26
‘ONE BUTTON MORE, ONE BUTTON LESS’
Throughout the summer of 1897 Giuseppina’s health worsened. She refused to eat, complaining of a severe pain in her side and saying that the sight of food made her feel ill. For all but a few hours a day, she remained in bed in her room at Sant’Agata.
She spoke little, but when she said she was suffering from the cold, Verdi ordered a new coal stove to be sent from Milan and had it installed in her room. She was weak and listless, and the dark depression that had so often plagued her in the past lay over her like an impenetrable blanket.
The doctor diagnosed acute pneumonia and was as surprised as anyone when, towards the second week of November, she unexpectedly rallied. Verdi even helped her plan a visit to her sister in Cremona. But the improvement did not last, just as Violetta’s did not in the final moments of La traviata. In a further echo of that opera, Verdi picked the last violets of the season and gave them to his wife. He urged her to smell their scent. ‘Thank you, but I cannot smell them because I have a slight cold,’ she replied.114
Verdi made the decision, as Giuseppina lay dying, to send a new composition, Quattro pezzi sacri (Four Sacred Pieces), to Ricordi. He had actually begun them several years before, and they had lain on his desk largely untouched. Occasionally he would add a passage here, or adjust another one there.
Verdi stayed by his wife’s side throughout her final illness. Boito visited and reported that Verdi himself was suffering from fatigue, and his memory was failing. At half past four in the afternoon on Sunday, 14 November, Giuseppina died at the age of eighty-two. After more than fifty years together, Verdi had lost his Peppina.
At times it had been an uneasy relationship. Verdi had not always afforded Peppina the unconditional love she so wanted, particularly once Teresa Stolz had come into his life. But that he needed her, that he relied on her, that she was always there to ease his passage through difficult times, was in no doubt. She had guided him along many paths, not all of them successful. She had shared his successes and his failures. Though he was not always overtly grateful, she knew he could not have managed without her calming and encouraging presence.
In return Verdi had been her rock, her anchor, to whose fate she had irrevocably tied her own. Her career over, she had devoted the remainder of her life to him. By marrying her, he had given her status. Whatever his profligacies, no one could take away from her the fact that she was the wife of il maestro, Italy’s most feted composer.
Final proof that Giuseppina was as much opposed to the ostentatious side of musical life as her husband came in her funeral instructions. She asked that it be conducted at dawn, and that there should be no flowers, no speeches, and no one present outside her family.
‘I came into this world poor and without pomp, and without pomp I want to go down into the grave.’115 Her body was dressed in black by the women of the household and a rosary placed in her hands, and she was laid on her bed under the dark, emerald velvet canopy.
Giuseppina had left instructions that a small envelope she had sealed fifty-one years earlier, and whose contents were a secret, should be buried unopened with her. According to Verdi’s biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, who spoke to descendants of the household staff, the envelope was searched for in every corner of Sant’Agata, but was not found. Giuseppina’s coffin was closed. Later, the envelope was discovered among her papers. It is not known if the envelope was ever added to the coffin.*
Giuseppina achieved her wish that her funeral should take place at dawn, but not that there should be no dignitaries present. Verdi walked behind his wife’s coffin when it left Sant’Agata at six thirty on the morning of 16 November.
At the parish church in Busseto – the town that had in the past treated her with such disdain – were local officials, mayors of nearby towns along with council members, heads of the local hospital, schools and care centres, all of which she had helped with financial contributions. All the families that lived on the huge Sant’Agata estate were also present.
The funeral service took place without music. There was a Mass, an absolution and a blessing of the coffin. There were no wreaths on the carriage as the coffin was transported by train to Milan. At every stop it was honoured by mayors, council members and local senators.
Among those at the main cemetery as Giuseppina’s coffin was lowered into a temporary grave were Boito and his wife, and a young conductor by the name of Arturo Toscanini, who had played cello in the orchestra at the premiere of Otello at La Scala, and was making a name for himself interpreting Verdi’s music.
The grave was temporary because both Verdi and his wife had expressed in their wills their desire to be buried alongside each other in the Casa di Riposo, the rest home for retired musicians endowed by Verdi that was in the process of being constructed.
Giuseppina named her husband as her sole heir, leaving him almost her entire estate. She left small amounts to family members, and also asked that gifts of money from her estate should be given every year to the poor of the village of Villanova, just a short distance from Sant’Agata.
