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CONTENTS

1

Confused Beginnings

2

A Father and His Daughter

3

‘He Is a Rude, Uncivil Scoundrel’

4

Intolerable Losses

5

Another Loss and a Fiasco

6

‘Little By Little the Opera Was Composed’

7

The Galley Years

8

‘Signor Maestro’

9

Verdi, Man of Property

10

Queen Victoria Is Not Amused

11

‘The Hour of Liberation Has Sounded’

12

Verdi Sets Tongues Wagging

13

The Opera Is ‘Repugnant, Immoral, Obscene’

14

A Rift in the Verdi Family

15

A Question of Identity

16

‘Without You, I Am a Body Without a Soul’

17

The Bear of Busseto

18

Verdi, Gentleman Farmer

19

‘Verdi Is My Tyrant’

20

A Wedding At Last

21

A Soprano Impresses Verdi

22

‘I Am an Almost Perfect Wagnerian’

23

An Opera for Cairo

24

‘The All-Powerful Corruptor of Italian Artistic Taste’

25

Scandal and Comedy

26

‘One Button More, One Button Less’

Afterword

Notes

Bibliography

Index

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