THE TWO FUNERALS OF GIUSEPPE VERDI IN MILAN

Not everyone knows that Verdi had had even two funerals.
The opera composer died from a stroke on January 27^th 1901, in room n° 105 of the Grand Hotel et De Milan, that became his dwelling from 1872 to 1901 because of its location near the Scala Theater. Here he composed Othello and Falstaff and followed the works of the nursing home for performers that he commissioned to build in Buonarroti Square.

In those six days of agony before his death, the streets around the hotel were scattered with straw in order to avoid that the noise of hooves and coaches may annoy him: this is to demonstrate the affection that Milanese people had for him.
Verdi asked for his funerals to be humble, and that, after his death, a thousand lire a day were to be given to the poor people in Sant’Agata.

However, the love of Italian people for the composer was so strong that both the funerals were anything but humble. The first one should have been private. The coffin should have been brought to the Milan Monumental Cemetery in the early morning, but from the first hours of sunrise tens of thousands of people from every part of the city had gathered and paid their last respects to the opera composer.
A month afterwards the body was moved to the nursing home for performers devised by him. More than 300,000 thousand people joined the parade, led by a chorus of 820 voices singing Va, Pensiero and directed by the conductor Arturo Toscanini.

The parade was so numerous that it took eleven hours to reach the nursing house in Buonarroti Square, where the opera composer is still buried, with his second wife Giuseppina Strepponi.