Verdi must have been heartened that Giuseppina left three pieces of jewellery to Teresa, including a bracelet with the word ‘souvenir’ picked out in small diamonds. To Verdi himself she bequeathed a gold bracelet that he had given her twenty-five years earlier in Naples, which bore the inscription: ‘To my dear Peppina 1872’. In her will she begged him to keep it as a ‘sacred memory’ until his death.
The final words of Giuseppina’s will read: ‘And now goodbye, my Verdi. As we have been together in life, so may God Almighty reunite our souls.’116
Verdi placed an announcement in the newspapers:
Deeply grieving, Maestro Verdi is unable to reply individually to the innumerable, compassionate condolences sent to him upon the loss of his dear companion Giuseppina. Deeply moved and in gratitude to all.117
One month later, in December 1897, Verdi wrote to Boito that his hands trembled so much he could hardly write; he was also, he said, half deaf, half blind and unable to focus on anything.
But he had Teresa. In that same month, just a few weeks after Giuseppina’s death, Verdi gave Teresa his manuscript score of the Requiem, with the inscription on the first page:
To Teresa Stolz, the first interpreter of this composition. G. Verdi. Sant’Agata. December 1897.
Teresa was now sixty-three years of age, and still close to the man she had admired so much for a quarter of a century. From then on she and Arrigo Boito, his closest male colleague, made sure Verdi was looked after. It is possible they made a pact that one or the other would be with him at all times, whether he was in Sant’Agata or Milan.
Their concern proved premature. Verdi regained his strength quickly after Giuseppina’s death. He had a house overflowing with guests for Christmas, which Boito described as the time of year the great man liked best. He even suggested that Verdi regretted his loss of faith as a young man: ‘Alas, like all of us, he had lost his credulity in miracles early; but, perhaps more than us, he kept a poignant regret for it all his life,’ he wrote to a friend.
In the new year, Verdi moved to Milan and took up residence in the Grand Hotel, in the apartment in which he and Giuseppina had stayed so many times. Teresa was in a new apartment, just a single block away. Did they see each other regularly – or even occasionally? We have no reports of meetings between them, which does not come as a surprise.
Even at this age Verdi was still stopped whenever he stepped out onto the street. He was certainly the most recognisable individual in Italy, and one of the most recognised in Europe.
There is a wonderfully revealing photograph taken around this time, which shows him standing in the street outside La Scala, reading a newspaper. We see a bearded man in a black top hat and black overcoat, the rim of his hat almost hiding his eyes, both hands holding the large broadsheet.
Why is it so revealing? Because it is a rare – if not the only – photograph taken of Giuseppe Verdi that he did not know was being taken, and for which he did not pose. What we have, therefore, is the real man. He shows his age with a much lined face, and no hint of a smile disturbs his features. He could be anyone, which is not something that could otherwise be said about him at practically any stage of his adult life. There is no touching up here, no embellishments, as there were in all the thousands of drawings and portraits of him made during his lifetime.
Given his celebrity, it is tempting to suggest he could not possibly have gone to see Teresa, or she come to see him, without someone recognising one or the other, and reporting it. But as I have said many times, all his life he was the master of evasion. Had he wanted a meeting to take place, he was quite capable of ensuring that it would do so clandestinely.
Outside Milan, there was not the same need for secrecy. Together Verdi and Teresa stayed several times in the spa town of Montecatini in Tuscany. While she remained in their hotel, Verdi would take walks and visit cafés. He seemed perfectly happy to be seen out there, though when the attention became too invasive, he would return to his rooms. Conversation did not interest him.
A young journalist wrote a vivid description of the famous composer in Montecatini:
Not at all expansive, severe in appearance, stingy with words, [he] stayed very much to himself. He wore black [suits] and his soft, wide-brimmed hat, and went in the morning to drink the waters … When he became aware that he was the target of stares of the too-curious, he moved or left. He spent almost all day in his apartment. He took lunch there, but for dinner he came down to the round table of the Locanda, sharing the meal, sitting at the head of the table, a place that everyone respectfully kept for him. In the evening he went upstairs early, and before going to bed he enjoyed himself for an hour or so playing card games … He prided himself on being very skilful at these games.
It seems that card games were the limit of his sociability.
