Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians, Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna, his first opera was performed in Venice in 1810. In 1815 he was engaged to manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Ferrara and elsewhere. During this period he produced his most popular works including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa, he composed opera seria works such as Otello and Semiramide. All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody and instrumental colour, dramatic form.
In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims, revisions of two of his Italian operas, Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse, in 1829 his last opera, Guillaume Tell. Rossini's withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years of his life has never been explained. From the early 1830s to 1855, when he left Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote little. On his return to Paris in 1855 he became renowned for his musical salons on Saturdays attended by musicians and the artistic and fashionable circles of Paris, for which he wrote the entertaining pieces Péchés de vieillesse. Guests included Franz Liszt, Anton Rubinstein, Giuseppe Verdi and Joseph Joachim. Rossini's last major composition was his Petite messe solennelle, he died in Paris in 1868. Rossini was born in 1792 in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy, part of the Papal States, he was the only child of Giuseppe Rossini, a trumpeter and horn player, his wife Anna, née Guidarini, a seamstress by trade, daughter of a baker.
Giuseppe Rossini was impetuous and feckless. Stendhal, who published a colourful biography of Rossini in 1824, wrote: Rossini's portion from his father, was the true native heirship of an Italian: a little music, a little religion, a volume of Ariosto; the rest of his education was consigned to the legitimate school of southern youth, the society of his mother, the young singing girls of the company, those prima donnas in embryo, the gossips of every village through which they passed. This was aided and refined by the musical barber and news-loving coffee-house keeper of the Papal village. Giuseppe was imprisoned at least twice: first in 1790 for insubordination to local authorities in a dispute about his employment as town trumpeter. In 1798, when Rossini was aged six, his mother began a career as a professional singer in comic opera, for a little over a decade was a considerable success in cities including Trieste and Bologna, before her untrained voice began to fail. In 1802 the family moved to Lugo, near Ravenna, where Rossini received a good basic education in Italian and arithmetic as well as music.
He studied the horn with his father and other music with a priest, Giuseppe Malerbe, whose extensive library contained works by Haydn and Mozart, both little known in Italy at the time, but inspirational to the young Rossini. He was a quick learner, by the age of twelve he had composed a set of six sonatas for four stringed instruments, which were performed under the aegis of a rich patron in 1804. Two years he was admitted to the recently-opened Liceo Musicale, Bologna studying singing and piano, joining the composition class soon afterwards, he wrote some substantial works while a student, including a mass and a cantata, after two years he was invited to continue his studies. He declined the offer: the strict academic regime of the Liceo had given him a solid compositional technique, but as his biographer Richard Osborne puts it, "his instinct to continue his education in the real world asserted itself". While still at the Liceo, Rossini had performed in public as a singer and worked in theatres as a répétiteur and keyboard soloist.
In 1810 at the request of the popular tenor Domenico Mombelli he wrote his first operatic score, a two-act operatic dramma serio, Demetrio e Polibio, to a libretto by Mombelli's wife. It was publicly staged in 1812, after the composer's first successes. Rossini and his parents concluded; the main operatic centre in north eastern Italy was Venice. Rossini's first opera to be staged was La cambiale di matrimonio, a on
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795 associated with PSL Research University. It is situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of France; the Conservatoire offers instruction in music and drama, drawing on the traditions of the "French School". In 1946 it was split in two, one part for acting and drama, known as the Conservatoire national supérieur d'art dramatique, the other for music and dance, known as the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris. Today the conservatories operate under the auspices of the Ministry of Communication. On 3 December 1783 Papillon de la Ferté, intendant of the Menus-Plaisirs du Roi, proposed that Niccolò Piccinni should be appointed director of a future École royale de chant; the school was instituted by a decree of 3 January 1784 and opened on 1 April with the composer François-Joseph Gossec as the provisional director. Piccinni did join the faculty as a professor of singing; the new school was located in buildings adjacent to the Hôtel des Menus-Plaisirs at the junction of the rue Bergère and the rue du Faubourg Poissonnière.
