Giuseppina
Strepponi’s father was an organist and a minor opera composer. As she
developed, he was realised that she was an excellent soprano and encouraged her
to perform. In 1834 she was a sensation at Milan’s La Scala opera house in
Donizetti’s Elixir of Love.
During the next few years, she performed in a
wide-ranging repertoire and, through a liaison with a popular tenor of the day,
had three children. The first, of these was a son Camillo, whom I will mention
again later in this review. Born in 1838, he, like the others she discretely
arranged to be adopted.
Soon after the third of these children went to adoption,
she used her influence to gain access to Milan’s La Scala opera house. His name
was Giuseppe Verdi, and he soon became known as the greatest Italian composer
of his age. In 1842, she had a key role – Abigaille – in the creation of “Nabucco,”
one of his first operas. It was a great success, with 57 successive
performances.
As she travelled throughout Europe
singing the role, she gave a boost to Verdi’s career, helping him quickly
become renowned. She was extraordinarily intelligent and proves a wonderful,
talented writer in the many letters included in the book. She guided Verdi’s
career and helped in translating texts from Spanish, French and could even help
a bit when they had to deal with the German theatres.
But Giuseppina took on too many great soprano roles.
In 1846, barely 30 years old, her voice was failing and she had to give up her
career. By then, however, she and Verdi were in love. She moved to Paris as a
teacher and Verdi joined her the following year. From then on, their lives were
linked. They settled in his home in Venice in 1851 and married in 1859.
Giuseppina Strepponi was the most famous singer
of her day when Giuseppe Verdi, then an unknown composer, wanted her to perform
his work. They became lovers and eventually married. Given her background as a
“fallen woman” – the Italian expression is “la traviata” – their story literally
became the stuff of grand opera.
Based on original research, documents and
letters which have remained hidden for almost a century, this biography tells
the story of the brief period in which she was the greatest soprano of her day. She was a singer, an actress
and the mistress of the most powerful impresario of the time in a period when
composers turned out opera as people make films today. She gave it all up, and
abandoned her three illegitimate children to become Verdi’s mistress and then
his wife.
Earlier on I mentioned Giusippina’s son,
Camillo. A young doctor doing his apprenticeship, at age 25 he died of cholera,
which is highly contagious. This means his body was almost certainly shoveled
quickly into the ground. Servadio writes, “the death certificate gives only the
Christian name of the father, and the mother’s name appears as Giuseppa: her
first child was allowed to die like a bastard without a history. [In Giuseppina’s]
notebook there is not a single line word or word that testifies to a mother’s
grief” (pp. 193-194). The point, of course, is that as Verdi’s wife she could
not let her grief besmirch his reputation.
The book provides a look at the lives of Giuseppina and Verdi within the
context of the Risorgimento – an ideological and cultural movement that aroused
the national consciousness of the Italian people and ultimately freed the Mediterranean
boot from foreign domination and united them politically.
Giuseppi Verdi was Italy’s
outstanding opera composer. His works were often based on libretti expressing
deep compassion for the misfits of the world: the lame, the morally corrupt, and
the socially damned. Gaia Servadio’s book is primarily about Giuseppina
Strepponi, but through many pages she is upstaged by her latter-day companion
and husband, Verdi.
The opening chapters describe the life
of women in the theatre in those days. Often they were used as sex objects by impresarios,
theatre managers, composers and others who helped create and rule the stage.
She often sat at his side when he
composed at the piano, declaring what was good and what might be better
expressed. She was Verdi’s companion through much of her early years as a
soprano, and after 19 years became his wife, a position she didn’t dare dream
of but was thrilled to receive. She was a beautiful woman, as many of the portraits
of the period show. She was only two years younger than Verdi.
As she began to gain weight and lose
her beauty, Verdi began an affair with a Bohemian soprano, Teresa Stolz. This
was a lasting affair, and Stolz became the principle soprano in La Scala’s
inaugural performances of Verdi operas from 1865 onward. As you can imagine, was
not happy with the ménage à trois Verdi
created. The threesome lived together at Verdi’s home in Venice, and had
adjoining apartments at his digs in Milan and Genoa.
In most of the biographies of Giuseppe
Verdi, Giuseppina Strepponi stands discretely off-stage after her major
influence on his break-out success with the opera Nabucco. In Ms. Servadio’s detailed and sympathetic account, she is
a compelling character in her own right. This book reveals the world of Italian
opera as being filled with scandal, intrigue, rivalries, casting couches, great
triumphs, bitter disappointments and vocal breakdowns. It also describes the
work of perhaps the greatest Romantic Era composer of opera.
La Dame aux Camélias (The Lady with the
Camellias) is a novel by the younger Alexandre Dumas. Many aspects of her life
paralleled the story of the “Lady of the Camellias.” That book was the origin
of one of Verdi’s greatest operas, and one in which Giuseppina
starred. Verdi titled the opera La
Traviata – in translation, “the fallen woman.” Giuseppina Strepponi-Verdi,
his wife, was The Real Traviata – the
title of the book.
In conclusion, a few thoughts: I have
read four other biographies of Verdi, all of them written by men. They all focus
on Verdi’s life and his compositional genius. By contrast, this book was
written by a woman about his wife and two of his mistresses – especially his
second wife, Giuseppina.
It seems to me that Servadio could have
given the story better balance by giving more focus to Verdi’s first wife and
children, and the tragedy that accompanied them. Rather horribly, while he was
on his second opera commission – writing the comedy A
One-Day Reign –his daughter Virginia, then his son Icilio,
and finally his wife Margherita died. Margherita was 27 years old at time of
death – the same age as Verdi himself. He did not write another comedy until Falstaff in 1893,
when he was 87 years old. Falstaff was his last opera and the third he based on
the works of Shakespeare.
That said, this book gives yet another
perspective on Verdi and his later years. Unlike the other books I’ve read, she
shows another side of Verdi, told through the lens of his second wife – a gifted,
intelligent, thoughtful and loving but vulnerable woman, Giuseppina.
