Giuseppe Verdi: a sophisticated gourmand
The cuisine at Verdi’s villa in Sant’Agata has been described, in my opinion, in too idealistic a fashion. Giuseppe Giacosa, as journalist and privileged guest, wrote thus in 1889, when the Maestro was at the height of his glory and wealth: “Verdi is not a gourmand, he is merely sophisticated; his conviviality is truly friendly, that is, magnificent and knowledgeable: the Sant’Agata cuisine deserves the honour of being on the stage, so picturesque is its greatness and so varied its appearance – as if it was coming from some pantagruelic alchemy workshop. There is no danger of lunch suffering because the cook is indisposed. Beside the appointed chef, the number of distinguished cooks at Sant’Agata includes the gardener, the coachman, one maid, and the owner himself: uno avulso non deficit alter. And please note that this whole apparatus is essentially for the sake of hospitality. Verdi is not a great eater, nor is he hard to please. He likes sitting down at the table just as all healthy, wise and sober men do, but most of all he loves to see shining around him, in his guests, the clever and sincere jocundity that accompanies and follows beautiful and exquisite meals: he is a disciplined man and as such believes that every function of life must have its own special moment: he is an artist, and as such considers lunch a work of art, and rightly so.”
There was, thus, an appointed chef at Sant’Agata and more than one substitute if needed. Certainly not “a great chef.” Verdi wouldn’t have put up with it. He wrote with his typical detached irony to Countess Clarina Maffei, to whom he was sending a bunch of flowers from his garden: “I love flowers, but if you want beautiful ones you need to have a Great Gardener… I detest all tyrannies and particularly domestic ones. Nowadays Great Gardeners, Great Chefs, Great Coachmen are the true tyrants of every household. With them, you are no longer free to touch a single flower of your garden, eat a simple egg with salad, use your horses if it’s raining or if it’s too hot! etc. etc. etc… No, no: I am the only tyrant needed in this house, and I know only too well how much work I make for myself!!! In any case I am a tyrant that always ends up doing what I don’t want to do… Do you want some proof? I write operas… and of all things this is the last one I want to be doing!!!” And it really seems that eating a simple egg with salad was a healthy, reasonable passion of his. This does not mean that he was not demanding where cooks were concerned. In 1878 he wrote to Luigi Bizzi, a man from the town of Reggio Emilia who had been a servant of his: “Let me know if one can find a cook in Reggio. Mind you, I don’t want someone who can sort of cook three or four local dishes, I absolutely want a chef, a real chef. I will pay what he is worth but, I repeat, he must be a chef.” The choice of cooks often turned out to be a headache for Verdi. In March 1875 he wrote to Giulio Ricordi from Genoa: “Today I will talk to you of neither art nor anything artistic, but… about a chef. If that person who declares to be a skilled manipulator of foods is still free, speak to him and above all take pains to ask for candid, sincere, serious, very serious information. You cannot trust them. For example, the one that I just hired, just like all the other ones before him, they all called themselves great cooks etc. and they were just bad potburners.” After going into details about the salary and the quantity of wine to be assigned to him, he concluded: “If we don’t like his cuisine I will send him back to Milan (naturally) at my expense. But since you are taking this task on, deal it with it seriously because it is a matter of daily bread… Poetry, idealism, they are all great …but you can’t do without eating!
P.S. Tomorrow I may write to you about higher, more poetical things… but perhaps quite useless ones.”
Visitors to the villa, still intact in its lush park, who are lucky enough to go into the kitchen, have the impression that it is a “pantagruelic alchemy workshop.” The shining copper of a hundred pots, pans, moulds, shapes and jugs makes a varied, wonderful display such as is rarely seen nowadays. Then there is a capacious sink, large tables and a cupboard, which is a large wardrobe of beautiful walnut wood in the Parmesan style with classical Petitot-like motifs. The stove is probably not the one which the Maestro had sent by rail from Paris in 1864. He wrote about it to his friend Opprandino Arrivabene to ask him to collect it: “The railways are made to break people’s b…s, and also to break the objects they transport. I had a stove sent from Paris, directed to Turin and from there to Borgo San Donnino. Yes sir, the administration of the Turin Railways got it into their head to hold on to this delivery, and so I am forced to ask you to please go and collect it, and send it on to me in Borgo S. Donnino. Please do me this favour and in addition to being grateful to you I will owe you 44.50 francs in addition to the transport and collection. This to break your b…s.”
