15
A QUESTION OF IDENTITY
What follows is an amalgam of fact and speculation. Speculation in a biography, I believe, is permitted when it is made clear that it is speculation, and where it is based on known fact.
For what follows I am heavily indebted to Verdi’s most comprehensive biographer, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, who carried out more extensive research in Busseto and the surrounding area than any other modern biographer, to the extent of living in Busseto, befriending and speaking to local people, hearing their stories and legends of Verdi, and examining records there and in other towns that had never before been made public. I shall tell this particular story largely as she tells it.
On 14 April 1851, at half past nine in the evening, a newborn baby girl was placed in the turnstile set into the wall at the Ospedale Maggiore in Cremona. The bell was rung, the turnstile revolved, and the nuns took the baby in.
Unusually for an abandoned baby, the nuns found a name for the baby inside the basket, and the following day she was baptised Santa Streppini. In every section of the baptismal register, in answer to details such as name of father, name of mother, and so on, is the word ‘unknown’.*
Was Giuseppina Strepponi the baby’s mother? We know that she had given up three earlier babies to foster parents, one of them placed in the turnstile in Florence, so to have placed this new baby in the turnstile would not have been an unlikely action for her to take.
Clearly the name ‘Streppini’ is just a single letter away from ‘Strepponi’, and again using false names closely resembling her own is not something alien to Giuseppina. Her illegitimate son was registered under the name ‘Sterponi’, while Giuseppina herself used the invented name ‘Spillottini’ when she wanted to receive letters in secret.
This new infant was placed with foster parents under the name Santa Stropellini. Yet another invented name, clearly and carefully entered into the register.
Phillips-Matz established, after exhaustive research, that none of these invented names appeared in any other official record for the entire first half of the nineteenth century. In other words, at the time these illegitimate babies were born, there was no other family in the Po valley with any of those family names. The invention of them, then, was obviously done with great care, to ensure there could be no confusion with any other family.
The foster parents with whom Santa was placed were smallholders living on a farm near the Sant’Agata estate. From it they could clearly see the Sant’Agata villa; one of the family would later do gardening work for Verdi.
Santa lived with her foster parents until she was fifteen. She was then formally adopted by their daughter and her husband, an unusual course of action that might be interpreted as a move to keep the child in the family. The husband’s mother was a similar age to Verdi and had been a friend of his when both were growing up in Busseto.
Santa and her new foster parents continued to live in the smallholding on the edge of Verdi’s Sant’Agata estate. Clearly (and unlike Strepponi’s earlier children) great care had been taken in the placing of this child. Was it made to ensure she lived close to Giuseppina? We cannot be sure, since there is no record of any further contact between the two of them. But it does seem plausible.
If Giuseppina was indeed Santa’s mother, then she would have become pregnant around the end of June or early July 1850. Towards the end of the year, she would not have been able to conceal it. It was at this time that relations between Verdi and his parents reached breaking point. Could it have been the discovery of Giuseppina’s pregnancy that caused it? It would certainly explain Verdi’s reluctance to have visitors to the Palazzo Cavalli in Busseto. It would also explain why she remained cloistered within the building for such a long period.
If we accept the proposition that Santa was Giuseppina’s daughter, it leads naturally to the assumption that Verdi was the father. He was living with her at the Palazzo Cavalli in Busseto at the time, of course. It is therefore unthinkable that she could have become pregnant by someone else – or, if she had, that Verdi would have allowed his relationship with her to continue.
At the very least, it might explain the rift between him and his parents. It might also go some way to explaining his complicated relationship with Giuseppina. Were they married or weren’t they? If they were, had he become stepfather to her other illegitimate children, as Italian law demanded? Given his international fame and reputation, the potential scandal that would have ensued was surely out of the question.
There are a lot of ‘ifs’, and no conclusive evidence that Giuseppina was Santa’s mother or Verdi her father. But the circumstantial evidence, it has to be admitted, is strong on both counts.
