Clelia Maria Giuseppa (Giuseppina) Strepponi (Lodi, 8 September 1815 – Villanova sull'Arda, 14 November 1897) 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.Budden 1998, pp. 582–583
Both her personal and professional life were 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. While it is known that she had a professional relationship with Verdi from the time of his first opera, Oberto in 1839, they became a couple by 1847 when they lived together in Paris, then moved to Busseto in 1849, married in 1859, and remained together until the end of her life.
Early life Strepponi was born in the city of Lodi in the Lombard region of Italy. She was the oldest child of Rosa Cornalba and Feliciano Strepponi (1797–1832), who was the organist at Monza Cathedral and a moderately successful opera composer, his works having been performed in theatres in Milan, Turin and Trieste. Her first music lessons were with her father who focused mainly on teaching her to play the piano, but in 1830 she was enrolled in the Milan Conservatory although just over the age of 15. After her father's death at the age of 35 in 1832 of encephalitis, she was able to continue studying singing and the piano as a non-paying pupil at the Conservatory where she notably won first prize for bel canto during her final year in 1834. Her performance of the cavatina from Beatrice di Tenda and for her parts in both a duet and a trio brought mention in the Gazzetta privilegiata di Milano of 29 September 1834, where it was noted that her vocal qualities, "will be a fine acquisition, when the time comes, for the Italian stage".Gazzetta, Milan, 29 September 1834, in Walker 1962, p. 51
Career as an opera singer
The 1830s
Strepponi made her professional opera début in December 1834 as Adria in Luigi Ricci's Chiara di Rosembergh at the Teatro Orfeo. She had her first major success during the following spring at the Teatro Grande in Trieste singing the title role in Rossini's Matilde di Shabran.
This success quickly led to numerous engagements at major opera houses throughout Italy and Giuseppina soon became her family's major breadwinner. In the summer of 1835, she went to Austria to sing Adalgisa in Bellini's Norma and Amina in Bellini's La sonnambula at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna where she was praised highly by audiences and critics. Although she was highly talented, she never sang outside Italy after 1835.
Strepponi became a celebrity among opera singers during the late 1830s, arousing fanatical enthusiasm in performances throughout Italy. In 1836 she sang the roles of Ninetta in Rossini's La gazza ladra, Elvira in Bellini's I puritani, and the title role in Rossini's La Cenerentola at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice.
In Spring 1837, she went under contract with Alessandro Lanari of Florence, then known as "the king of impresarios", who was able to secure important engagements for her in the years following. However, within a very short time, she found herself pregnant and had to sing through three pregnancies during the time with Lanari.
That same year she reprised the role of Elvira and portrayed the roles of Elena in Donizetti's Marino Faliero and the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. In 1838 she sang the title roles in Donizetti's Maria di Rudenz, Bellini's Beatrice di Tenda, and Carlo Coccia's Caterina di Guisa at the Imperial Regio Teatro degli Avvalorati in Livorno. She made her La Scala debut in 1839, replacing Antonietta Marini-Rainieri, who was found unsuitable in the work's premiere performance, as Leonora in the first production of Giuseppe Verdi's first opera Oberto. Strepponi's performance was considered one of the strongest aspects of this production and one of the main reasons that the work was received well.
Other notable roles for Strepponi during the late 1830s include Elaisa in Saverio Mercadante's Il giuramento, Adina in Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore and Sandrina in Luigi Ricci's Un'avventura di Scaramuccia. However, the record of constant performances over several years has invited speculation about what that might have done to the quality of her voice in later years.
The 1840s
Returning to Milan for rehearsals of Nabucco, she claimed that illness would prevent future performances in Vienna and asked to be relieved of that obligation. Lanari ordered a complete medical examination which concluded that she had "reached the limits of her endurance" and that she would be obliged to give up her career or else she would become a consumptive.Phillips-Matz 1993, pp. 125 She persisted with Nabucco, singing all eight performances of Verdi's opera: in her words to Lanari, "I dragged myself to the end of the performances" and then told him that she had the possibility of an offer of marriage from a man who would only do so if she were free from contractual obligations. The doctors' conclusions would allow her to do that, but it took her more than a year to recover.
Strepponi continued to remain a highly popular singer during the early 1840s. She notably sang the title role in Donizetti's Adelia in 1841 at the Teatro Apollo in Rome, a role written specifically for her by the composer. This was followed by a critically acclaimed portrayal as Abigaille in the world premiere of Verdi's Nabucco at La Scala in 1842. She reprised the role of Abigaille in several opera houses throughout Italy the following year, including the Teatro Regio di Parma and the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, which considerably aided the work's popularity. Also in 1843, she sang the roles of Elisabetta in Donizetti's Roberto Devereux and Imogene in Bellini's Il pirata in Bologna.
