Casa di Riposo per Musicisti | |
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General information | |
Architectural style | neo-Gothic style |
Address | Piazza Michelangelo Buonarroti, 29, 20145 Milano MI, Italy |
Town or city | Milan |
Country | Italy |
Coordinates | 45°28′13″N9°09′17″E / 45.4704°N 9.1548°E |
Completed | 1896 |
Design and construction | |
Architect(s) | Camillo Boito |
The Casa di Riposo per Musicisti (literally 'rest home for musicians') is a home for retired opera singers and musicians in Milan, northern Italy, founded by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi (whose statue is in the piazza outside the building) in 1896. The building was designed in the neo-Gothic style by Italian architect, Camillo Boito. Both Verdi and his wife, Giuseppina Strepponi are buried there. A documentary film about life in the Casa di Riposo, Il Bacio di Tosca (Tosca's Kiss in the US), was made in 1984 by the Swiss director Daniel Schmid. [1]
In the last years of his life, Verdi wrote to his friend Giulio Monteverde:
Of all my works, that which pleases me the most is the Casa that I had built in Milan to shelter elderly singers who have not been favoured by fortune, or who when they were young did not have the virtue of saving their money. Poor and dear companions of my life!" [2]
In 1888, Verdi had already built, equipped and managed a hospital in Villanova sull'Arda, a town bordering the fields of his estate. The following year, he turned to his next philanthropic project, a home for retired opera singers and musicians who had fallen on hard times. In 1889, he wrote to Giulio Ricordi that he had acquired a large piece of empty land in Milan outside the Porta Garibaldi on which he planned to build his Casa di Riposo. He then announced his plans publicly in an 1891 interview in the Gazetta musicale di Milano. Construction did not begin until 1896, but in the intervening years Verdi and wife, Giuseppina Strepponi, met frequently with the architect, Camillo Boito to plan the project. (Camillo Boito was the brother of Verdi's friend and librettist, Arrigo Boito.) He also sought out information on how other hospices for the elderly were run. In 1895, Verdi made provisions in his will to fund the Casa after his death, bequeathing the future royalties from his operas to the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti - Fondazione Giuseppe Verdi. Construction was completed in 1899, but Verdi did not want any residents to move in until after his death.
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron, Antonio Barezzi. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, whose works significantly influenced him.
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Arrigo Boito was an Italian librettist, composer, poet and critic whose only completed opera was Mefistofele. Among the operas for which he wrote the libretti are Giuseppe Verdi's monumental last two operas Otello and Falstaff as well as Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda.
Clelia Maria Giuseppa (Giuseppina) Strepponi was a nineteenth-century Italian operatic soprano of great renown and the second wife of composer Giuseppe Verdi.
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Camillo Boito was an Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist. He was the brother of Arrigo Boito, the friend and librettist of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi.
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Il Bacio di Tosca is a 1984 film directed by Daniel Schmid, a documentary of life in the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti of Milan, the world's first nursing home for retired opera singers, founded by composer Giuseppe Verdi in 1896. The New York Times review called it "Bravissimo!"
The Life of Verdi is a 1982 Italian-language biographical television miniseries directed by Renato Castellani dramatizing the life of Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. Castellani also co-wrote the original script with Leonardo Benvenuti and Piero De Bernardi. The English version was written by Gene Luotto and narrated by Burt Lancaster. The miniseries first aired in 1982, and was made available on DVD in 2003.
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Feliciano Cristoforo Bartolomeo Strepponi was an Italian composer and conductor. He was born in Lodi and died in Trieste at the age of 38. Amongst his compositions were seven operas which had a modest success in their day. The last one, L'Ullà di Bassora, premiered at La Scala in 1831. He was the father and first teacher of the opera singer Giuseppina Strepponi who later became the second wife of Giuseppe Verdi.
Giuseppe Gallignani was an Italian composer, conductor and music teacher.
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The Conservatorio di Musica Arrigo Boito, better known in English as the Parma Conservatory, is a music conservatory in Parma, Italy. It was originally established as the Regia Scuola di Canto, a school for singing in 1819 by Marie Louise, Duchess of Parma, and expanded into a conservatory of music in 1825. In 1840 instrumental music instruction began, followed by the addition of music composition, conducting, and other musical studies.
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