One of the greatest composers of Italian opera, Giuseppe Verdi revolutionized
the genre and left behind many popular arias from Rigoletto, La traviata,
Nabucco and Aida, becoming through his commitment a symbol of national
reunification. Born in the hamlet of Roncole (now Roncole Verdi), near Busseto
in Emilia-Romagna, on October 10, 1813, Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was
born in a French department taken over from Austria four months later. The first
child of a couple of innkeepers, he received his first musical lessons from
schoolmaster and organist Pietro Baistrocchi, an...