page_title: Giuseppina Strepponi
section_title: The last years
hierarchical_section_title: Giuseppina Strepponi / The last years
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Giuseppina Strepponi (1815–1897), italienische Opernsängerin und zweite Ehefrau von Giuseppe Verdi. Español: Giuseppina Strepponi (1815-1897), cantante de ópera y mujer del músico italiano Giuseppe Verdi.
context_page_description: Clelia Maria Josepha Strepponi was a nineteenth-century Italian operatic soprano of great renown and the second wife of composer Giuseppe Verdi.
  She is often credited with having contributed to Verdi's first successes, starring in a number of his early operas, including the role of Abigaille in the world premiere of Nabucco in 1842. A highly gifted singer, Strepponi excelled in the bel canto repertoire and spent much of her career portraying roles in operas by Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioachino Rossini, often sharing the stage with tenor Napoleone Moriani and baritone Giorgio Ronconi. Donizetti wrote the title role of his opera Adelia specifically for Strepponi. She was described as possessing a "limpid, penetrating, smooth voice, seemly action, a lovely figure; and to Nature's liberal endowments she adds an excellent technique"; her "deep inner feeling" was also lauded.
  Both her personal and professional life was complicated by overwork, by at least three known pregnancies, and by her vocal deterioration which caused her to retire from the stage by the age of 31, in 1846 when she moved to Paris to become a singing teacher.
context_section_description: In 1894, Verdi and his wife made their last trip to Paris. Hungarian writer Dezső Szomori, who knew them at that time, then described Verdi as a man with small eyes and next to him a woman, Giuseppina, who looked more like an old bird, but ultimately concluded: "a beautiful and charming couple who grew up together and grow old in the music world."
  In those years, Strepponi frequently suffered from stomach problems and arthritis and during her last year of life she could barely move from her bed. In the autumn of 1897, when the couple was once again preparing to spend the winter in Genoa in a more salubrious climate with proximity to the sea, Verdi made the decision to stay in Sant'Agata because his wife was bedridden. Giuseppina Strepponi died after a long illness on 14 November that year at Sant'Agata, due to pneumonia. She was initially buried in Milan. With the death of Giuseppina, Verdi became a widower for the second time, and was once again tormented by the pain of losing one of the most important figures in his life. When Verdi died in 1901 he left instructions in  his will to be buried next to Giuseppina, but he was buried in the main cemetery of Milan. The desire to see the couple together in the afterlife eventually led on 26 February 1901 to the transfer of both of their bodies to the oratory of the Casa di Riposo in Milan, the retirement home for musicians which Verdi had created. Arturo Toscanini directed a choir of 900 singers in the famous Va, pensiero from Nabucco.
caption: Giuseppina Strepponi, last portrait, 1897
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