As the " galley years " were drawing to a close, Verdi created one of his greatest masterpieces, Rigoletto, which premiered in Venice in 1851.

With Rigoletto, Verdi sets up his original idea of musical drama as a cocktail of heterogeneous elements, embodying social and cultural complexity, and beginning from a distinctive mixture of comedy and tragedy.

* 1851 – The first performance of Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi takes place in Venice.

In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata.

Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi.

For the première, La Fenice had cast Felice Varesi as Rigoletto, the young tenor Raffaele Mirate as the Duke, and Teresa Brambilla as Gilda ( although Verdi would have preferred Teresa De Giuli Borsi ).

* Il Duca di Mantova, Rigoletto ( Verdi )

* the young Giuseppe Verdi ( Nabucco, Ernani, Macbeth, Rigoletto, La traviata, Il trovatore ).

They included Giorgio Ronconi, who created the title role in Verdi's Nabucco ; Felice Varesi, who created the title roles in Macbeth and Rigoletto as well as Germont in La traviata ; Antonio Superchi, the originator of Don Carlo in Ernani ; Francesco Graziani, who was the original Don Carlo di Vargas in La forza del destino ; Leone Giraldoni, the creator of Renato in Un ballo in maschera and the first Simon Boccanegra ; Enrico Delle Sedie, who was London's first Renato ; Adriano Pantaleoni, renowned for his performances as Amonasro in Aida as well as other Verdi roles at La Scala, Milan ; Francesco Pandolfini, whose singing at La Scala during the 1870s was praised by Verdi ; Antonio Cotogni, a much lauded singer in Milan, London and Saint Petersburg, the first Italian Posa in Don Carlos and later a great vocal pedagogue, too ; and Giuseppe Del Puente, who sang Verdi to acclaim in the United States.

One of the best known Italian Verdi baritones of the 1920s and ' 30s, Mariano Stabile, sang Iago and Rigoletto and Falstaff ( at La Scala ) under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

* Maddalena < sup >*</ sup >, Rigoletto ( Verdi )

* Verdi, Rigoletto ( Act IV only, 1944 ; from World War II Red Cross benefit concert held in Madison Square Garden, with the combined forces of the New York Philharmonic and the NBC Symphony ; the entire concert, complete with an auctioning of one of Toscanini's batons, was released on an unofficial recording in 1995 )

He wrote a mass, his Messe brève, and composed operettas almost yearly and occasional music for the theater, such as dances and antique airs for Victor Hugo's Le roi s ' amuse, the play that Verdi turned into Rigoletto.

10 ; Wagner, Spinner-Lied from Der fliegended Holländer ; Verdi, Rigoletto Paraphrase.

30 Live, 1969 ; Indiana University Symphony Orchestra ; Liszt, Die Forelle ( Schubert ); Des mädchens Wunsch ( Chopin ); Widmung ( Schumann ); Réminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor ( Donizetti ); Spinnelied aus Der fliegende Holländer ( Wagner ); Rigoletto Paraphrase ( Verdi ) in studio, 1969.

Although he sang Tonio in Pagliacci, Escamillo in Carmen, and Scarpia in Tosca, he was particularly acclaimed as one of the finest interpreters of the great Verdi baritone roles, above all the title role of Rigoletto, which was captured in 1950 in an RCA recording with soprano Erna Berger and tenor Jan Peerce, conducted by Renato Cellini.

* Verdi ; Rigoletto ; Gavazzeni ; RCA

* Verdi ; Rigoletto ; Kubelik ; RCA

* Verdi, Rigoletto, Giulini

* Verdi: Rigoletto ( Callas, di Stefano ; Serafin, 1955 ) EMI

* Verdi: Rigoletto ( with Sutherland, Pavarotti, Tourangeau, Talvela — Bonynge, cond.

* Verdi: Rigoletto ( with Sills, Kraus, M. Dunn, Ramey – Rudel, cond.

At the intersection with 72nd street, the triangle of tiny Verdi Square is surrounded by several notable apartment buildings, including The Ansonia, and the Florentine palazzo occupied by Apple Bank for Savings.

Of these Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi.

Immediately after Rossini's death, Giuseppe Verdi proposed to collaborate with twelve other Italian composers on a Requiem for Rossini, to be performed on the first anniversary of Rossini's death, conducted by Angelo Mariani.

Returning to Busseto, he became the town music master and, with the support of Antonio Barezzi, a local merchant and music lover who had long supported Verdi's musical ambitions in Milan, Verdi gave his first public performance at Barezzi ’ s home in 1830.

Sometime in the mid-1840s, after the death of Margherita Barezzi, Verdi began an affair with Giuseppina Strepponi, a soprano in the twilight of her career.

While living in Busseto with Strepponi, Verdi bought an estate two miles from the town in 1848.

The soprano Teresa Stolz ( who later had a strong professional – and, perhaps, romantic – relationship with Verdi ) was at that time engaged to be married to Mariani, but she left him not long after.

Later in 1869 / 70, the organizers again approached Verdi ( this time with the idea of writing an opera ), but he again turned them down.

Teresa Stolz was associated with both Aida and the Requiem ( as well as a number of other Verdi roles ).

Verdi's comments on Wagner and his music are few and hardly benevolent (" He invariably chooses, unnecessarily, the untrodden path, attempting to fly where a rational person would walk with better results "), but at least one of them is kind: upon learning of Wagner's death, Verdi lamented, " Sad, sad, sad!

Arturo Toscanini performed as cellist in the orchestra at the world premiere and began his friendship with Verdi ( a composer he revered as highly as Beethoven ).

Verdi used musical theater to contrast noble ideals with the corrosive effects of power, love of country with the inevitable call for sacrifice and death, and the lure of passion with the need for social order.

Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco.

Later La Scala became the reference theatre in the world, with its premières of Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi.

( Verdi had toyed, too, with writing an opera based on King Lear and Arrigo Boito later tried to interest him in Antony and Cleopatra, but neither project was ever brought to fruition.

While it has not proved to be as immensely popular as the Verdi works that immediately preceded it, namely Aida and Otello, Falstaff has long been an admired favorite with critics and musicians because of its brilliant orchestration, scintillating libretto and refined melodic invention.

Although Verdi did not attend the premiere in Cairo, he was most dissatisfied with the fact that the audience consisted of invited dignitaries, politicians and critics, but no members of the general public.

( Verdi had previously attempted to persuade the manager of La Fenice to re-cast the role with a younger woman, but with no success.

After the première and before leaving Paris, Verdi authorised the Opéra authorities to end Act 4, Scene 2 with the death of Posa ( thus omitting the insurrection scene ) if they thought fit.

Although Verdi had accepted the need to remove the first act, it seems that he changed his mind and allowed a performance on 29 December 1886 in Modena which presented the “ Fontainebleau ’’ first act along with the revised 4-act version.

But Mercadante's style began to shift with the presentation of I Normanni a Parigi at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1832: " It was with this score that Mercadante entered on the process of development in his musical dramaturgy which, in some aspects, actually presaged the arrival of Verdi, when he launched, from 1837 on, into master works of his artistic maturity: the so-called " reform operas ".