In the dining room, which is also exactly as it used to be, the china cabinets are full of silver and porcelain objects. There is also the samovar brought back from Russia. The silverware is from the Christofle factory in Paris, purchased in 1867 when Verdi was living in Avenues des Champs Elysées, over one hundred pieces costing 1562.30 francs, plus 5 francs’ tip: one can still see the quote, the invoice and a letter from Giuseppina complaining that there were 17 table knives instead of 18. The letter V over two intertwined Gs (Giuseppe and Giuseppina) are elegantly engraved on each piece. When staying in France, the Verdis often made purchases at this famous Paris company, which also had a branch in Karlsruhe, including their fine china. The latter includes a white and turquoise Sèvres service, etched with gold. The furniture is dark and sober, softened by diverse inlays, and reflects great and yet unpretentious affluence. Every night the Maestro and Giuseppina changed for dinner, which was often followed by a short walk or, if there were guests, a game of billiards or cards. Verdi didn’t like losing at cards, so that he was often helped to win.
His guests were few and illustrious: the Ricordis, Arrigo Boito, Franco Faccio, the soprano Teresa Stolz, Emanuele Muzio and a few others in his flourishing old age. Sometimes the Mayor of Busseto would come to lunch, as shown by the succinct and cordial invitations he received. The following was sent to the Mayor Donnino Corbellini: “The peacock that you were so good as to favour me with has already gone to better life, and on Sunday at one it will make its triumphant appearance. I wish this may be an occasion for you to find the road to Sant’Agata so that you can come and eat some soup with us now and again. We will look forward to seeing on Sunday, then, and without any ceremony. We put our feet under the table at one o’clock.”
As Abbiati relates in his important biography, Corbellini had given the peacock to Verdi on a day when the latter had come home empty handed from hunting. Verdi was a hunter, but not a very keen one, since according to family memories he preferred walking along the banks of the Po River with his dog beside him to shooting. In the villa there is still a taxidermied pheasant that may have been one he hunted, or one of the pheasants he raised and used to give to friends.
In 1860 he repeatedly invited Angelo Mariani, the famous orchestra conductor, over to hunt several times. “They tell me there are many wild ducks in the woods of the Po River. I will be going soon to have a look at them and will let you know about them.” (March 15). “I go hunting in the mornings, I sleep, I eat and I don’t do anything: and what are you doing? When are you coming? The quail hunting is on and soon we will be catching dozens of them with nets, and some of them with our rifles, if we can shoot straight. In the meantime every morning we bring home 8 to 10 small and large birds and without going further than a few rifle-shot lengths from home. Luccardi, a great friend of mine, is my hunting companion and tomorrow morning we will go to the woods for the first time and will come back loaded with turtle-doves, blackbirds, starlings, Gallus petri, and partridges as well, what do you say? Come then…” (August 9). “I get up at five, go quail hunting, fire a few shot at the quails that are not so stupid as to enter the nets; then we have breakfast” (August 26). Coffee he could not do without, he liked it strong and in great quantities. He owed to coffee, partly, his recovery from one of the first signs of apoplexy. It happened in Genoa, in early January 1897; Giuseppina had come into the bedroom and found him lying on the bed, looking as if he was dead. She told her cousin Maria, who wanted to call the doctor. Giuseppina was against this; meanwhile Verdi opened his eyes and gestured for something to write with. On a piece of paper he wrote with a trembling hand the word “coffee.” Maria ran to the kitchen and gave the order for a very strong coffee which, as Abbiati relates, “re-started his semi-paralyzed body.” His friend, the engineer De Amicis, was once asked to pay for the consignment of 25 kilos of “Porto Rico coffee” from Romanengo.