Verdi and Teresa also took the waters at the spa town of Tabiano, where he had previously spent many a sojourn with Giuseppina, Teresa often joining them. Strong evidence of the intimacy between the pair, and the extent to which he now relied on her to keep his spirits up, comes in a series of letters Verdi wrote to Teresa, while she was in Tabiano and he was at Sant’Agata.
Dearest
Delightful hours but [they were] too short! And who knows when even ones as short as those will come again! Oh an old man’s life is truly unhappy! Even without real illness, life is a burden, and I feel that vitality and strength are diminishing, each day more than the one before. I feel this within myself, and I don’t have the courage or power to keep busy with anything … Love me well always, and believe in my [love], great, very, very great, and very true …
We will write to each other again and see what we shall be able to do. I am feeling a moment of good humour, and I give you not one kiss but two. Addio, addio, addio …
So everything is set for Saturday morning at nine. I will send a carriage to bring you to Sant’Agata … Oh! Joy! Joy! I am truly happy, even though my health is a bit off…
At the time Verdi wrote these notes, he was eighty-seven years of age, Teresa sixty-six. As his biographer Phillips-Matz observes, few could doubt, reading his words, that this man and woman were in love.
When he was not in Milan or Sant’Agata, Verdi stayed in Genoa, in an apartment he had bought some years previously and where he and Giuseppina had spent many summers. It was in Genoa that Verdi kept his business affairs. On 1 October 1900 he transferred his entire business operations from Genoa to Milan, against the protestations of his bankers.
A conservative estimate of his fortune put it at around 6 million lire.† This was augmented considerably by the annual income from his estates. In his will he had named his daughter Filomena, Fifao, as his sole heir.
During his stay in Genoa, his health worsened considerably. For the first time he needed to be carried up the stairs to his apartment. Back in Sant’Agata he said he felt so weak that he could not move easily, and found it difficult to concentrate on anything.
A visitor to the villa described him as ‘melancholy and sad’. He quoted Verdi as saying:
I don’t talk any more, I don’t read any more, I don’t write any more, I don’t play any more! What a season! It is the seasons that depress me! … My legs won’t carry me any longer!
When the visitor told him that, according to his doctor, he was blessed with a strong, healthy constitution, Verdi replied, with characteristic pessimism:
I know, I know, and if I were not, I would never have got to eighty-seven years of age. But it is the eighty-seven years that are a burden to me!
Verdi had lived into the new century, but he knew the end was near. Over his life he had filled two wooden crates with his early compositions. He instructed Fifao to ensure that they were destroyed. A giant magnolia that stood in front of the villa and obstructed the path, he ordered to be cut down. ‘I planted that with my own hands when I first came to Sant’Agata,’ he said as he watched it being felled.
Late in October 1900 he was described as ‘serene and solemn with his white hair, his white beard … extraordinarily cordial and open, and with a very, very lucid mind’. That was not how he saw himself. In January 1901 he stayed inside the villa for two full weeks, and in a letter to a friend he said he was vegetating, rather than living, and did not understand why he was still on the earth.
A day after writing this, he decided he needed to be in Milan. There were business affairs to attend to. He installed himself in his familiar apartment in the Grand Hotel. On 20 January, the conductor Arturo Toscanini came to see him. Verdi wanted to know how Mascagni’s new opera had been received.
Toscanini reported that he had a good conversation with Verdi, who had asked him what a pavane was, before hurriedly stating that of course he knew. Toscanini said Verdi was in good spirits but sadly somewhat confused.
On the morning of 21 January his doctor came to see him. Shortly after he left, Verdi began to dress himself. He had trouble doing up the buttons on his waistcoat, so he called the chambermaid for assistance. He sat on the edge of the bed. His hands were trembling.
When the maid offered to do the buttons up for him, he insisted on doing it himself. ‘One button more, or one button less,’ he said, then fell back on the bed unconscious.‡
The maid hurried out to fetch the hotel doctor, while Verdi’s own doctor was also called. The hotel doctor was the first to examine him. His right side was paralysed; his eyes showed no reaction to light, though there was some movement in his arms and hands.
