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This is Le Roncole,
a hamlet in Bussetto, in the province of Parma, where Verdi was born.
The house where he was born has been lovingly preserved, maintained and restored.
It was a sort of very modest cafÈ or inn where people came to share bread and wine around the table.
Verdi was born here in this unadorned room on October 10th, 1813.
And look : His birth certificate is in French, because Bussetto was then part of the French department of Taro.
Four months later, the region returned to Italian control.
Fog often blankets the plain of the River Po,
and we can imagine Verdi running in the rain to the church located just a few meters from his home.
Here at the church, the priest, Pietro Baistrocchi, introduced him to music on this little organ, which Verdi learned to play.
He was also baptised in this church.
A few kilometres away from Le Roncole is the estate of SantíAgata, where Verdi spent much of his life.
Today the estate is still large, and well maintained, but at the outset it was a simple farm that Verdi purchased and turned into a lovely estate,
where he could feel at home.
Today the estate is preserved by the great-grandson of Verdiís adoptive daughter, his only offspring.
Mr. Carrara Verdi, thank you to have us here, in this private area of this extraordinary house, in which you were born.
Iíll speak Italian.
This is the house where I was born, and where Iíve lived since 1968.
Itís a great honour to be here,
but itís also a great burden, because I have to maintain the house
and always keep it in perfect condition, and thatís quite difficult.
But we do get some satisfaction out of it ;
everyone who comes here goes away feeling satisfied. So itís something the family is very proud of.
Because we really have the feeling that Verdi still lives in this house.
Yes, itís something we insist on, because the villa is kept in the exact same condition that he left it in.
In fact itís a request he left in his will, that his things be maintained in the way he would have wanted.
And so weíve continued to do that. Obviously, because we live here, we are able to respond quickly when problems crop up ; we can see them and anticipate them.
And so everything remains just as it was then. And it almost seems like heís going to walk in at any moment.
Weíre sort of stuck in the last century.
So, can you tell us how your family got this house, and what are the connections between the Carrara family and G. Verdi.
Letís start with the purchase of the property.
The Maestro was born poor ; when he began to earn money, for his operas and so on,
he would invest in secure things, in other words land.
And in 1848 he bought this property, at the suggestion of his benefactor Antonio Barezzi.
Originally he had planned to set his father and mother up here.
So he started to have some renovation done.
Unfortunately, however, his mother died shortly after that,
and just as he arrived in Busseto with Giuseppina Strepponi, which was in 1849/50,
when they were not yet married and living together was not viewed positively.
What happened was : He decided to move from Busseto to here in SantíAgata.
And he transformed the place; he began working on this manor house,
expanding it, doing it and undoing it, destroying it as he saw fit.
And out of that came this villa, which has about fifty rooms, with almost eight hectares of grounds.
This was aÖ the place where he decided to live.
He even tried it in the winter, which is a very difficult season in this area, because itís very damp, as you can see.
But despite all that, even though he would go spend winters in Genoa, where the climate is milder,
he continued to come here every two or three weeks because this was his land.
This was the place he wanted to be.
In fact, partly because of Giuseppina Strepponi, he realised this,
because life in the 1800s was in the big cities, important life, that is.
Except that when he was away from here, I donít know, he was missing something.He was missing some of his inspiration, and Giuseppina Strepponi had realized that.
And so she, accustomed as she was to the major salons of Paris, Milan and London, decided to sacrifice her life for the Maestro.
Because here he experienced special inspiration. And fortunately that was true.
Now, as for our family, the Carrara-Verdis,
in 1867 my great-grandmother, Maria Filomena, who called herself Filomena, came to live in this house ;
her surname was Verdi because she was the daughter of a cousin of the Maestro, whose name was also Giuseppe Verdi.
The reason for that was a mishap,
because that summer, at Maria Filomenaís home, her brother, one of Maria Filomenaís little brothers, had tipped over a cauldron, a pot of boiling water, spilling it all over himself.
And her father asked the Maestro if he could keep the girl for a few days, a week, two weeks, away from their home,
And they didnít want her to witness her little brotherís agonizing death.
because the boy had survived but did not survive long-term ; he died from his burns.
The point is that she came here and never left, because the Maestro and Giuseppina Strepponi fell in love with the girl.
She was seven years old and brought an air of youth, of life to the house ;
he asked his cousin if it would be a problem if he kept her for a few more days, a few more weeks,
and the cousin was very pleased at that because at the time there were a lot of mouths to feed, and he had other children,
so it was a positive and important thing for him to be able to provide his daughter with a secure future.
In fact the Maestro even began the adoption process. But he interrupted that, because Giuseppina Strepponi told him :
"Her name is Verdi as well because her fatherís name is also Giuseppe Verdi ;
They didnít like the name Filomena very much. They liked Maria, and thatís how she got the name Maria Filomena Verdi.
she has your surname, and her name is Filomena Verdi."
So Maria Filomena grew up here in the house with the Maestro,
or with the Maestro and her father, because when he travelled around Europe for the theatre,
he would leave her with her father,
- and something that shouldnít be overlooked is that he sent her to school, to a boarding school in Turin,
and she graduated as a teacher.
Which for women at the time was a very difficult thing,
and thereís an anecdote : When he and Strepponi went to Turin and they took her to the boarding school,
they met the schoolís director and said :
ìOK, this is going to be your home for a few years. î
As they were walking towards the carriage, she ran towards the Maestro and hugged him :
ìDonít abandon me, donít leave me here.î
He took her and carried her to the carriage, but Giuseppina Strepponi said :
ìItís for her own good ; donít give in to your love for her ; make her go.î
So he made her go back into the school, and he left,
but he felt unbounded love for her, partly because, as we know, his own life, in terms of family affection, was not very positive.
