She is said to have been his closest friend during childhood. Verdi had a younger sister, Giuseppa, who died aged 17 in 1833. Following his mother, Verdi always celebrated his birthday on 9 October, the day he himself believed he was born. Additionally, it lists Verdi as being 'born yesterday', but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. The baptismal register, prepared on 11 October 1813, lists his parents Carlo and Luigia as 'innkeeper' and 'spinner' respectively. Verdi, the first child of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi (1785–1867) and Luigia Uttini (1787–1851), was born at their home in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro and within the borders of the First French Empire following the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza in 1808. The bicentenary of his birth in 2013 was widely celebrated in broadcasts and performances. His operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). As he became professionally successful, he was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements.

The chorus ' Va, pensiero' from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini, whose works significantly influenced him. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi ( Italian: 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. More practically, theatrical performances showed audiences that political change really was possible, making the newly engaged spectator in the opera house into an actor on the political stage.Portrait of Giuseppe Verdi by Giovanni Boldini, 1886

Among the lessons taught by this music were that rules enforced by artistic tradition could be broken, that opera could jolt spectators into intense feeling even as it educated them, and that Italy could be in the vanguard of stylistic and technical innovation rather than clinging to the glories of centuries past.

Capturing what it was like to attend the opera or to join in the music at an aristocratic salon, Waiting for Verdi shows that the moral dilemmas, emotional reactions, and journalistic polemics sparked by these performances set new horizons for what Italians could think, feel, say, and write. While many of the accompanying stories were exaggerated, or even invented, by later generations, Verdi's operas-along with those by Rossini, Donizetti, and Mercadante-did inspire Italians to imagine Italy as an independent and unified nation. The name Giuseppe Verdi conjures images of Italians singing opera in the streets and bursting into song at political protests or when facing the firing squad.

Verdi opera set during 5th century