That Carlo and Luigia were having their kid learn languages when he was only four shows that they saw Giuseppe was exceptional. Carlo was, in fact, an innkeeper who was shocked! shocked! when the authorities claimed there was gambling going on in his establishment. Keeping in mind that few people actually had much hard currency, his dad, Carlo, was of the respectable middle class. In any case being a "poor peasant" doesn't really fit Giuseppe's circumstances. Other accounts say Pietro taught him to play the organ and let him stand in for him in the church services. One biography said that Pietro taught Giuseppe the languages but didn't say anything about music. One of Giuseppe's earliest teachers was the local school master, a chap named Pietro Baistrocchi. Later Giuseppe began attending the local school and received what for the time and place was a good education. Often called a dialect of Italian, Milanese is actually a separate language from Tuscan which is where we get modern Italian. Why a kid from Italy needed to learn Italian seems a bit strange but Giuseppe's native language was Milanese. Supposedly Giuseppe began studying the languages at age four. Different biographies mention different people on whether they taught him music, Latin, or Italian. But figuring out who taught him what is rather a mish-mash of information. At least Giuseppe said he heard the story from his mom. Although the story seems like one of those exciting but usually apocryphal tales where the course of musical history was hanging by a thread, it's probably true enough. With soldiers on the rampage, Giuseppe's mom, Luigia, fled her house with the infant and hid in a church tower. So in February Russian troops came sweeping into northern Italy.
Since Italy had been part of Napoleon's empire it was one of the places the coalition set out to - well - "liberate". A coalition which included Austria, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, and Sweden began sweeping around Europe and booting out any remnants of the Little Corporal and his friends. It was also the tail end of the Napoleonic Wars. That year wasn't only when Colonel Jackson took a little trip down the Mighty Mississip.
In 1813 the region of Parma - where Le Roncole is - was part of the French Empire.īut not so in 1814. The birth record even lists his given names as Joseph Fortunin François. He said he thought it was 1814 and that he didn't learn he was a year older until he was grown.Ī little known - or a least little discussed - fact is that Guiseppe was in fact born a Frenchman. For a long time Giuseppe wasn't even sure what year he was born in. But some people - including Giuseppe - said he was born on the 9th. You'd think two original documents which agree perfectly would clinch the matter. There is also a civil record that was dated October 12 which said the birth was October 10. The exact day has some uncertainty, but the baptismal record was recorded on October 11 and says that Giuseppe was born the day before. Giuseppe (as we'll call him although his nickname was Peppino) was born in Le Roncole, a small village, which is a ways south and east of Milan. Just how did a poor peasant kid end up becoming the most popular opera composer in Italy and one of the most popular in the world? Well, lots of this boils down to 1) Giuseppe had a lot of talent and 2) there were a lot of opportunities in rural Italy for such talented young people. One "classic" opera composer who lived well into the 20th century was Giocomo Puccini whose Madame Butterfly remains a staple. All in all, classic but not classical composers are mostly from the 19th century with a bit of spillage over into the 20th. Some of their songs are pretty classical-like but they all lived and worked in the modern era. More problematical are the Russian composers like Dmitri Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Sergei Prokofiev, the British Benjamin Britten, and American Aaron Copland. This definition, though, excludes modernist compositions even by such venerable and often performed composers like Igor Stravinsky. "Classic", though, is used more broadly to refer to music that sounds sort of like classical music, but not necessarily, and has become well-established in the repertoire. Strictly speaking classical refers to European music written from the mid-1700's to the early 1800's, usually counting from the careers of Hayden to the early Beethoven. "Classic" composers should not be confused with "classical".
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