To add to this, we have local legend. Phillips-Matz, who lived with Bussetans of a later generation, was told time and time again that Santa’s father was Verdi and her mother Giuseppina, and that this knowledge had been handed down through the generations.
There is more, and it concerns Verdi, though not this time Giuseppina. In late May 1850 a boy was born in Busseto, named Giuseppe, and placed in the turnstile in the same hospital in Cremona where Santa would be put almost a year later.
Giuseppe was placed with foster parents in Busseto, where he would live and grow up. When he was old enough to understand, Giuseppe was told that he was Verdi’s illegitimate son, and that his mother was one of the maids in the Palazzo Cavalli when Verdi and Giuseppina were living there.
It is certainly possible. At this stage in their lives, the relationship between Verdi and Giuseppina, while not being entirely open, might have been somewhat relaxed as far as other relationships were concerned. We know Verdi had affairs; there was the ‘Angel’ in Venice and the baroness who lived outside Busseto, and there were surely more.
Once again, it was local legend that Giuseppe’s father was Verdi, and once again this was passed down the generations.
We know, too, that in the run-up to Rigoletto Verdi was under intense pressure, both professionally and in his private life. The letter to Piave that I quoted in the last chapter, where he says he feels tired, ‘as exhausted as if they had drained off half my blood’, was written less than three weeks before Santa was born.
Exactly two weeks after Santa was placed in the turnstile, Verdi wrote again to Piave. After criticising his father, who ‘does not want to leave me free and at peace’, there are these heartfelt words:
I assure you that I am at a fork in the road that is so dreadful that I do not know how to get out of it. But it is better not to mention certain things to you, and it is useless for me to tell you about my troubles, [for] you cannot help me.
If only he had told Piave. What was the ‘fork in the road’? We can only surmise. It might have referred to Rigoletto, or it might have referred to something more personal.
To take conjecture even further, we can look at Verdi’s artistic creations, his operas. It has not been lost on biographers that through many of them run strong father–daughter relationships.
Even before Santa’s appearance on the scene, we have the illegitimate Abigaille in Nabucco, a role that Verdi was determined Giuseppina would sing. There is a tender duet between father and daughter in Act Three of Luisa Miller. The strongest portrayal to date of a father–daughter relationship comes in Rigoletto; in fact it forms the whole basis of the drama. As I have shown, it is entirely possible that Giuseppina was pregnant while Verdi was working on Rigoletto.
Still to come is La traviata, in which Violetta begs her lover’s father to embrace her as a daughter. Beyond that, there is the great father–daughter recognition scene in Simon Boccanegra; father comforts daughter in Act One of La forza del destino; and on Verdi’s mind throughout most of his adult life is his desire to write an opera based on King Lear, with the searing relationship between the king and his daughter Cordelia at its heart.
We can, naturally, conclude nothing from any of this. In fact one can quite reasonably point out that three of those operas were composed before Santa was born, so even if he were the father, how would Verdi know he had a daughter?
Nor must we forget that Verdi was a father who had lost two children – one a daughter – in infancy.
Taking everything together, the circumstantial evidence that Santa was the daughter of Verdi and Giuseppina is strong, perhaps even overwhelming. Phillips-Matz concludes that they were indeed her parents, while accepting there is no definitive proof.
Giuseppina’s biographer Gaia Servadio disagrees. She points to the fact that Giuseppina had a brief physical relationship with the composer Donizetti when she was in her mid-twenties. Seven years later Donizetti died of syphilis. He had already lost his wife, whom it’s thought he infected, and Servadio suggests he caused physical harm to Giuseppina, leaving her sterile by the age of twenty-eight.†
The opera critic Andrew Porter, in an article for the Financial Times following the publication of Phillips-Matz’s biography, writes, ‘There is no proof, only pointers toward the probability that the composer of those poignant father–daughter duets lived with a load of guilt.’64
He suggests, though, that a man of Verdi’s ‘stern fearless character’ would have been more likely to defy the world and ‘boldly and lovingly acknowledge his love-child’. In the close-knit and deeply devout community of Busseto in the 1850s, he would certainly have had to be fearless, given the damage that would have done to his reputation.