Other notable roles for Strepponi during the early 1840s included the title role in Bellini's Norma, the Marchesa del Poggio in Verdi's Un giorno di regno, and the title role in Giovanni Pacini's Saffo.
Around 1844, Strepponi began to experience significant vocal problems, most likely brought on by her relentless performing schedule, which culminated in a disastrous season in Palermo in 1845, where she was booed by audiences. Her voice never recovered and she thereafter appeared only sporadically in operas until her retirement in February 1846. Most of her last performances were in operas by Verdi, including performances of Elvira in Ernani and Lucrezia Contarini in I due Foscari.
Strepponi's children
Camillo Cirelli (whom Verdi had met while a student of Lavigna's some years before) was one of a group of three theatrical agents under Lanari who took responsibility for Strepponi from Milan after the early months of 1837. He also engaged her for the Teatro San Benedetto in Venice, but it was not uncommon for her to work under other impresarios. However, she became pregnant around March/April 1837 and she stopped singing only about a month before her first child, Camillo Luigi Antonio, was born in Turin in January 1838 and baptised as "Sterponi" (sic). From her performance records of these two years, Frank Walker corroborates the fact that she was absent from the stage for about three months,Walker 1962, p. 51 and then began another hectic round of performances under an exclusive contract with Lanari announced in February 1838.Walker 1962, p. 61 Cirelli believed that he was the father, although Frank Walker states that he proved to be a very good friend and that "it is possible that he had been Camillino's godfather, and given him his Christian name".Walker 1962, p. 66
However, sometime in the Spring of 1838, Strepponi became pregnant again and, in Florence on 9 February 1839, she gave birth to her second child, Giuseppina Fausta, only a few hours after completing a performance at the Teatro Alfieri and before leaving for an engagement in Venice. The child was placed in the turnstile for abandoned infants at the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Florence under the name of "Sinforosa Cirelli". These children were known as the esposti, "the exposed", or as described by Phillips-Matz, "society's trash".Phillips-Matz 1993, p. 122 Cirelli, who had returned to Milan, initially denied paternity, believing that she had taken another lover.Phillips-Matz 1993, p. 121, states that "she took another lover, who, she thought, got her pregnant" But Cirelli then accepted paternity when the child was born prematurely and there was no time for her to be taken to somewhere private for the birth.
In late 1838, Lanari and Bartolomeo Merelli, the impresario of La Scala, had negotiated for Strepponi, Moriani, and Ronconi to appear in La Scala for the following spring season, but they had both been horrified to find out in early January that she was five months pregnant,Merrelli to Lanari, 16 January 1839, in Walker 1962, p. 64 and that this would cause her to be unavailable. But in February 1839 in Florence, she sang in Il giuramento with such dramatic intensity that it appears to have caused her to miscarry and, by necessity, withdraw from further performances for some time. Increasingly pressured by Lanari, she finally relented to appear at La Fenice, where she was a triumph in March. By April 1839 she was in Milan to fulfill those engagements, and her La Scala debut in I Puritani on 20th was another triumph.Walker 1962, pp. 65—67 By March 1840, it appears that she may have given birth to a stillborn girl since Phillips-Matz notes that a combination of time taken out of her working schedule corresponds to around the 22 March records showing parents abandoning her in the parish in which she lived.
Performances in Florence in March and early April 1841 in I Puritani were the last which Strepponi gave with both Ronconi and Moriani, the latter then leaving for Vienna and Dresden, she and Ronconi going on to the other Italian towns. Later in the year, as the 1841–42 season was being planned, Walker states that "she knew quite well that she would not be able to carry out the whole of this programme, for she was again pregnant."Walker 1962, p. 76 During the following few months, letters between Strepponi and Lanari, in whom she had clearly confided, reveal the existence of "the despicable M ..." (and in another letter, he is "Mr. Mo..."), and she asks that he "kindly remind him of the important sum of money that through your offices he has agreed to pay."Strepponi to Lanari, 8 August 1841, in Walker 1962, pp. 76—77 On 16 August she wrote again to Lanari, stating that "I have been too cruelly treated under the mantle of love ... But I do not wish him ill."Strepponi to Lanari, 16 August 1841, in Walker 1962, p. 77