GIUSEPPE VERDI’S LOVE INTERESTS

Giuseppe Verdi had a very bad temper, he was surly and he liked to be alone. Despite these characteristics though, he had a pretty lively love life: two official love affairs and at least another one concealed.

His first wife, Margherita Barezzi, died very young at the age of barely 26 and this episode has certainly marked the love life and life in general of the opera composer.

It took twelve years for the second wedding, and the years spent with the “devoted” Giuseppina Strepponi were very complicated ones. With two illegitimate children, a very tough life and always devoted to the people around her, Giuseppina has always attended the world of opera until she became a protagonist herself or an inseparable coworker of Verdi. Everyone knows, behind every great man is (usually) a great woman. And this is surely the case: moderate and reasonable, Giuseppina Verdi always managed to support and suggest the opera composer.

And here we go to the most gossiped love: that with Teresa Stolz. The liaison between the Maestro and the Bohemian soprano began with the new version of La forza del destino (27 February 1869), when Verdi heard Stolz sing for the first time. Stolz, who was about to get married, left Mariani and began visiting Sant’Agata in 1871. Their increasingly close relationship during the 1870s gave rise to intense gossip, provoking a painful reaction from his wife Giuseppina. Teresa Stolz reluctantly distanced herself from Verdi in order to help restore marital peace. Surprisingly, however, she became a loyal friend to the elderly couple, proving to be an important source of support, spending long periods with them in Sant’Agata or at the spas of Tabiano and Montecatini. After Strepponi’s death at the end of 1897, the Bohemian singer became Verdi’s inseparable companion, following him on his travels between Genoa, Milan and Sant’Agata.