Giuseppe Verdi Italian heritage: the state purchases Villa Verdi. Appeal to the government

For several weeks rumors related to the fate of Giuseppe Verdi’s home have been chasing each other, let’s talk about the Villa Verdi Museum in Sant’Agata, the place that the Maestro lived in from the mid-19th century. Scrolling through the museum’s website and reading a series of articles online we read that today, October 31st, will permanently close to visits; we read that all merchandising is sold at half price; we read about the judicial case dividing the heirs; we read that the court will appoint a custodian who can protect him and again we read, with great sadness, of a very worrying situation.

Giuseppe Verdi is Father of the Country. He is as good as Giuseppe Garibaldi, Giuseppe Mazzini, Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour. In some respects it is even more so, not for heroism or artistic and intellectual superiority, it is because Giuseppe Verdi embraces all of Italy, it is because the name of Giuseppe Verdi is never divisive, Giuseppe Verdi’s melodies are ours history, the heroes of Giuseppe Verdi are our Risorgimento, the villains of Giuseppe Verdi are our enemies of yesterday and almost always our defects of today. Giuseppe Verdi is our critical conscience, as Pier Paolo Pasolini was, just to give an example, in the twentieth century. Not only that, Giuseppe Verdi is the greatest European artist that the history of universal musical theater has ever had. Europe loved and venerated him, courted and applauded him and he reciprocated this sentiment. Of the 27 opera librettos that make up his catalog, only two are of Italian inspiration, Oberto and I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata by Tommaso Grossi. The rest are Dumas, Schiller, Gutierrez, Scribe, Shakespeare, Byron, Hugo, Scott. The cities that have seen it debut are London, Paris, St. Petersburg.

Giuseppe Verdi was a just, generous, honest, consistent man.

The houses of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour belong to the state. Is there any reason, we wonder, why Villa Verdi shouldn’t be bought from Italy?

There is a right of pre-emption, we ask that it be exercised.

If the time of the heirs of the Maestro draws to a close, we believe there is no other solution than that of the purchase by Italy. It is opposed by many that in any case there is a “visibility constraint”; we believe that it is a Pilates palliative, which in no way guarantees the full usability of the property and the conservation of all the documents and all the works kept in the Villa of Sant’Agata.

We ask the government of the Republic to intervene promptly so that this inalienable chapter of the history of Italy belongs to all of us.

Finally, we add an objective fact: melodrama, of which Giuseppe Verdi is the brightest star, represents the most important communication vehicle of our language and culture in the world. There is no time to lose!

Piero Maranghi and Leonardo Piccinini
Beauty Almanac
Classic Hd – Sky 136