In June, a class in dramatic declamation was added, the name was modified to École royale de chant et de déclamation. In 1792, Bernard Sarrette created the École gratuite de la garde nationale, which in the following year became the Institut national de musique; the latter was installed in the facilities of the former Menus-Plaisirs on the rue Bergère and was responsible for the training of musicians for the National Guard bands, which were in great demand for the enormous, popular outdoor gatherings put on by the revolutionary government after the Reign of Terror. On 3 August 1795, the government combined the École royale with the Institut national de musique, creating the Conservatoire de musique under the direction of Sarrette; the combined organization remained in the facilities on the rue Bergère. The first 351 pupils commenced their studies in October 1796. By 1800, the staff of the Conservatory included some of the most important names in music in Paris, besides Gossec, the composers Luigi Cherubini, Jean-François Le Sueur, Étienne Méhul, Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny, as well as the violinists Pierre Baillot, Rodolphe Kreutzer, Pierre Rode.
A concert hall, designed by the architect François-Jacques Delannoy, was inaugurated on 7 July 1811. The hall, which still exists today, was in the shape of a U, it held an audience of 1055. The acoustics were regarded as superb; the French composer and conductor Antoine Elwart described it as the Stradivarius of concert halls. In 1828 François Habeneck, a professor of violin and head of the Conservatory's orchestra, founded the Société des Concerts du Conservatoire; the Society held concerts in the hall continuously until 1945, when it moved to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The French composer Hector Berlioz premiered his Symphonie fantastique in the conservatory's hall on 5 December 1830 with an orchestra of more than a hundred players; the original library was created by Sarrette in 1801. After the construction of the concert hall, the library moved to a large room above the entrance vestibule. In the 1830s, Berlioz became a part-time curator in the Conservatory library and was the librarian from 1852 until his death in 1869, but never held a teaching position.
He was succeeded as librarian by Félicien David. Sarrette was dismissed on 28 December 1814, after the Bourbon Restoration, but was reinstated on 26 May 1815, after Napoleon's return to power during the Hundred Days. However, after Napoleon's fall, Sarrette was compelled to retire on 17 November; the school was closed in the first two years of the Bourbon Restoration, during the reign of Louis XVIII, but reopened in April 1816 as the École royale de musique, with François-Louis Perne as its director. In 1819, François Benoist was appointed professor of organ; the best known director in the 19th century was Luigi Cherubini, who took over on 1 April 1822 and remained in charge until 8 February 1842. Cherubini maintained high standards and his staff included teachers such as François-Joseph Fétis, Fromental Halévy, Le Sueur, Ferdinando Paer, Anton Reicha. Cherubini was succeeded by Daniel-François-Esprit Auber in 1842. Under Auber, composition teachers included Adolphe Adam, Halévy, Ambroise Thomas.
In 1852, Camille Urso, who studied with Lambert Massart, became the first female student to win a prize on violin. The Conservatory Instrument Museum, founded in 1861, was formed from the instrument collection of Louis Clapisson; the French music historian Gustave Chouquet became the curator of the museum in 1871 and did much to expand and upgrade the collection. In the Franco-Prussian War, during the siege of Paris, the Conservatory was used as a hospital. On 13 May 1871, the day after Auber's death, the leaders of the Paris Commune appointed Francisco Salvador-Daniel as the director – however Daniel was shot and killed ten days by the troops of the French Army, he was replaced by Ambroise Thomas, who remained in the post until 1896. Thomas's rather conservative directorship was vigorously criticized by many of the students, notably Claude Debussy. During this period César Franck was ostensibly the organ teacher, but was giving classes in composition, his classes were attended by several st
Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe
For other theatres with this name, see Odeon The Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe is one of France's six national theatres. It is located at 2 rue Corneille in the 6th arrondissement of Paris on the left bank of the Seine, next to the Luxembourg Garden, it was built between 1779 and 1782, in the garden of the former Hôtel de Condé, to a Neoclassical design by Charles De Wailly and Marie-Joseph Peyre. The Odéon was intended to house the Comédie Française, however, preferred to stay at the Théâtre-Français in the Palais Royal; the new theatre was inaugurated by Marie-Antoinette on April 9, 1782. It was there. An 1808 reconstruction of the theater designed by Jean Chalgrin was named the Théâtre de l'Impératrice, but everyone still called it the Odéon, it burned in 1818. The third and present structure, designed by Pierre Thomas Baraguay, was opened in September 1819. In 1990, the theater was given the sobriquet'Théâtre de l'Europe', it is a member theater of the Union of the Theatres of Europe. Notes SourcesHemmings, F. W. J..
