent. We can take it that she did not know who the father was. The baby was dispatched to a family in Florence. Giuseppina made no attempt to maintain contact, and as far as we know never saw her son again.
Within a matter of months she was pregnant again. In February 1839 she gave birth to a daughter, Giuseppa Faustina. The delivery took place six hours after she had come off stage. Although the pregnancy had been clearly visible, since she continued working right up to the birth, it appears there was a conspiracy to hide the pregnancy from the authorities. To give birth illegitimately was a crime.
When she was unable to perform, it was hinted she had suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth. The local newspaper reported she was recovering from ‘a slight indisposition’.
Once again she could not be sure who the father was, though when word inevitably leaked out, her agent claimed paternity. And once again there was apparently not a trace of sentimentality in Giuseppina. The inconvenience of a new arrival could not be allowed to interrupt a flourishing career.
This time the baby was placed in a turnstile set into the wall of the Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents) in Florence. This was, in effect, a revolving door. The infant was deposited in the small doorway, the turnstile was rotated, and the bundle removed by nuns on the inner side of the wall out of sight. This unbearably poignant act was the sole means of escape for a woman who had sinned against the Roman Catholic church and who could not bear to take the consequences.
Did I say not a trace of sentimentality? Perhaps there was one small sign. She hung round her baby’s neck a piece of string with half a coin attached. Two years later a married couple turned up at the hospital bearing the other half, which Giuseppina had passed to them, along with a sum of money.
Giuseppa thus had a home. But, as with her son, Giuseppina never saw her daughter again, or made any further attempt to contact her. We know nothing more of these two illegitimate children, other than the fact that Giuseppa lived to the age of eighty-six, dying in a mental hospital in 1925. You have to wonder if she ever knew the place her mother held in musical history, due to the unique role she would play in the life of Italy’s greatest composer.
Exactly when Verdi first set eyes on La Strepponcina, as she was dubbed, is not known. Nor do we know for certain when she first saw him. But the mutual attraction was immediate.
Verdi was turning heads, and not just for his musical prowess. Several accounts describe him as immensely attractive, a blaze of creativity in his eyes, his restless energy driven by unstoppable ambition. He was married, which in the intense and emotional world of the theatre might have been a challenge in itself, the more so since his wife was cloistered at home caring for their son, who was less than a year old. The knowledge that Verdi was grieving for his daughter was likely to elicit emotional comfort from others.
As for Giuseppina, a portrait painted just a few years later shows a true beauty. A perfectly formed oval face, large eyes that were deeply dark and expressive, full lips, a long white neck and gently sloping shoulders. She was every inch the romantic heroine. Even allowing for flattery on the part of the artist, it is easy to sense her magnetism on stage and her allure off it.
It was inevitable, given the circles in which they moved, that Giuseppe and Giuseppina would meet, and perhaps inevitable too that a flame would spark. The creative artist and the interpreter, a shared passion for music and the opera; one, at twenty-three years of age, lauded in opera houses across the land, the other, three years older, on the brink of fame. They even shared a name!
At least Verdi himself was in no doubt he was on the brink of fame, and it seems Giuseppina was of the same view. She had heard talk of his compositions from fellow singers. She might even have tried them out herself. We know she was impressed because it was she who went to the all-powerful Bartolomeo Merelli and urged him to look again at Verdi’s work, in particular his full-length opera Oberto. We can be certain, too, that she proposed Merelli award her the lead female role of Leonora, should he decide to put the opera into production.
Fate now intervened to give the young composer his first chance to make a real name for himself. The season at La Scala was going badly – for Merelli very badly indeed. Several singers had fallen ill. One had throat trouble; another’s voice failed in mid-performance.
Merelli was having to cancel performances, reschedule others. Soon, the wealthy patrons of Milan began leaving the city for their summer residences. The season was turning into a financial disaster for Merelli. He needed something new, and something good, for the autumn.
There was an obvious solution, and it was Giuseppina who reminded him of it. Verdi’s opera Oberto. Why was she able to persuade him to look again at Oberto without any apparent difficulty? Merelli was among Giuseppina’s conquests. For a time she was his mistress; if that role had diminished in importance by this point, the relationship certainly had not ended. In fact it was rumoured in operatic circles that Merelli was the father of at least one of her illegitimate children.
Merelli did as Giuseppina asked, and we can imagine a certain sense of relief on his part at the discovery that the opera, as it stood, had merit. In fact, with an alteration here and an amendment there, it might even be stageable.
