Giuseppina Strepponi

Clelia Maria Giuseppa (Giuseppina) Strepponi (Lodi, 8 September 1815 – Villanova sull'Arda, 14 November 1897) was a nineteenth-century Italian operatic soprano of great renown and the second wife of composer Giuseppe Verdi.

She is often credited with having contributed to Verdi's first successes, starring in a number of his early operas, including the role of Abigaille in the world premiere of Nabucco in 1842.

A highly gifted singer, Strepponi excelled in the bel canto repertoire and spent much of her career portraying roles in operas by Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioachino Rossini, often sharing the stage with tenor Napoleone Moriani and baritone Giorgio Ronconi.

She was described as possessing a "limpid, penetrating, smooth voice, seemly action, a lovely figure; and to Nature's liberal endowments she adds an excellent technique"; her "deep inner feeling" was also lauded.

[1] Both her personal and professional life were complicated by overwork, by at least three known pregnancies, and by her vocal deterioration which caused her to retire from the stage by the age of 31, in 1846 when she moved to Paris to become a singing teacher.

While it is known that she had a professional relationship with Verdi from the time of his first opera, Oberto in 1839, they became a couple by 1847 when they lived together in Paris, then moved to Busseto in 1849, married in 1859, and remained together until the end of her life.

She was the oldest child of Rosa Cornalba and Feliciano Strepponi (1797–1832), who was the organist at Monza Cathedral and a moderately successful opera composer, his works having been performed in theatres in Milan, Turin and Trieste.

[2] After her father's death at the age of 35 in 1832 of encephalitis, she was able to continue studying singing and the piano as a non-paying pupil at the Conservatory where she notably won first prize for bel canto during her final year in 1834.

[3] Strepponi made her professional opera début in December 1834 as Adria in Luigi Ricci's Chiara di Rosembergh at the Teatro Orfeo.

Other notable roles for Strepponi during the late 1830s include Elaisa in Saverio Mercadante's Il giuramento, Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Sandrina in Luigi Ricci's Un'avventura di Scaramuccia.

[4] Around 1844, Strepponi began to experience significant vocal problems, most likely brought on by her relentless performing schedule, which culminated in a disastrous season in Palermo in 1845, where she was booed by audiences.

[4] Camillo Cirelli (whom Verdi had met while a student of Lavigna's some years before) was one of a group of three theatrical agents under Lanari who took responsibility for Strepponi from Milan after the early months of 1837.

However, she became pregnant around March/April 1837 and she stopped singing only about a month before her first child, Camillo Luigi Antonio, was born in Turin in January 1838 and baptised as "Sterponi" (sic).

[8] However, sometime in the Spring of 1838, Strepponi became pregnant again and, in Florence on 9 February 1839, she gave birth to her second child, Giuseppina Fausta, only a few hours after completing a performance at the Teatro Alfieri and before leaving for an engagement in Venice.

But I do not wish him ill."[15] All of Frank Walker's investigations, using letters and performance histories of the different people involved in her life, put Strepponi together with only one man at the time that the three children must have been conceived.

[4] However, this account is vehemently disputed by both Frank Walker, who declares "but it is not true: it is fiction",[18] as well as biographer Gabriele Baldini, who states "that it is certain that Giuseppina was not Merelli's lover, that she had no sons by him ...".

The reaction of many of the people of Busseto towards Giuseppina, a woman of the theatre living openly with the composer in an unmarried state concerned Verdi, and as such, she was shunned in the town and at church.

In the autumn of 1897, when the couple was once again preparing to spend the winter in Genoa in a more salubrious climate with proximity to the sea, Verdi made the decision to stay in Sant'Agata because his wife was bedridden.

The desire to see the couple together in the afterlife eventually led on 26 February 1901 to the transfer of both of their bodies to the oratory of the Casa di Riposo in Milan, the retirement home for musicians which Verdi had created.