But let’s return to his friends, from his youth and from later years. Marina, the librettist Francesco Maria Piave, the sculptor Vincenzo Luccardi, Count Opprandino Arrivabene and the alienist (as psychiatrists were then called) Cesare Vigna, to whom he dedicated La Traviata: with them at the villa everything was more simple, more spontaneous, and less formal. To find another Mayor of Busseto we need to fast forward to 1897, when the composer, restored to fair health, was working on his Pezzi Sacri. The first citizen of the town of Busseto, who had dropped by Sant’Agata with a request for a recommendation regarding the secondary school, stayed for lunch and was served culatello with melon. He apologized to Verdi explaining he would not partake of it because he could not stand the smell of melon, which at times even caused him to pass out.
Among his guests was also Antonio Barezzi, to the end of his life, dear Mr Antonio, “father and benefactor and friend” to use the words of Verdi, whose love and veneration for him never abated. We meet him at the Maestro’s table in the account by the music publisher Leon Escudier, who had come to Italy to bring Verdi the Legion of Honour bestowed on him by Napoleon III: “We sat down at the table; needless to say it was papà Antonio who guided the conversation, with Verdi as the subject, with great despair of the Maestro who, tired of fighting, gave up trying to keep him quiet.” At dessert, Escudier brought out the Legion of Honour: Verdi, after an emotional pause, shook him warmly by the hand. What about Barezzi? “The father-in-law was stunned. He wanted to speak, but he could not utter a single word; he waved his arms, he got up, he fell on Verdi’s neck, pulled him to himself, embraced him and wept like a child.” Then he asked to borrow the decoration and, promising to return it the next day, hurried away to show it to everyone in Busseto.
When the Verdis travelled away from Sant’Agata, they expected their accommodation to be of the highest standard. A revealing example is given by the correspondence with Cesarino De Sanctis. They were to travel to Naples in late 1872 for the performance of Aida and needed to stay in a hotel or an apartment. These were the requirements laid out by Giuseppina to ensure that Verdi was not deprived of “his comforts and full freedom”:
“1st Can we have a nice, well furnished apartment, clean beds, not far from the theatre, in a location that is beautiful and well ventilated and not too noisy?
2nd Assuming that there is such an apartment, how much would it cost monthly? of course roughly.
You know that we require two master bedrooms, a drawing room, a dining room, a front hall, a room for the female servant, to serve also as a workroom – a room for the male servant – a room for the cook, a kitchen and utility rooms for storing trunks etc. Clean and English-style cabinets d’aisance [toilets], in short a comfortable apartment, or it’s not worth discussing it. We need to know the approximate price, to determine whether it is worth running a household, as you will understand that I would like to avoid the trouble, and to make sure Verdi should not have cause to regret choosing a hotel as far as expenditure and comfort are concerned.” In the end they went to a hotel, not to the Hotel de Russie in Santa Lucia where, as De Sanctis says, there was “a cuisine to satisfy the demanding and knowledgeable Maestro”, but to the Hotel delle Crocelle where for the first time, on April 1st, his splendid String Quartet in E minor was performed, a masterpiece of Verdi’s less well-known chamber works.
The Maestro enjoyed hearty meals, “pacciatine”, as Giuditta Ricordi, Giulio’s wife, said in Milanese dialect; she added that she looked forward to such “another one soon… but when he can do full justice to it, as he does when he feel wells.”