Theatre and State in France, 1760–1905. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-03472-2. Official website
Lucca
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio, in a fertile plain near the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital of the Province of Lucca, it is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls. Lucca was founded by the Etruscans and became a Roman colony in 180 BC; the rectangular grid of its historical centre preserves the Roman street plan, the Piazza San Michele occupies the site of the ancient forum. Traces of the amphitheatre may still be seen in the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro. At the Lucca Conference, in 56 BC, Julius Caesar and Crassus reaffirmed their political alliance known as the First Triumvirate. Frediano, an Irish monk, was bishop of Lucca in the early sixth century. At one point, Lucca was plundered by the first Germanic King of Italy. Lucca was an important city and fortress in the sixth century, when Narses besieged it for several months in 553. Under the Lombards, it was the seat of a duke; the Holy Face of Lucca, a major relic carved by Nicodemus, arrived in 742.
During the eighth-tenth centuries Lucca was a center of Jewish life, the community being led by the Kalonymos family. Lucca became prosperous through the silk trade that began in the eleventh century, came to rival the silks of Byzantium. During the tenth–eleventh centuries Lucca was the capital of the feudal margraviate of Tuscany, more or less independent but owing nominal allegiance to the Holy Roman Emperor. After the death of Matilda of Tuscany, the city began to constitute itself an independent commune with a charter in 1160. For 500 years, Lucca remained an independent republic. There were many minor provinces in the region between southern Liguria and northern Tuscany dominated by the Malaspina. Dante’s Divine Comedy includes many references to the great feudal families who had huge jurisdictions with administrative and judicial rights. Dante spent some of his exile in Lucca. In 1273 and again in 1277, Lucca was ruled by a Guelph capitano del popolo named Luchetto Gattilusio. In 1314, internal discord allowed Uguccione della Faggiuola of Pisa to make himself lord of Lucca.
The Lucchesi expelled him two years and handed over the city to another condottiero, Castruccio Castracani, under whose rule it became a leading state in central Italy. Lucca rivalled Florence until Castracani's death in 1328. On 22 and 23 September 1325, in the battle of Altopascio, Castracani defeated Florence's Guelphs. For this he was nominated by Louis IV the Bavarian to become duke of Lucca. Castracani's tomb is in the church of San Francesco, his biography is Machiavelli's third famous book on political rule. In 1408, Lucca hosted. Occupied by the troops of Louis of Bavaria, the city was sold to a rich Genoese, Gherardino Spinola seized by John, king of Bohemia. Pawned to the Rossi of Parma, by them it was ceded to Mastino II della Scala of Verona, sold to the Florentines, surrendered to the Pisans, nominally liberated by the emperor Charles IV and governed by his vicar. Lucca managed, at first as a democracy, after 1628 as an oligarchy, to maintain its independence alongside of Venice and Genoa, painted the word Libertas on its banner until the French Revolution in 1789.
Lucca had been the second largest Italian city state with a republican constitution to remain independent over the centuries. In 1805, Lucca was conquered by Napoleon, who installed his sister Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi as "Princess of Lucca". From 1815 to 1847 it was a Bourbon-Parma duchy; the only reigning dukes of Lucca were Maria Luisa of Spain, succeeded by her son Charles II, Duke of Parma in 1824. Meanwhile, the Duchy of Parma had been assigned for life to Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, the second wife of Napoleon. In accordance with the Treaty of Vienna, upon the death of Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma in 1847, Parma reverted to Charles II, Duke of Parma, while Lucca lost independence and was annexed to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany; as part of Tuscany, it became part of the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1860 and part of the Italian State in 1861. The walls encircling the old town remain intact as the city expanded and modernized, unusual for cities in the region. Built as a defensive rampart, once the walls lost their military importance they became a pedestrian promenade, the Passeggiata delle Mura Urbane, a street atop the walls linking the bastions.