We know that his first wife, Margherita Barezzi, and his two children, Icilio and Virginia, all died.
So weíve come to Maria Filomena, who was my great-grandmother.
The reason weíre called Carrara-Verdi is because Maria Filomena married Alberto Carrara,
who was the son of Giuseppe Verdiís notary.
A close friend, and from right here in Busseto, one of Bussetoís important families, Alberto Carrara married Maria Filomena Verdi.
What happened was that four children were born ; one of them was Angiolo Carrara, who was my grandfather and who then became the heir
ñ the owner of the villa.
And what happened? He submitted a request to the King to be allowed to combine the two surnames, because at the time,
it was the father who gave his surname to the children,
so he would have been Angelo Carrara and the name Verdi would have been lost.
Now thereís the royal edict in the Maestroís bedroom that allowed the two surnames to be combined : Carrara-Verdi.
And from that we come to us.
And, Verdi was a musical genius, but he was also very good at saving his money, his fortune grew a lot,
and there were two parts of it : the first one was the copyright to his works, and the second one was his lands.
He created this wonderful institute, the "Casa di riposo" (nursing home), can you tell us how the funding of the "Casa di riposo" worked after he died ?
As you can see if you read the Maestroís will, he was a great benefactor ; in fact he left 90% of his property to charity.
Starting, as I said, with the musiciansí retirement home,
including Boldiniís paintings, he left them to the retirement home.
he left all his most important paintings, all the works he had acquired or had made for him,
But the most important thing he left to the retirement home was the copyright to his works.
Thatís how he gave the retirement home a future, because the copyright is valid for 50 years.
He was afraid that if he was no longer there as the main source of funding, the retirement home would close.
Because he left the copyright, the retirement home was able to continue its work,
as he said and wrote, of giving musicians less fortunate than himself a chance.
Here in Villanova he built a hospital, because there werenít any in this area,
and thereís this story that I told you earlier,
that one morning he heard a commotion in front of the villa, and he saw a cart passing by with an injured farmer, who had been gored by a bull.
And this cart was going to Fidenza, which at the time was called Borgo Sandonnino, 15 kilometres from here,
and he thought : "How is it possible that if you have a problem, an accident, you have to travel all that way ?"
We have to realize the way things were at the time : today 15 kilometres is nothing, but at the time, with horses and carts, it was a real journey.
That was when he began construction of the Villanova hospital, which is still going today. Itís about two kilometres from here.
so that it could carry on with the income from the lands that it could manage and survive.
And he even left a lot of land to the hospital,
So, since the copyright isn't available now, how does the funding work today ?
Over time, all the fruits of what he left behind were very carefully invested.
The retirement home owns many different properties : flats, apartment buildings, and so on.
So it is always able to collect the rents. And because of that it continues to function.
Iím a member of the board of directors, and I can tell you first-hand, because I experience that every month.
Yes, also because, fortunately, in Milan Verdi is a very beloved figure, and because it was his good fortune. We can say that Verdi was from Parma, not so much Parma but from Busseto, so...
But his good fortune came from Milan. Because thatís where he studied, where he became somebody, where La Scala is.
And opera was in the big cities.
Now, whether he loved Milan or not, that remains to be seen, but the Milanese certainly loved Verdi.
And still today many people leave something to the retirement home when they die.
One of the main bequests came from Arturo Toscanini...
And all this money, this income, was, as I said earlier, very carefully invested.
So it has managed to survive without asking anyone for anything.
So he created an institute which today is perpetuated by other people, this is wonderful !
So, you were born in this house, you grew up here too, how does it feel to live here and how do you live in this very special and historical house,
and especially in those very special days of Verdi's bicentenary ?
For me, itís the most natural thing in the world, because, as I was born here, I couldnít imagine any other way of life ;
when I was a student at boarding school, or at the university in Parma,
to tell you the truth, I felt somewhat lost because,
even though this is not the best time of year to visit this area because the weather is not so great,
but when I was in Parma, at university, and we lived in an apartment, a lovely apartment, it felt very confined.
Itís better being in a small town, here, in the open countryside, itís an incredible experience.
And when you think that the Maestro chose it as his home, thatís one more incentive.
And itís easy to understand. The reason he chose it, when you stroll through the garden, you can feel it.
So, this is your private property, and you maintain it and you finance it in a private way, i guess it is an important investment ?
Yes, thatís the most difficult thing.
My entire family has sacrificed,
because keeping up a building this big and so historically important requires no small commitment.
It requires spending a lot of money.
Fortunately or unfortunately, we are the only ones who maintain it.
As we know, Italy has so many monuments ;
it has about 85% of the worldís historical monuments, perhaps too many to be able to maintain them.
In my opinion, itís good that some things like these are private.
So that theyíre perhaps better protected.
Itís very difficult ; now weíre able to live here in order to maintain the house - why ?
Aside from the beauty of it, itís an old house because itís a important house,
but itís beginning to show its age.
And so the problems keep coming one after another, frequently,
but we carry on, cause that is the task assigned to us by the Maestro.
And we hope we can continue to do that, and that people are always satisfied with what we are able to do.
Well, this is a great responsability, it is a real sanctuary ! Could you give us a tour of the house and tell us some stories ?
Visitors to the home will be moved by several of the rooms.
Giuseppinaís room, first of all,
and especially the maestroís office-bedroom,
where so many reminders bring him to life, from the cast of his hand to his bed,
the desk where he composed so many masterworks, the bust of his beloved Giuseppina, and his own bust in clay that seems to express his inner torment,
or the Erard piano he used to check his chords and phrasing.
Or this score for Lohengrin, with notes in his handwriting, showing his attention to Wagnerís work.
Not to mention this writing case where he would stand to do his accounts, or lay out his orchestral scores before retiring to the comfortable privacy of his beautiful red sitting room.