Often, however, he did not feel well, because of an almost constant sore throat with a temperature or stomach ache, all psychosomatic disorders which did not stop him from being as strong as an ox into his eighties. He wrote as follows to Piroli on December 23, 1885: “… you can merrily eat the Christmas Eve meal, eat the Maroben and the Capon on Christmas Day and the Pollino on New Year’s Day. I don’t know if we can do as much because I have a little cough, and Peppina also has a cough, and a strong one. Let’s hope it goes, or at least gets better.” Maroben is a Cremona term and means cappelletti, a typical local stuffed pasta made with a filling of eggs, cheese and spices only, the same way they are made in the Busseto area. Pollino is obviously a turkey.
While Sant’Agata was being renovated, the dining room had to be moved to different parts of the villa. A lovely letter from Strepponi to Maffei, written in 1867, refers to this period of domestic upheaval. To make the villa “a bit less like a farmhouse, Verdi turned architect, and I can’t begin to tell you the walking and the dancing about of beds, dressers and all the furniture that we had during construction. Suffice it to say that we slept and ate in every corner of the house, except for the kitchen, the cellar and the stable. When the fate of Italy was being decided, and Verdi and other gentlemen were bringing the States to King Vittorio, Guerrieri, Fioruzzi, etc, came to Sant’Agata and had the honour of dining in a kind of vestibule, or passageway, in the presence of nests of swallows, which kept flying in and out of a window grate to bring food to their chicks. With God’s help the house was finished, and I can assure you that Verdi oversaw the works very well and probably better than a real architect.”
Life at the villa allowed him to make good use of the products of his estate, an endless expanse of adjoining, or nearly adjoining, farms, more than a thousand hectares in total, in the municipality of Villanova d’Arda and in neighbouring ones. Crops, woods, livestock, a mill, and a dairy were all managed with passion, skill, prudence, and interest in innovative irrigation and fertilization techniques.
The chicken coop at Sant’Agata, first looked after by his father, is still there, and it is certainly not a small structure. The pantry and ice house in the garden were also supplied by the periodical “pendizi”, or tributes, an established quantity of products that farmers had to bring to the “Master” every year on set dates.
For example, in 1875-76, according to their contract, the tenants Bocchi had to bring from the Stradello Casa Vecchia farm “to the Master Landlord and to his house every year: 10 cubic meters of oats, 10 steri of straw, 800 kilograms of grapes chosen by the landlord, 8 pairs of young hens weighing 2 kilograms a pair in the months of July and August at the Landlord’s request. A dozen sets of twenty eggs, half at Easter, half at the August moon. 8 pairs of capons half on San Martino day and half at Christmas weighing three kilograms a pair. Two turkeys, one on San Martino day, the other at Christmas weighing four kilograms each. According to the Registry’s regulation, a value of 114 Italian liras is assigned to these goods.”
When the Verdis went to Genoa for the winter, all kinds of produce arrived from Sant’Agata. Here is a letter of November 23, 1871, from his steward Mauro Corticelli: “I am glad to hear you received the box with the turkey, capon and two bondiole [pork shoulders], and next Saturday I will send another box with two capons prepared as you like, as in the past week I bought three pairs of capons. Right now there are more than 22 capons in the coop, in addition to one turkey and 4 young hens. So you can see that at Christmas as usual we can have one for Tonnina, one for Giovanna and two for Guerrino; but I wanted to know if I should still send Guerrino two capons every week, or instead bring a certain number of live ones to Genoa, as we did last year, but I think without much success… the 20 Kg of lard of perfect quality will be bought, and I will see if it will be possible to send 6 Kg of lard with the box I am sending on Saturday with the two capons, and bring the remainder myself, Guerrino says that he will look immediately for the three salami, and he thinks he will find perfect ones as requested; I will send again the red grapes on the vines, as they kept very well”
Again in 1871, at the end of March, Corticelli sent another shipment: “I’m sending you a box with 6 bottles of your particular wine, taken from the closed vat and so you will taste it before coming home; you’ll let me know if it’s to your satisfaction, and as good as I found it.” This may be the same wine he had written about on March 4: “Last night I bottled the white wine, which is perfect and one couldn’t wish for better; 104 bottles are done and I also filled the demijohn, that will contain about another 14 bottles. The red wine that is in bottles, the same as the one that came to Genoa, has the same flaw as the last wine bottled in Genoa which now the servants are drinking, a bit of a spike.” A spike, that is, of acidity, or bad taste.
