At the age of thirty-eight, Verdi began an affair with
Giuseppina Strepponi, a soprano in the twilight of her career. Their cohabitation before marriage was regarded as
scandalous in some of the places they lived, but Verdi and Giuseppina married in
1859. While living in Busseto with Strepponi, Verdi bought an estate two miles from the town in 1848. Initially, his parents lived there, but, after his mother's death in
1851, he made the
Villa Verdi at
Sant'Agata his home until his death.
As the "galley years" were drawing to a close, Verdi created one of his greatest masterpieces,
Rigoletto which premiered in Venice in 1851. Based on a play by
Victor Hugo, the libretto had to undergo substantial revisions in order to satisfy the epoch's
censorship, and the composer was on the verge of giving it all up a number of times. The opera quickly became a great success.
With
Rigoletto Verdi sets up his original idea of musical drama as a cocktail of heterogeneous elements, embodying social and cultural complexity, and beginning from a distinctive mixture of comedy and tragedy.
Rigoletto's musical range includes band-music such as the first scene or the song
La donna è mobile, Italian melody such as the famous quartet
Bella figlia dell'amore, chamber music such as the duet between Rigoletto and Sparafucile and powerful and concise
declamatos often based on key-notes like the C and C# notes in Rigoletto and Monterone's upper register.
There followed the second and third of the three major operas of Verdi's "middle period": in
1853 Il Trovatore was produced in
Rome and
La traviata in Venice. The latter was based on
Alexandre Dumas, fils' play
The Lady of the Camellias.
Between 1855 and
1867 an outpouring of great Verdi operas were to follow, among them such repertory staples as
Un ballo in maschera (
1859), La forza del destino (commissioned by the Imperial Theatre of
Saint Petersburg for 1861 but not performed until
1862), and a revised version of
Macbeth (1865). Other somewhat less often performed include
Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) and
Don Carlos (1867), both commissioned by the Paris Opera and initially given in French. Today, these latter two operas are most often performed in their revised Italian versions.
Simon Boccanegra followed in
1857.
In
1869, Verdi was asked to compose a section for a
Requiem Mass in memory of
Gioacchino Rossini and proposed that this Requiem should be a collection of sections composed by other Italian contemporaries of Rossini. The Requiem was compiled and completed, but it was not performed in Verdi's lifetime. Five years later, Verdi reworked his "Libera Me" section of the Rossini Requiem and made it a part of his
Requiem Mass, honoring the famous patriot
Alessandro Manzoni, who had died in
1873. The complete Requiem was first performed at the cathedral in Milan, on
22 May 1874.
Verdi's grand opera,
Aida, is sometimes thought to have been commissioned for the celebration of the opening of the
Suez Canal in 1869, but, according to one major critic , Verdi turned down the Khedive's invitation to write an "ode" for the new opera house he was planning to inaugurate as part of the canal opening festivities. The opera house actually opened with a production of
Rigoletto. It was later in 1869/70, when the organizers again approached Verdi (but this time with the idea of writing an opera), that he again turned them down. When they warned him that they would ask
Charles Gounod instead and then threatened to engage
Richard Wagner's services, Verdi began to show considerable interest, and agreements were signed in June 1870.
In fact, the two composers, who were the leaders of their respective schools of music, seemed to resent each other greatly. They never met. Verdi's comments on Wagner and his music are few and hardly benevolent ("He invariably chooses, unnecessarily, the untrodden path, attempting to fly where a rational person would walk with better results"), but at least one of them is kind: upon learning of Wagner's death, Verdi lamented: "Sad! Sad! Sad! ... a name that leaves a most powerful mark on the history of our art." Of Wagner's comments on Verdi, only one is well-known. After listening to Verdi's
Requiem, the great German, prolific and eloquent in his comments on some other composers, said, "It would be best not to say anything."
Aida premiered in
Cairo in 1871 and was an instant success.