We have not yet heard from the woman at the centre of all this, Giuseppina Strepponi herself. We have precious little to go on, in fact just a couple of sentences in a single letter. They do not resolve the issue; indeed in some sense they add to the uncertainty.
Depending on the reading of her words, they could be said to refute the proposition that Santa was their daughter. Conversely her use of the future tense, and the words that follow in parenthesis, could be said to give the theory credence. Either way, Giuseppina’s words offer us an insight into the extraordinary hold she clearly had over Verdi.
On 3 January 1853, while she was in Livorno and he was in Rome, Giuseppina wrote to Verdi:
We will not have children (since God perhaps is punishing me for my sins by preventing me from enjoying any legitimate joy before I die)! Well, having no children by me, you will not, I hope, give me the sorrow of having any by another woman. Now, without children, you have a fortune more than sufficient to provide for your needs and even for a bit of luxury. We adore the country and in the country one spends little [money] – and there is great pleasure.65
This lends credence to Servadio’s theory that Giuseppina was incapable of having children, for whatever reason, be it through contact with syphilis or – another theory – early menopause. Or it could be that Verdi had made it clear that marriage, for now, was out of the question. Either way, that would explain her use of the word ‘legitimate’ and the future tense.
What seems surprising is the pressure she is putting on Verdi not to have children by any other woman. It is quite possibly a decision he had already taken, but if he had, he had not confided in her. The fact that it would cause her ‘sorrow’ suggests she expects the relationship with Verdi to continue, something that is reinforced by the fact that they are already living together in the country, namely at Sant’Agata.
It is surely fair to assume that the two of them must have discussed the question of children, and their future life together. It is also quite possible that Verdi had already assured Giuseppina that he would marry her one day. She is unlikely to have used such language otherwise.
The move into Sant’Agata came on 1 May 1851. This was less than two weeks after his parents moved out – or, more accurately, were evicted by him. Just two days before the move, he had reached a financial agreement with his father, after months of wrangling and acrimony. Debts were settled in both directions.
Verdi’s mother Luigia was still ill. It is not an exaggeration to say her health was broken by all the tension that had grown up between parents and son.
For Verdi, he had realised his dream. He was back living in the countryside he adored. Immediately he set to work to improve the house and the grounds. He brought in a team of carpenters, stonemasons, bricklayers and decorators.
He began to live the life he had for so long coveted. In a pattern that he would develop, but which then remained fundamentally unchanged for decades to come, he indulged in the physical effort of gardening, planting shrubs and trees; he took long walks across the fields and even longer drives in his carriage; he interested himself in the livestock, the delivery of calves and their sale at market; fruit trees and vines he nurtured, making sure the soil was well irrigated from the rivers that bordered the estate.
The greatest operatic composer Italy had produced, the most famous in Europe, had at last become the man of the soil he had always wanted to be. But it had come at a cost. Unequalled he might have been in the world of opera, but to the people of Busseto he was a man who had turned his back on them, lived inappropriately, disrespected his parents, flown in the face of tradition and morality.
Few visitors came to Sant’Agata. Those who did – and that included some of the workers he employed – became objects of scorn in Busseto. To say that Verdi was a pariah would be putting it a touch too strongly, but only a touch.
We know, of course, that Verdi’s genius would supplant all this. He would be remembered long after the people of Busseto were forgotten. And, just as he had hoped, the joy of living in the countryside, on his own estate, stimulated his creativity.
Almost as soon as he moved into Sant’Agata, Verdi began work on a new opera.
* After exhaustive searching, Phillips-Matz found this document in a locked cabinet of the lowest storage cellar of Cremona City Hospital, not, as might be expected, in the parish records office. It is a fair assumption that it had been hidden there.
† Servadio gives no direct source for her assertion that Giuseppina was sterile, and I have found no reference to it elsewhere.