In another letter of March 11: “I have taken the white wine out of the small tub: it decreased a lot in boiling, because it is out of a brenta [50 litres] that the tub holds, we extracted a little more than 3/4 of it; to fill it up again, after cleaning it really well, in addition to the demijohn of white wine I had kept for this purpose, I had to open 5 more bottles. The wine came out as light as water; it is good and tends more to hard than to sweet; personally I prefer the white brought to Genoa to this one, but now that it’s been decanted it will get better, because that thick deposit on the bottom, that was like lime, has been removed. Today since the gardeners were busy with planting, I put off taking out the red wine from the covered tank to tomorrow, Sunday, and I’m getting everything ready so that the work will be done promptly during the day, without leaving the wine uncovered; and tomorrow I will write to tell you how this wine turned out.” The Maestro, from Genoa, was requesting all these small details on almost a daily basis.
Verdi always followed very closely the wine that was being produced at Sant’Agata. In October 1898, when he was 85 years old, he wrote to his steward Marenghi: “I am telling you again to decant the wine from the first pressing and to remove that part of my wine that is still in the vats before our arrival.” He used to send his wine as a gift to the hospital of Villanova, which he himself had had built and that he had been supporting since 1888. However, as a thrifty man he included a recommendation: “Dear Signor Persico, I am sending 200 bottles of red wine. Please remember to return the empty bottles”
There was plenty of wine for the servants, too, an abundance that came with rules. In 1871 he wrote to Bizzi, whom we have already met and who had found him a new cook: “Let’s hope that the man you suggest is really a fair cook, and that he doesn’t have any idiotic notions in his head… Make sure he understands that in Genoa we don’t have the same cellar as at Sant’Agata and therefore when we are in Genoa we give 4 litres of wine a week. Excellent and choice wine.” He admonished Corticelli in this way about one of his workers: “Let Mazzega drink how much is fit, but I hope you haven’t given her the wine you just bottled for me. If there are no other bottles, then you should take it (without bottling it) from a small tub. And every morning go with Mami to the cellar and take from the small tub the bottles that are needed for the day.”
They pressed the grapes at Sant’Agata and also in his building, now Palazzo Orlandi, in Busseto. There he met yet one more affront from the people of the town. Verdi complained about it in October 1861 with the lawyer Giuseppe Piroli, a childhood friend who had become a Member of Parliament: “My steward will tell you about something done against me, I don’t know whether illegal or rude. As my peasants were pressing the grapes in the courtyard of my house in Busseto, they were singing to pass the time. The National Guard called the Carabinieri and together they imposed silence on these poor devils. Is there a law that forbids singing in one’s own home? And even if there was one, shouldn’t people be warned with some civility before imposing armed forces on them? Tell me what I can do, after you have questioned the steward thoroughly about this. I am really fed up, and I have trouble digesting this affront (it’s not the first one) from my very amiable fellow citizens. Write to me immediately.”
