Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi was an Italian opera composer, born at Le Roncole near Busseto in the Duchy of Parma. His operas, among them Nabucco, Rigoletto, La traviata, Il trovatore, Aida, Otello and Falstaff, made him the dominant figure of nineteenth-century Italian opera. Works such as I vespri siciliani and his public support for unification made him a symbol of the Risorgimento, and he sat in the first Italian parliament.