Verdi, with his heightened sense of the dramatic, recounted to his French biographer Pougin more than forty years later how, as he was about to give up on Milan and return with his wife to Busseto, dejected, disappointed, disillusioned, he received a summons to La Scala, where the most powerful impresario in Italian opera awaited him.
He told me in no uncertain terms that … he wanted to produce [Oberto] during the next season. If I accepted his offer, I would have to make some changes in the [vocal ranges] because he no longer would have all four of the same artists that he had had earlier.
It was a good offer. Young, unknown, I happened to meet an impresario who dared to put a new work on stage without asking me for any kind of underwriting, which in any case I could not have given him. Merelli … offered to divide any receipts with me half and half, if he could sell the opera. Nor should I be under any illusion that this was a bad deal: it was for an opera by a beginner!11
It most certainly was not a bad deal. In fact for Verdi it was to prove life transforming, and in more ways than one. A guarantee to stage his first completed opera on the most prestigious stage in Europe, half of any profits guaranteed. Verdi knew how fortunate he was. In collaboration with the librettist Temistocle Solera he set about making the changes Merelli wanted. Notoriously reluctant in later life to change what he had written, Verdi was aware that with Merelli’s vast experience he should listen to his advice and learn from it.
Things did not, however, progress entirely smoothly. I said that earlier in the season several singers had suffered indispositions. One of them was none other than Giuseppina Strepponi herself. Two pregnancies in swift succession had taken their toll. Merelli had given her the role of Leonora and rehearsals were not going well. It must have been devastating for her to admit it to herself, but her voice was losing its lustre.
When an offer of less demanding work in Venice and Lucca came along, Giuseppina took it. La Scala was now too big a stage for her. She was forced to pull out of Oberto, and left Milan. Matters came to a head in Lucca: on the orders of five doctors, she took two months off.
What was actually going on in the celebrated soprano’s life? In her revelatory biography of Giuseppina Strepponi, Gaia Servadio writes that the evidence points to Giuseppina suffering a miscarriage or abortion at about this time (after two full-term pregnancies so close together) – an abortion being more likely, since she would not perhaps have tolerated the prospect of yet another pregnancy. The doctors, Servadio believes, were bribed.
Servadio goes further. Given the complicated emotions that would afflict both Verdi and Giuseppina in later life over children in the extended Verdi family, coupled with the exhaustive lengths they went to to deceive others about their early relationship, she argues that ‘it would be tempting to think that this pregnancy was due to Verdi’. She acknowledges, though, that we cannot even be fully certain that Giuseppina was pregnant. It is just that if she were, all speculation would fit.12 It is a tempting, though unproven, hypothesis.
Given what was about to happen in Verdi’s life, Giuseppina – whatever level their relationship might have reached – had reason to be grateful she was many miles absent from the young man who had captivated her.
Verdi, with the biggest challenge of his nascent career ahead of him, was about to be plunged to the depths of despair, yet again. His infant son, Icilio Romano, came down with a disease that even the doctors of Milan were unable to diagnose. For three weeks he lingered between life and death. On 22 October Icilio died, most probably of bronchial pneumonia. He was just fifteen months old.
Giuseppe Verdi and his wife Margherita had lost both their children in the space of fourteen months. Neither child had seen its second birthday.
Verdi was at least able to lose himself in his work. Margherita, away from her family, away from Busseto, simply shut herself indoors to grieve.
After a short and intensive period of rehearsal, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio, Verdi’s first full-length opera, was premiered at La Scala on 17 November 1839, less than a month after Icilio’s death. Margherita did not attend the most important night of her husband’s career to date. It was not the moment to dress up in finery and feign enjoyment.
Verdi told later biographers that, between Act One and Act Two, he ran all the way from La Scala to their apartment to hug Ghita and tell her all was going well. Even given his predilection for the dramatic, one can easily imagine this most passionate of men doing that.
And in fact all really was going well. The audience thoroughly enjoyed the opening night of Oberto, a convoluted tale of love and betrayal among the aristocracy in medieval Italy. Verdi was called from the orchestra pit – the traditional place for the composer – several times during the performance to take applause, culminating in a triumphant curtain call at the close.
Oberto ran for fourteen performances – a good showing, and much to Merelli’s relief. On the morning after the premiere he offered Verdi a contract for three further operas to be written at eight-month intervals. These would be performed either in Milan or Vienna – Merelli was of course operatic impresario in both cities.