It passes through the Bastions of Santa Croce, San Frediano, San Martino, San Pietro/Battisti, San Salvatore, La Libertà/Cairoli, San Regolo, San Colombano, Santa Maria, San Paolino/Catalani, San Donato. Each of the four principal sides of the structure is lined with a different tree species than the others; the walled city is encircled by Piazzale Boccherini, Viale Lazzaro Papi, Viale Carlo Del Prete, Piazzale Martiri della Libertà, Via Batoni, Viale Agostino Marti, Viale G. Marconi, Piazza Don A. Mei, Viale Pacini, Viale Giusti, Piazza Curtatone, Piazzale Ricasoli, Viale Ricasoli, Piazza Risorgimento, Viale Giosuè Carducci; the town includes a number of public squares, most notably the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, site of ancient Roman amphitheater. Ducal Palace: built on the site of Ca
Bergamo
Bergamo is a city in the alpine Lombardy region of northern Italy 40 km northeast of Milan, about 30 km from Switzerland, the alpine lakes Como and Iseo and 70 km from Garda and Maggiore. The Bergamo Alps begin north of the city. With a population of around 120,000, Bergamo is the fourth-largest city in Lombardy. Bergamo is the seat of the Province of Bergamo; the metropolitan area of Bergamo extends beyond the administrative city limits, spanning over a densely urbanized area with less than 500,000 inhabitants. The Bergamo metropolitan area is itself part of the broader Milan metropolitan area, home to over 8 million people; the city of Bergamo is composed of an old walled core, known as Città Alta, nestled within a system of hills, the modern expansion in the plains below. The upper town is encircled by massive Venetian defensive systems that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 9 July 2017. Bergamo is well connected to several cities in Italy, thanks to the motorway A4 stretching on the axis between Turin, Verona and Trieste.
The city is served by Il Caravaggio International Airport, the third-busiest airport in Italy with 12.3 million passengers in 2017. Bergamo is the second most visited city in Lombardy after Milan. Bergamo occupies the site of the ancient town of Bergomum, founded as a settlement of the Celtic tribe of Cenomani. In 49 BC it became a Roman municipality. An important hub on the military road between Friuli and Raetia, it was destroyed by Attila in the 5th century. From the 6th century Bergamo was the seat of one of the most important Lombard duchies of northern Italy, together with Brescia and Cividale del Friuli: its first Lombard duke was Wallaris. After the conquest of the Lombard Kingdom by Charlemagne, it became the seat of a county under one Auteramus. An important Lombardic hoard dating from the 6th to 7th centuries was found in the vicinity of the city in the 19th century and is now in the British Museum. From the 11th century onwards, Bergamo was an independent commune, taking part in the Lombard League which defeated Frederick I Barbarossa in 1165.
The local Guelph and Ghibelline factions were the Suardi, respectively. Feuding between the two caused the family of Omodeo Tasso to flee north c. 1250, but he returned to Bergamo in the 13th century to organize the city's couriers: this would lead to the Imperial Thurn und Taxis dynasty credited with organizing the first modern postal service. After a short period under the House of Malatesta starting from 1407, Bergamo was ceded in 1428 by the Duchy of Milan to the Republic of Venice in the context of the Wars in Lombardy and the aftermath of the 1427 Battle of Maclodio. Despite the brief interlude granted by the Treaty of Lodi in 1454, the uneasy balance of power among the Northern Italian states precipitated the Italian Wars, a series of conflicts from 1494 to 1559 that involved, at various times the Papal States and the Holy Roman Empire; the wars, which were both a result and cause of Venetian involvement in the power politics of mainland Italy, prompted Venice to assert its direct rule over its mainland domains.
As much of the fighting during the Italian Wars took place during sieges, increasing levels of fortification were adopted, using such new developments as detached bastions that could withstand sustained artillery fire. The Treaty of Campo Formio formally recognized the inclusion of Bergamo and other parts of Northern Italy into the Cisalpine Republic, a "sister republic" of the French First Republic, superseded in 1802 by the short-lived Napoleonic Italian Republic and in 1805 by the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. At the 1815 Congress of Vienna, Bergamo was assigned to the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, a crown land of the Austrian Empire; the visit of Ferdinand I in 1838 coincided with the opening of the new boulevard stretching into the plains, leading to the railway station, inaugurated in 1857. The Austrian rule was at first welcomed, but challenged by Italian independentist insurrections in 1848. Giuseppe Garibaldi conquered Bergamo in 1859, during the Second Italian War of Independence; as a result, the city was incorporated into the newly founded Kingdom of Italy.
