Painted portrait of Giuseppe Verdi at seventy-two, in a black top hat with a full white beard and a white silk scarf, against an olive ground

Portraits · Composers · XIV of XVII

Giuseppe Verdi

1813–1901 · Composer

Practise yourselves in fugue constantly, obstinately, even to satiety, until your hand becomes free enough and strong enough to mould the notes to your will.

Esercitatevi nella Fuga costantemente, tenacemente, fino alla sazietà, e fino a che la mano sia divenuta franca e forte a piegar la nota al voler vostro.

Giuseppe Verdi · letter to Francesco Florimo, 1871
Read it in the source →

In January 1871 the musicians of Naples asked Giuseppe Verdi to direct their conservatory. He said no, but in his letter to Francesco Florimo he set down what he would have told the students: fugue, again and again, until the hand obeys.

Twenty-two years later he ended his last opera, Falstaff, with a fugue.

Letter to Francesco Florimo, Genoa, 5 January 1871 (the draft is dated 4 January; first printed in Il Pungolo, Naples, 17 January 1871), declining the directorship of the Naples Conservatory. I copialettere di Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Gaetano Cesari and Alessandro Luzio (Milan, 1913), p. 232. English: Arthur Pougin, Verdi: An Anecdotic History of His Life and Works, trans. James E. Matthew (London: H. Grevel & Co., 1887), p. 283.

The originals

Pastel portrait of Giuseppe Verdi in 1886: black top hat, white beard, white silk scarf, black coat, looking straight out
The likenessPASTEL BY GIOVANNI BOLDINI · 1886Our portrait is painted after it.Public domain (Boldini died 1931; faithful reproduction of a 2D work, PD-Art). Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome; Google Art Project scan on Wikimedia Commons.
A handwritten orchestral score page headed Acte I, Finale I, marked Allegro agitato, with the instrument names written in ink down the left margin
Jérusalem · Finale I, 1847His autograph score of Jérusalem, his reworking of I Lombardi for the Paris Opéra, first staged there on 26 November 1847.Autograph full score, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Music Department, MS-1070, p. 187 of 479 in the scan. Public domain, Wikimedia Commons.