Summary: <br> Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) in 1843<br> <br> <br> <br> On February 11, 1843 – 176 years ago today – Giuseppe Verdi’s opera I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (The Lombards of the First Crusade) received its first performance at the Teatro La Scala in Milan. It was the 29-year-old Verdi’s fourth opera. His third opera, the monumentally successful Nabucco (as in Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon) – which had premiered just 11 months before – in March 1842, had put Verdi on the Italian opera map. I Lombardi secured his position on that map; as an unnamed critic wrote in his review of I Lombardi in the Gazzetta di Milano:<br> <br> <br> <br> “We would just say that if Nabucco created this young man’s reputation, I Lombardi has served to confirm it.”<br> <br> <br> <br> The “reputation” to which the critic refers was not just Verdi’s standing as a composer, but his growing status as a hero of the Risorgimento, the movement that would eventually see Italy achieve nationhood. Verdi was indeed “the right composer at the right time and the right place” and therein lies a remarkable story.<br> <br> <br> <br> Risorgimento<br> <br> <br> <br> Risorgimento means, “rising up again”. Verdi lived the bulk of his life during the so-called “Italian Risorgimento”, a period that saw the Italian people “rise up again” to achieve cultural renewal and nationhood. Running from the Italian conquests of Napoleon in 1796 to the unification of Italy in 1870, the Risorgimento was, for Verdi, an essential spiritual influence in his life. <br> <br> <br> <br> Background<br> <br> <br> <br> Between 1800 and 1808, much of the Italian peninsula was invaded and annexed by Napoleonic France. Napoleonic Italy collapsed like an undercooked soufflé in 1813, the year of Verdi’s birth. (An interesting historical tidbit: Verdi was born in the village of Le Roncole, in the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. At the time of his birth, the Duchy was still part of the French Empire, and as such, Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born a French citizen!)<br> <br> <br> <br> The Italians themselves had nothing to do with the defeat of Our Little Corsican Friend and as a result, Italy’s fate was left to the allies who did in fact defeat France – Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia – who met at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.<br> <br> <br> <br> The Congress chose to slice up the peninsula like a Pizza Margherita into a hodge-podge of states controlled primarily from abroad. The big winner was Austria, which outright annexed the northern states of Lombardy and Veneto and took control of the rich lands of Tuscany and Modena. <br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/11085235/Giuseppe_Mazzini.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872)<br> <br> <br> <br> Among the very few things the diverse population of the Italian peninsula had in common was their growing mutual hatred for the Austrians. At the same time, “heroes” were emerging: writers and politicians who believed that they’re calling was to build a sense of Italian pride, nationalism, and self-awareness. In doing this, no single individual was more important than Giuseppe Mazzini (1805-1872). (For our information, Verdi’s beard – grown in his late-teens – was a “Mazzini-style” beard, and no Italian looking at Verdi would have failed to recognize Verdi’s furry imitation of and therefore sympathy with this great Italian patriot and revolutionary.)<br> <br> <br> <br> As a young man, Mazzini had studied literature and philosophy, and he became involved in revolutionary politics in his twenties. While in exile for those activities in Marseilles, he founded a secret society called “Giovine Italia” (“Young Italy”), which campaigned for Italian unity under a republican government. Mazzini was a tireless traveler and revolutionar...
