Verdi fever strikes Italy -- 100 years on

MILAN, Italy -- Italy is gearing up for festivities to mark the centenary of the death of a national icon, opera composer Giuseppe Verdi.

Verdi, who fought his way to musical fame and fortune from humble beginnings in northern Italy, died on January 27, 1901, and his compatriots are preparing to celebrate the centenary in style.

From Milan's world-renowned La Scala opera house to the small village of Le Roncole where Verdi was born, the year will be full of homage to the composer of such favourites as "La Traviata," "Rigoletto" and "Aida."

Verdi has always held a special place in the hearts of Italians, bucking the theory that the true greats were misunderstood or under-valued in their own eras.

Such was his popularity that when he lay dying in Milan, aged 87, people laid matting on the street outside so the maestro would not be disturbed by traffic rolling past.

When his body was taken to the Rest Home for Musicians a month after his death, the procession became a state ceremony.

The streets of Milan were draped in black and crowded with an incredible 200,000 mourners.

Verdi's body was sent on its way by an 800-strong choir singing a chorus from the composer's opera "Nabucco" led by legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini.

On the centenary of his death, choirs the length of the peninsula will sing what is arguably Verdi's most popular non-operatic work, "Requiem."

The anguished "Dies Irae" and prayers for the souls of the dead will raise roofs from La Scala in Milan to the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere in Rome.

In Milan, where Verdi spent much of his working life, the whole opera season will be devoted to the maestro with performances 11 of his operas.

"It is not just a matter of performing Verdi but to rethink him, to understand him in his European stature ... to find new hidden meanings, to interrogate him over again," La Scala music director Riccardo Muti said in the opera house's magazine.

Other events are also giving themselves over to Verdi, include Verona's famed summer opera festival, where the march of "Aida" looks so much more triumphal for being performed in a pink marble Roman amphitheatre.

The son of an inn-keeper and a seamstress, Verdi rose to international acclaim in the dog-eat-dog world of music, plotting a path which itself seems the stuff of opera.

There are strains of an operatic duet in his love life.

After living together for 12 years -- rare in the mid-19th Century -- Giuseppe married his lover Giuseppina Strepponi in 1859.

The composer and singer lived happily together until Giuseppina died in 1897.

Verdi not only blazed a musical trail but his name also became bound up in the 19th Century struggle for Italian national unity and independence, known as the Risorgimento.

During this period, which culminated in the establishment of an Italian kingdom in 1861 under King Vittorio Emmanuele, "Viva Verdi" became a rallying cry scrawled on walls -- his name crafted into the acronym: "Viva V-ittorio E-mmanuele, R-e D-'I-talia" -- "Long Live Vittorio Emmanuele, King of Italy!"

Verdi, who looked quite the statesman with wavy hair often tucked under a top hat and an immaculately trimmed beard, commanded respect wherever he went.

He even flirted with politics himself, persuaded to serve as a deputy for four years in the 1860s in a break from composing.

His heart was not in it though and he simply voted according to how his friend Count Camillo Benso di Cavour did.

"In that way I can be quite certain of not making any mistakes," Verdi once said.

Modern Italy still looks to Verdi, the great old man of opera, for inspiration.

"Verdi's music lives on in his operas, whose humanity, strength, vibrant melody and dramatic truth are more appreciated than ever in an age in which these qualities are so sadly lacking," wrote Charles Osborne, a leading British Verdi scholar.

His operas still hold a place in the hearts of people the world over, be they conductors, critics or construction workers.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Bocelli releases back-to-back opera albums
September 29, 2000
Elton John's 'Aida': 'It's very camp'
October 13, 1998

Giuseppe Verdi
National Committee for Verdi Centenary Celebrations
La Scala Opera House in Milan

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.