Born in 1813 at Le Roncole, near Busseto, in the Duchy of Parma, Giuseppe Verdi was turned down by the Milan Conservatory and studied privately before his first opera was staged at La Scala in 1839. The success of Nabucco in 1842 made his name; among those that followed are Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore and La traviata (1853), Aida (1871), and, late in life, Otello and Falstaff. He died in Milan in 1901.
Verdi wrote almost nothing for the piano: his tunes reached the keyboard through the transcriptions of his day, which amateurs played at home. The catalogue presents the Brindisi from La traviata in the one by N. Toledo. Before playing it, listen to the sung version: the breaths and surges of the voice give the phrasing that the piano score can only suggest.