Verdi, however, certainly didn’t drink only his own wine. We know how difficult he was to please and what a fine connoisseur he was. In view of his first trip to Saint Petersburg for La Forza del Destino, in 1861, Giuseppina wrote to Corticelli, then secretary of the famous actress Adelaide Ristori, who was also engaged in the Russian capital: “We will need absolutely perfect tagliatelle and maccheroni to keep Verdi in good humour in the midst of ice and furs… if Ristori is minded to overwhelm and dominate with her tagliatelle, Verdi is counting on eclipsing her with his risotto, and in truth he can make a divine one. Since, in spite of your peregrinations and being surrounded by so many luvvies, you remain what you always were, our excellent friend, we are happy to take advantage of your offer and we ask you to get some supplies for us too. We will be stopping in Russia for about 3 months, that is, from November 1 to the whole of January 1862 and there will be four of us eating, two Masters and two servants. If it is indispensable to have an interpreter, and if the custom is to provide meals for him, instead of four there will be 5 of us. You could buy for us, in proportion to the number (that is, calculating in proportion to the number of people), the supplies that you are getting for Ristori of the following foods: Rice, Maccheroni, Cheese, Cured meats and those things that you know we cannot find in Russia or can only be found at an exorbitant price. As for the wine here is the number of bottles and the kinds that Verdi would like:
No. 100 Small bottles of Bordeaux to drink with meals
” 20 ” Fine Bordeaux
” 20 ” Champagne
Perhaps it might be less inconvenient for you to get more abundant supplies for Ristori and give us the portion she doesn’t need and is necessary for us. I’ll settle with you when I get to Saint Petersburg, as now I have risen from the rank of singer to that of housewife…”
Bordeaux and Champagne: not bad for the Sant’Agata farmer, spoiled, or rather, taught by his years in Paris. The rice, however, was all of his own making, truly Verdian. In the tradition of his modest family from Roncole, a tradition that was kept up at Sant’Agata, rice was eaten and appreciated at every season, while the affluent Carrara family considered it merely a food for Lent.
In September 1869 Giuseppina, writing to Camille Du Locle, impresario of the Opéra, said of Verdi: “il est passé maître pour le risotto.” Du Locle had requested the recipe, “celle du risotto”, on behalf of a “gourmet” friend, and Giuseppina told him that Verdi was next to her, ready to dictate it: “J’écris sous la dictée meme de Verdi.” Du Locle would have also liked the recipe for ravioli, but the “cook” who made them “si biens” had left. Here is the recipe for the risotto, for 4 people: “Put two ounces of fresh butter in a pot; two ounces of ox or veal marrow, with a little chopped onion. When this has browned add sixteen ounces of Piedmont rice: turn up the heat and cook (rossoler) stirring often with a wooden spoon until the rice is roasted and has turned a nice golden colour. Get some boiling broth, made with good meat, and add two or three ladlefuls (deux ou trois grandes cuilleres à soupe) to the rice. When the heat has very gradually absorbed it, add a little broth and continue until the rice is perfectly cooked. Remember, though, that halfway through cooking the rice (a quarter of an hour after adding the rice to the pot) you will need to pour in half a glass of natural and sweet white wine: also add, one after the other, three large handfuls of grated Parmesan cheese. When the rice is almost completely cooked, take a pinch of saffron, melt it in a spoonful of broth, add it to the rice and mix it in, take it off the heat and pour the risotto into the soup bowl. If you have truffles, slice them very finely and sprinkle them over the risotto as you would cheese. Otherwise only cheese. Cover and serve immediately.”
Melchiorre Delfico drew a caricature of Verdi in Naples, wearing a cook’s apron, and holding a smoking pot that may contain risotto, while Baron Genovesi at the stove is busy with his maccheroni: we like to imagine a culinary competition between North and South, obviously ending in a draw. Maybe those are simply maccheroni in the cartoon, the maccheroni that Verdi loved since the time of I Lombardi in Milan, when in a tender message he wrote to the Countess Giuseppina Appiani: “Are were going to eat these maccheroni or not? I want to turn Neapolitan in Milan.” Indeed, in April-May 1858 his Neapolitan friends sent him some maccheroni.
To return to the risotto, on 19 February 1861 Giuseppina wrote to papà Barezzi from Turin, where the first Italian Parliament had just been opened and Verdi had gone to Teatro Regio without managing to escape notice: “… once they recognized him, they started shouting Viva Verdi and everyone stood up in the boxes and in the stalls to salute the Great Composer from Roncole! If they only knew how he can compose a risotto alla milanese, my God, what ovations would rain down on him! I have told you about these events because I know that You, my excellent Signor Antonio, do not share the opinion of the Wise Man, who says in Ecclesiastes: Vanity, etc. Ovations to Verdi always made you cry. Get your handkerchief out because I am convinced that at this moment You are getting the spices box wet.”