For its contribution to the Italian unification movement, Bergamo is known as Città dei Mille, because a significant part of the rank-and-file supporting Giuseppe Garibaldi in his expedition against the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies came from Bergamo and its environs. During the twentieth century, Bergamo became one of Italy's most industrialized areas. In 1907, Marcello Piacentini devised a new urban master plan, implemented between 1912 and 1927, in a style reminiscent of Novecento Italiano and Modernist Rationalism; the 2017 43rd G7 summit on agriculture was held in Bergamo, in the context of the broader international meeting organized in Taormina. The "Charter of Bergamo" is an international commitment, signed during the summit, to reduce hunger worldwide by 2030, strengthen cooperation for agricultural development in Africa, ensure price transparency; the town has two centres: Città alta, a hilltop medieval town, surrounded by 16th-century defensive walls, the Città bassa. The two parts of the town are connected by funicular and footpaths.
The upper city, surrounded by Venetian walls built in the 16th century, forms the historic centre of Bergamo. Walking along the narrow medieval streets, you can visi
Hector Berlioz
Louis-Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer. His output includes orchestral works such as the Symphonie fantastique and Harold in Italy, choral pieces including the Requiem and L'enfance du Christ, his three operas Benvenuto Cellini, Les Troyens and Béatrice et Bénédict, works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" Roméo et Juliette and the "dramatic legend" La damnation de Faust; the elder son of a provincial doctor, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris, he moderated his style sufficiently to win France's premier music prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1830 but he learned little from the academics of the Paris Conservatoire. Opinion was divided for many years between those who thought him an original genius and those who viewed his music as lacking in form and coherence.
At age 22 Berlioz fell in love with the Irish Shakespearean actress Harriet Smithson, he pursued her obsessively until she accepted him seven years later. Their marriage was happy at first but foundered. Harriet inspired his first major success, the Symphonie fantastique, in which an idealised depiction of her occurs throughout. Berlioz completed the first of which, Benvenuto Cellini, was an outright failure; the second, the huge epic Les Troyens, was so large in scale that it was never staged in its entirety during his lifetime. His last opera, Béatrice et Bénédict – based on Shakespeare's comedy Much Ado About Nothing – was a success at its premiere but did not enter the regular operatic repertoire. Meeting only occasional success in France as a composer, Berlioz turned to conducting, in which he gained an international reputation, he was regarded in Germany and Russia both as a composer and as a conductor. To supplement his earnings he wrote musical journalism throughout much of his career.
Berlioz died in Paris at the age of 65. Berlioz was born on 11 December 1803, the eldest child of Louis Berlioz, a physician, his wife, Marie-Antoinette Joséphine, née Marmion, his birthplace was the family home in the commune of La Côte-Saint-André in the département of Isère, in south-eastern France. His parents had five more children. Berlioz's father, a respected local figure, was a progressively-minded doctor credited as the first European to practise and write about acupuncture, he was an agnostic with a liberal outlook. After attending a local school when he was about ten, Berlioz was educated at home by his father, he recalled in his Mémoires that he enjoyed geography books about travel, to which his mind would sometimes wander when he was supposed to be studying Latin. He studied philosophy, – because his father planned a medical career for him – anatomy. Music did not feature prominently in the young Berlioz's education, his father gave him basic instruction on the flageolet, he took flute and guitar lessons with local teachers.
He never studied the piano, throughout his life played haltingly at best. He contended that this was an advantage because it "saved me from the tyranny of keyboard habits, so dangerous to thought, from the lure of conventional harmonies". At the age of twelve Berlioz fell in love for the first time; the object of his affections was Estelle Dubœuf. He was teased for what was seen as a boyish crush, but something of his early passion for Estelle endured all his life, he poured some of his unrequited feelings into his early attempts at composition. Trying to master harmony, he read Rameau's Traité de l'harmonie, which proved incomprehensible to a novice, but Charles-Simon Catel's simpler treatise on the subject made it clearer to him, he wrote several chamber works as a youth, subsequently destroying the manuscripts, but one theme that remained in his mind reappeared as the A-flat second subject of the overture to Les francs-juges. In March 1821 Berlioz passed the baccalauréat examination at the University of Grenoble – it is not certain whether at the first or second attempt – and in late September, aged seventeen, he moved to Paris.
At his father's insistence he enrolled at the School of Medicine of the University of Paris. He had to fight hard to overcome his revulsion at dissecting bodies, but in deference to his father's wishes, he forced himself to continue his medical studies; the horrors of the medical college were mitigated thanks to an ample allowance from his father, which enabled him to take full advantage of the cultural, musical, life of Paris. Music did not at that time enjoy the prestige of literature in French culture, but Paris nonetheless possessed two major opera houses and the country's most important music library. Berlioz took advantage of them all. Within days of arriving in Paris he went to the Opéra, although the piece on offer was by a minor composer, the staging and the magnificent orchestral playing enchanted him, he went to other works at the Opéra-Comique.
