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Giuseppina Strepponi was born in Lodi on 8 September 1815, the daughter of an opera composer. At the age of five she entered the Conservatory of Music in Milan, where she studied singing, making her debut at the young age of twenty in Rossini’s “Matilde di Sharban” attracting immediately the critics' attention. Thus wrote Il Gondoliere di Venezia on 11 November 1835: “A voice that is limpid, penetrating, delicate, a convincing dramatic performance and a graceful figure. In addition to the numerous virtues that Nature has generously given her, there is also that science of singing in which she excels. This same science, in little time, will make her shine among the brightest stars of Italian theatre”. When Strepponi became part of Verdi’s life she was already a famous singer, who exerted pressure on the impresario Morelli in order that he stage at the Scala Theatre “Oberto conte di San Bonifacio”, the work of the then unknown master from Busseto. In 1842 she played Abigaille in “Nabucco”, and was the cause of the only problem suffered by the opera during its premiere. In fact, Strepponi’s voice was beginning to falter, mainly because of the excessive amount of work the singer had to accept to support her whole family after her father’s untimely death. A contemporary critic wrote: “As far as acting and singing are concerned, this artist has performed miracles, but her voice needs some rest, and we pray that she may take it, for our and her own good, because we want to keep on the stage, for a long time, a singer that is so rich in applause”. The young soprano’s life was particularly tempestuous, aggravated by her unhappy relationship with Napoleone Marini and the worries connected with her two illegitimate sons, whom she raised alone. The deterioration of her vocal cords would force her to abandon Italy’s most important theatres for a time and take to singing in less important and central theatres. Finally, she had to put an end to her career in January 1846, after her last appearance in “Nabucco” in Modena. After that, she moved to Paris and started giving singing lessons. In 1847 she met Verdi again, who was there to stage “I Lombardi”.
 Napoleone Moriani ( 1806- 1877)
Nicknamed death’s tenor
performed mainly in Doninzetti’s operas. For him, during a repeat of Attila at the Scala theatre (1846)
Verdi wrote the new Fosseto Romance
Oh dolore! Ed io vivea
Busseto – Casa Barezzi, Amici di Verdi
View of Busseto
collection of drawings and maps
Volume 20, number 49
Parma – Archivio di stato
Verdi at S. Agata photograph
S. Agata – Villa Verdi
Among the many proofs, we can quote a letter of 5 December 1860: “I swear - and you will not find this hard to believe - I am often amazed by the fact that you know music! Even if this art is divine and even if your genius may be worthy of the art it professes, the formula that fascinates me and that I adore, in you, is your personality, your honour, your indulgence towards other people’s mistakes, though you are very demanding of yourself.
Your charitableness so full of reserve and mystery, your proud independence and your childlike simplicity, a quality, this naturalness, that has been capable of conserving the untamed purity of ideas and of feelings midst the human sewer. Oh my Verdi, I don’t deserve you! Your love for me is charity, is a balm for this heart which, sometimes, is very sad despite its falsely cheerful appearance. Keep loving me! Love me after I die, so that when I stand before Divine Justice I will have the wealth of your love and of your prayers, oh my Redeemer!”.
This extraordinary woman’s intelligence and moral fibre can be evinced from another letter, revealing how Giuseppina analysed human nature: “Our youth has passed, but we continue being the world and look with great compassion at the human puppets as they stir, run, scramble, drag themselves, hit each other, hide and reappear. All of this to try and conquer, in their masks, the top rung, or the rungs closest to the top, of society’s masquerade. In this perpetual convulsion they reach the end and are amazed because they don’t have anything, they don’t have anything that is sincere and disinterested to console them in their final hour and aspire, too late, to peace, which to me seems the most important value on earth, and which they had scorned till then, substituting it with vanity’s illusions.”
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Giuseppina Strepponi (1877) photograph
Sant’Agata – Villa Verdi
Her handwriting in the score for his new opera, “Gerusalemme”, is proof of the inestimable help she lent Verdi on this occasion. From this moment onwards, Giuseppina was to become the maestro’s official and inseparable collaborator.
Giuseppina Strepponi’s move to Busseto to live with Verdi provoked a surge of criticism and gossip mainly among the townsfolk, but Verdi did not go to the trouble of informing anyone of his situation, except his former father-in -law and benefactor, Antonio Barezzi: “A free, independent lady, a lover, like me, of solitary life, is living in my house. Neither she nor I are bound to explaining any of our actions [...] I will ensure that in my house, she is entitled to the same respect, or rather, more respect than I am entitled to, and I will not tolerate anyone being disrespectful to her for any reasons. As she deserves complete respect for her conduct, her spirit and the special consideration that she always shows others”.
Strepponi, with her vast experience as a singer, became a valid and loyal collaborator, full of good advice and suggestions. Giuseppina herself described their relationship in a letter to Verdi dated 3 January 1853: “What if you haven’t written a word? You don’t have your poor Livello (that is, “bothering person” in the Lodi dialect), in a corner of your room, sitting deep in an armchair, telling you: This is good; this isn’t good. Repeat, this is original. Now, failing the poor Livello, God punishes you and forces you to wait, and you rack your brain before the doors of your head open to let out your magnificent ideas in music”.
The relationship between Verdi and Strepponi became official on 29 August 1859, with their wedding at the church of Collogne-sous-Salève, in Savoy, attended by the bell ringer and the coachman as sole witnesses. During the fifty years they spent together, living both at the house in St. Agata and at their winter residence in Palace Sauli Pallavicino in Genoa, Giuseppina’s love for Verdi remained unchanged.
Vista de Villa Verdi en Sant’Agata
painting by Salvatore D’Avendaño (1870 circa) oil on canvas
Sant’Agata –- Villa Verdi
Lulù’s tomb in S. Agata painting by Salvatore D’Avendaño (1870 circa)
oil on canvas
S. Agata – Villa Verdi
Lulù
painting by Filippo Palizzi (1858)
S. Agata – Villa Verdi
Verdi’s family life was enlivened by the presence of several pets, especially the deeply loved cocker spaniel Lulù, whose death upset the couple so much that they had a tomb built for the dog in the cemetery of Santa Agata with the epitaph: “In memory of a true friend”. Their long and happy life together ended on 14 November 1897 with Giuseppina’s death in Santa Agata. The maestro was left alone with Filomena, a distant relative that the Verdi had renamed Maria and of whom they had assumed guardianship in 1867 at the age of seven, taking her in their house as their daughter.
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