He remained unconscious, but breathing regularly, for several days. Boito was one of the first to reach his bedside. He reported that ‘the silence of death’ was upon him, and that he perfectly resembled a bust that a young sculptor Vincenzo Gemito had made of him thirty years before in Naples, in return for financial help Verdi had given him to avoid military service. ‘Poor Maestro,’ reported Boito, ‘how courageous and handsome he was, right up to the last moment.’118
The hotel and the city of Milan took unprecedented measures. Noise and traffic around the hotel was controlled. Carriages were ordered to travel at the slowest speed possible; tram conductors were told not to ring their bells. Straw was laid down outside on the street that Verdi had walked along so many times.
Bulletins on Verdi’s condition were regularly posted on a board to the right of the hotel’s main entrance. His health was briefly overshadowed by the death of Queen Victoria on 22 January, but then the focus of attention returned once more to Italy’s most famous son.
On 26 January, bulletins were issued twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. Doctors then announced that no further bulletins would be issued. On the evening of the 26th, he stopped breathing, but then resumed again.
At 11 p.m. that night, with Boito and Teresa by his bedside, his breathing slowed, the pause between breaths growing longer. In the early hours of the night, Teresa fainted and was taken to lie down on a bed in another room of the suite.
Giuseppe Verdi took his last breath at 2.50 a.m. on 27 January 1901. He was eighty-seven years and three months.
As the news spread, crowds gathered in the street outside. By dawn, flags on government buildings and churches had been draped with ribbons of mourning. For the next three days most shops in the city were shut. Newspapers bore black mourning borders.
Later on the day of his death, despite it being a Sunday, the Italian Senate met and mourned the passing of ‘that shining star who filled the whole civilised world with glory’.119
Giuseppe Verdi had outlived his wife Giuseppina by three years and three months. Teresa Stolz never recovered her health. She died a year after the man she so admired and loved. She was sixty-eight.
On the morning of 30 January, two hundred thousand people crowded into the centre of Milan, more than had ever gathered on the streets of that city before or since. They had come to bid farewell to one of their own.
He was a country lad, a farmer at heart, who all his life loved the soil on which he was raised, and the country for whose independence he strove.
Dressed in his best evening clothes, he was laid in his coffin with only palm fronds beside his body and an ebony cross on his chest. His instructions for ‘two priests, two candles, one cross, and no flowers’, together with an ‘extremely modest’ service, were respected.
A second-class hearse bore his coffin to the church of San Francesco di Paola, more than an hour away. Fellow composers Puccini, Mascagni, Leoncavallo and Giordano joined family members.
After the service, Verdi was laid alongside Giuseppina in the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano, the city’s main cemetery, while preparations were made to carry out their final wish, to be buried alongside each other in the Casa di Riposo.
Almost one month later, on 27 February, more than three hundred thousand people lined the route, as a funeral car, towering more than four metres above the street, looking like ‘a black and gold boat sailing on a sea of humanity’, was drawn by six horses, draped in black.
Before the cortège left the cemetery, Arturo Toscanini conducted a chorus of more than eight hundred voices in ‘Va, pensiero’, ‘The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves’, from Nabucco. At the Casa di Riposo, the Miserere from Il trovatore was sung.
The procession included a royal prince, the Count of Turin, representing the King and Queen of Italy; consuls from several European governments; representatives of the Italian Senate and Chamber of Deputies, and the Mayor of Milan, as well as delegates from every other major city in Italy.
All along the route tapestries, flags with mourning ribbons and coloured silk hangings were hung from balconies and windows. People leaned from rooftops and clung to the branches of trees.
At the Casa, at the end of a garden path and down circular steps, Verdi and Giuseppina were buried alongside each other. At some point thereafter, a plaque was set into the low wall at their feet, at a point midway between their two coffins, commemorating the soprano Teresa Stolz.
As for the elaborate ceremony of farewell, it would not have pleased Verdi at all. It was precisely the kind of scene he enjoyed depicting in his operas, and pricking for its pomposity.
He would, though, have been quietly pleased that the farewell from his fellow Italians was conducted on a scale, and with a depth of mourning, that the country had never seen before.
* Gaia Servadio’s account differs. She states in her biography of Giuseppina that the envelope was never found. Whichever version is true, the contents of the envelope have never been disclosed.
† Approximately £21 million today.
‡ It is a poignant coincidence that both Verdi’s final words and those of King Lear, about whom he never achieved his lifelong ambition of writing an opera, were about buttons.