Jérusalem
Jérusalem is a grand opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was to be an adaptation and partial translation of the composer's original 1843 Italian opera, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, it was the one opera which he regarded as the most suitable for being translated into French and, taking Eugène Scribe's advice, Verdi agreed that a French libretto was to be prepared by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, who had written the libretto for Donizetti's most successful French opera, La favorite. The opera received its premiere performance at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris on 26 November 1847; the maiden production was designed by Paul Lormier, Charles Séchan, Jules Diéterle and Édouard Desplechin, Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph Thierry. The director of the Paris Opéra, Léon Pillet, had invited Verdi to compose an opera for the company in November 1845 and February 1846, but Verdi declined; this was the composer's first encounter with the Académie Royale de Musique, as the Paris Opéra was known.
Among 19th-century Italian composers, there had been an increasing interest in writing for Paris, where the combination of money and flexibility of style were appealing. Musicologist Julian Budden provides examples of those composers who had crossed the Alps, the most well-known being Rossini and Donizetti However, Verdi had given some consideration of the idea of adapting one of the librettos written by Temistocle Solera in earlier years, librettos which music historian David Kimball regards as having something of grand opera in their structure. After conducting the premiere of I masnadieri in London and within a week of Verdi's arrival in Paris on 27 July 1847, he received his first commission from the company, agreeing to adapt I Lombardi to a new French libretto; the adaptation meant that Verdi could "try his hand at grand opera" without having to write something new, a strategy which both Donizetti and Rossini had employed for their Paris debuts. There are significant changes in the location and action of the French version of Lombardi given the need to set the story for French involvement in the First Crusade of 1095–1099.
Characters' names changed from Italian to French and one, Arvino was now a baritone instead of a tenor. Several roles present in the original version were deleted, including the leading tenor role of Oronte. In the restructured libretto, the central romance is given more prominence, a happier ending. In addition, Verdi added a standard ballet and new music, but re-shaped much of the structure by removing inappropriate material he felt to be weak; as musicologist Roger Parker notes, "only a few of the original numbers in their former positions." Verdi himself described the new work as having "transformed out of recognition". During this period in Paris, Verdi was to complete the score for Jérusalem. From Paris, he fulfilled the obligation to write and oversee the production of Il corsaro from a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave which took place in Trieste in October 1848, he worked with Salvadore Cammarano on two librettos, one for La battaglia di Legnano, the other being Luisa Miller, presented in Naples in December 1849 after Verdi's return to Italy.
Many writers, including Baldini and Frank Walker, have speculated on supposed relationships which Verdi, a man close to his thirties, might have had with women in the years following his first wife's death. However, the only real evidence, visible in Walker's The Man Verdi and Baldini's The Story of Giuseppe Verdi, relates to Giuseppina Strepponi, the singer who Verdi first encountered at the time he was writing Nabucco in 1842, she sang the first Abigaille, continued on and off with that role in spite of her declining voice up to her retirement and move to Paris in October 1846 where she became a singing teacher in November and planned a concert of Verdi's music for the following June. It is known that the two had conducted friendly correspondence over several years and that Strepponi had offered various pieces of advice to the composer; as is known and Emanuele Muzio had arrived in Paris on 2 June 1847 en route to London for I masnadieri, the composer had sent Muzio on to London to make sure that Jenny Lind, about whom rumours of her reluctance to come to England abounded, was present and ready to go to work.
While Verdi remained in the city, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz in her massive biography of the composer, speculates that Verdi saw her in the three days he was present. On 27 July 1847, having left London, Verdi returned to Paris. To friends in Italy, he had written from London about "being able to lead the life I wish" and "intend to stay a month in Paris, if I liked it". With the exception of a return to Italy after the 18 March 1848 bloody uprising in Milan against the Austrians and the period of overseeing the rehearsals of La battaglia di Legnano in Rome, Verdi remained in Paris. However, as far as the relationship with Strepponi proceeded, Phillips-Matz recounts that Verdi was "living in an apartment around the corner from Strepponi's house", that the news of this had reached Italy, that, in writing the music for Jérusalem, he had received her