Another Busseto Christmas tradition is mentioned by Giuseppina in a letter of 1871 to Canon Giovanni Avanzi, patriot priest from Busseto and friend of Verdi’s. Now that he was feeling a bit better, he would be able to “eat gnocchi and snails on Christmas Eve and so celebrate the solemn holidays with your mouth in motion and your feet under the table.”
Sometimes when he was away from home, Verdi missed polenta. While dealing in 1870 with a number of European and Egyptian projects that were worrying him, he wrote that he hoped it would all end “in a polenta at Sant’Agata,” in order to return to the peace and flavours of his origins. His origins were as son of two innkeepers, and of a mother who is sure to have been a good cook. Amos Aimi and Angela Leandri have published the shopping list for a lunch at the Roncole inn dating back to 27 September 1828, when Verdi was an adolescent. The occasion was the Patron Saint’s Day of the nearby village of Spigarolo and the guests were probably the five priests who had participated in the Mass and two lay people, the same as at the beginning of the same month, with the same shopping list, for the feast of Madonna dei Prati. Carlo Verdi had the following put on his account: “Beef and Veal”, “Old sirloin”, two “young hens” and a “pito” (that is, a turkey), “good cheese”, “fresh butter”, salt, oil, vinegar, 8 eggs, “fine spices”, 2 lemons, two soldi worth of capers and two soldi worth of “Peanut”, vegetables, salad, onions, carrots, tomatoes, herbs, bread and wine, coffee, sugar and “Fruit for the Table”, coming to a total of 100 Liras. There is no mention of pasta, therefore we can deduce that they made passatelli in brodo, as all the ingredients necessary for it are included. It was followed by boiled meats with sauces and a roast with salad, then fruit for dessert and coffee.
But let’s go back to wines, Italian ones. In December 1864, Verdi wrote to Arrivabene: “The Asti wine bought from Cova is good but he sent me a quality called Vino Secco (dry wine) that I don’t like. I am going to write to him soon and ask him to send me more bottles of that wine, but I want it sweet and sparkling.” And to Arrivabene again, in August 1869: “Did you get more of that wine from Oudar in Asti who sent you that excellent Cortese d’Asti and another kind that we drank together? Do not be surprised if I talk about drinking: in the summer one wishes for nothing else.” And he wished him “buoni gnocchi” at the end of 1885, “as rustic as the Roncole peasants.”
When in 1889 Verdi started going to Montecatini for his health, he had already converted to Tuscan wine, although he did not give up on his bottles of Champagne even in the spa town. Once he had six bottles of Moët & Chandon delivered there from Cremona.
The Tuscan wine at Sant’Agata was sent by the hotel owner, Napoleone Melani. Once the delivery caused disappointment: “I received, not the letter, but the fruit that you sent, and I thank you kindly. The wine I talked to you about arrived, I don’t know from where or whom! At first I kept it closed out of discretion then I decided to open the drum. It contained about 100 litres of a sweet, red wine which cannot be drunk with meals because it’s sweet. If you can take care of this matter, I authorize you to do so and I will be obliged to you. I repeat, a drum of wine that is too sweet, good wine for those who like it sweet, but it is common wine. Forgive the bother…”
Earlier evidence of Verdi liking Tuscan wine comes from Teresa Stolz organizing samples of Chianti, on the Maestro’s behalf, in Florence in September 1875. I will say no more about the Chianti, because Mariangela Rinaldi has an interesting account about it in the following pages.
