- Wrote his earlier operas in a style now known as "bel canto" or "beautiful singing"; beginning with Otello, wrote in a more dramatic style.
- Was idolized by conductor Arturo Toscanini.
- Italian composer. His world recognition is due mainly to his operas. Among these, the best known are: "Rigoletto", "Il Trovatore", "La Traviata", "La Forza del Destino", "Aida", "Otello" and "Falstaff". "Otello" and "Falstaff" are considered by most critics to be the finest operas ever adapted from Shakespeare. Verdi wrote "Falstaff" when he was eighty, in 1893. The tenor aria "La donna e mobile", from "Rigoletto", is one of the most famous arias ever written for an opera, and is familiar even to people who never listen to opera.
- During the Second Italian War of Independence (1859), Verdi used his wealth to supply guns to General Garibaldi's army.
- Was a lifelong agnostic, to the point where he would accompany his wife to church but not go inside himself. This did not prevent him from composing his famous "Requiem" (1874) and his last work, "Four Sacred Pieces" (1898).
- Verdi's comic opera "Un giorno di regno" (1840) was such a fiasco he waited over 50 years to write another one, "Falstaff" (1893).
- Born at 8:0pm-LMT
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