Giuseppe Verdi had arrived on the world stage. He was no longer the provincial peasant, struggling to be accepted in the big city.
On the evening of 26 November, his father-in-law, Giovanni Barezzi, and his closest friend as a teenager, Giuseppe Demaldè, as well as other supporters from the Busseto Philharmonic Society, were in the La Scala audience for Oberto.
It must have been a joyous evening for them, to see ‘their boy’ up there on the stage of Europe’s most prestigious opera house, and indeed it must have been a moment of unimaginable pride for the composer himself.
Not that you would believe it from his description of events more than thirty years later:
It won a success which, if not very notable, was at least great enough to warrant a certain number of performances, which Merelli thought he might increase by giving a few beyond those which had been subscribed.13
A touch of false modesty, perhaps, from a composer who by then was world famous.
To his friends and colleagues it might have seemed that Giuseppe Verdi was assured of future fame and fortune – a success at La Scala, a contract for three further operas in his pocket – but that was not how it seemed to the composer himself.
Surprisingly, perhaps, he was seriously short of money. The cost of living, in particular for accommodation, was expensive in Milan. For that reason the apartment Verdi rented was unfurnished, the furniture having been brought from Busseto. Verdi had borrowed the money for a down-payment on the apartment from his father-in-law. In order to keep up with the rent, he needed to borrow again. This time he appealed to Merelli, against future payment. Merelli refused.
Verdi was thrown into despair. His first opera was being performed at La Scala, yet he had to suffer the humiliation of being unable to enjoy the lifestyle this should have allowed him, with requests for a loan turned down by the man who was effectively in charge of his career.
We know Verdi was deeply hurt because he told a biographer many years later that his wife saw his distress, and without telling him went out and pawned a ‘few gold things of her own’.14 He was deeply touched by this ‘loving act’, adding that he was quickly able to fulfil his promise to repay her.
Putting money troubles aside, he had work to do. Merelli handed him a libretto for the first of the three operas he was now contracted to write, a turgid melodrama with the title Il proscritto (‘The Outcast’).
Verdi set to work and found, somewhat bafflingly, that inspiration would not come. Perhaps not so bafflingly to us. He was grieving for the loss of his second child; his wife was cloistered in their apartment, deep in grief. The resolution of his financial problems depended on successful composition. He was a twenty-six-year-old man under intense pressure, on both a professional and an emotional level.
Was Giuseppina Strepponi also encroaching on his thought processes? Whatever level their relationship might or might not have reached, we can be certain that an emotional bond had formed between them.
She, so highly experienced, could have taught him a lot about stagecraft, about singers’ needs, what they wanted from a composer, what they did not want. He for his part must have inspired her with his unquenchable ambition. On one of her absences from Milan she had sent him a small intimate portrait of herself. Was he careful to secrete it away from Margherita?
His creative juices temporarily stilled, Verdi was unexpectedly rescued by Merelli himself. The impresario found that he was missing an opera buffa for the coming season. He needed a piece of work that would make the audience laugh, some levity amid all the exaggerated melodrama of opera.
He handed Verdi a number of comic librettos, and told him to choose for himself which one to set. It was a remarkable act of confidence in the young composer, who had never tried his hand at comedy. Perhaps in an act of self-defence, a guard against possible failure, but more likely an early sign of the undoubted arrogance he would display in later years, Verdi declared them all worthless. Merelli, no doubt with a dismissive wave of the hand, told him to choose one, and get on with it.
Forty years later Verdi told his French biographer he had chosen the ‘least bad’.15 Given a new title, Un giorno di regno (‘King for a Day’) was an absurd tale of exchanged identities and thwarted love.
Verdi set to work in late May 1840, and once again struggled. This time he suffered physically as well. He developed a severe throat infection, giving him pulsating headaches and threatening to go down into his lungs, affecting his breathing. This was probably a psychosomatic reaction to stress, something he would exhibit throughout his life at the beginning of the compositional process.
The opening night of the new opera was scheduled for 5 September on the stage of La Scala. To say time was short is an understatement. Three months to compose a full-length opera, rehearse the singers, make adjustments, rewrite here, cut or add there. All less than a year after the loss of his second child.
And it was a comedy! Anything less suitable for Verdi, given the circumstances of his life, it would be hard to imagine. What he could not know was that those circumstances were about to become much worse.