Giulio Ricordi

Giulio Ricordi (19 December 1840 – 6 June 1912) was an Italian editor and musician who joined the family firm, the Casa Ricordi music publishing house, in 1863, then run by his father, Tito, the son of the company's founder Giovanni Ricordi.

Under the pen name Jules Burgmein, Ricordi contributed a very great deal to the prestige of the Casa Ricordi as it also produced several magazines (La gazzetta musicale, Musica e musicisti and Ars et labor), and various other once famous publications (La biblioteca del pianista, l'Opera Omnia di Frédéric Chopin, L'arte musicale in Italia, Le Sonate di Domenico Scarlatti).

Ricordi was also publisher of the later operas by Giuseppe Verdi, having established a relationship with that composer as a young man.

Visits by Verdi to this mansion may have been related to the successful strategy of luring the aging composer out of his retirement with the composition of his two final works, Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893.

These included Amilcare Ponchielli, Alfredo Catalani, Carlos Gomes, Umberto Giordano, and, above all, Giacomo Puccini.

Giulio Ricordi
1900 group portrait at Verdi's house in Sant'Agata with various family and friends. Verdi is in the middle, and Giulio Ricordi is standing second from the right, with his wife seated below him.