Giuseppe Verdi and the Italian Risorgimento

In the effort to show the extent to which the myth-making tendencies of the later 19th century have falsified the historical record, some non-Italian scholars have gone so far as to assert that Giuseppe Verdi and the operas he wrote were not prime figures in the Italian Risorgimento. But no Italian scholar has accepted this position, since it self-evidently flies in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. This paper will present evidence of the significance of Verdi and his music to several key moments of the Italian Risorgimento (the period leading up to the 1848 revolutions; the Cinque Giornate in Milan and their influence throughout the Italian peninsula; the strong Austrian reaction, particularly in the form of state censorship, to movements for national unity during the 1850s; the formation of the first Italian Parliament in 1861). Through a consideration of Verdi’s music and his letters it will demonstrate Verdi’s fundamental role in the Italian Risorgimento, a role that could be explicit in moments of relative freedom or implicit in moments of severe oppression