He also drank Chianti at Genoa. If he was having lunch at the Concordia restaurant, he would order a flask of it, and if any was left, he would get out a piece of paper, write his name on it, stick it to the neck of the flask, and tell the waiter: “Let it be the same Chianti tomorrow.” In that restaurant he fell in love with Genoese cuisine, like gnocchi with basil, lean capon and snails. Maestro De Ferrari had cooked the latter for him at Palazzo Doria, overcoming forever the Verdis’ reservations about them. His friend Giuseppe De Amicis supplied him with Paqueret, the Spanish wine he imported to Genoa. The correspondence with De Amicis is rich with gastronomic news, wine and, above all, liqueurs: from the usual Champagne to Marsala, Port, Cognac,”true Jamaica Rum”, “Kuraçao”, and the “Chartreuse Jeune” requested by the Maestro. We know that these, so to speak, invigorating drinks had been present in the Verdi home since the time of his marriage with Margherita from the following request to papà Barezzi: “Please send me:
1 Bottle of the Muscat I drank this morning
1 Bottle of Rum
1 Bottle of Malaga
Take note of everything…”
Verdi certainly needed invigorating help in the middle of his gruelling “prison years.” Muzio wrote to Barezzi on 21 April 1845: “Mr Pasetti sent him a few bottles of 20-year-old wine to that by drinking a small glass every morning he can gradually strengthen his stomach…” Verdi became so emaciated and thin at that time that people started saying he was dead, a rumour that was immediately picked up by newspapers.
We have already seen something about cured meats. To find another mention of culatello, we need to go back to the Maestro’s youth in Milan, at the time of his unsuccessful exam at the Conservatory. Antonio Barezzi had sent from Busseto two culatelli to Seletti, with whom Verdi was staying, but to their great disappointment, one was lost on the way. The salame and the pork shoulders sent by Barezzi and being taken by Emanuele Muzio to Milan, where Verdi was waiting for him after the success in Florence of his Macbeth, escaped confiscation: “The journey went extremely well and the salame and pork shoulders passed triumphantly through all the excise officers, who didn’t bother us. At Carossa, however, there was a dog sniffing inside the case, and had we not left quickly he was sure to tell on us.”
Among the cured meats enjoyed by Verdi a special place goes to the pork shoulder, called spalletta, typical of San Secondo Parmense.
It is mentioned for the first time in May 1843. While Verdi was in Parma, where he met again with Strepponi and “their” Nabucco was a triumph, he promised his friend Luigi Toccagni, from Milan, that he would visit him soon and bring with him a “spalletta di San Secondo.”
I know of at least three shipments. The first to Count Arrivabene, in April 1872: “I will not become overlord of the Fortress of San Secondo but I can certainly send you a Spalletta of that Saint. In fact, I already sent it this morning by rail. Although the season is already a little late I think you will find it’s good, but you must eat it right away before it gets hot. Do you know how to cook it? First you need to remove the salt by leaving it in lukewarm water for a couple of hours. Then you put it on the stove in a container full of water. It must boil on low heat for six hours, then you leave it to cool in its broth. Once it is cold, about 24 hours later, remove it from the pot, dry it and eat it.”
The second one is to Stolz in August 1890: “Together with this letter you will receive by rail a case containing two Spallette di San Secondo, one for you and one for the Ricordi family. You choose which one you want. Remember that to cook the spalletta properly you need to:
1) Put it in lukewarm water for about 12 hours to remove the salt.
2) Put it in cold water and let it cook over low heat, so that it does not boil over, for at least 3 and a half hours, and perhaps 4 for the larger one. To know if it is cooked, insert a toothpick in the spalletta and if it enters easily, the spalletta is cooked.
3) Let it cook in its own broth and serve it. Take special care with the cooking time: if the spalletta is hard it’s not good, if it’s too cooked it becomes dry and hard. I have talked and talked and now I’ll catch my breath!”
I cited both instructions because of the variations they contain.
Thus, of the two spallette sent to Milan on 12 August 1890, one was for Stolz and the other one reached the Ricordi family. This gave Giulio the material for a little joke he played on the Maestro. The publisher asked what its price was, and Verdi answered good-humouredly on August 19: “Dear Giulio, there is great abundance of pigs … but spallette are rather dear! Price L.100,000 (one hundred thousand) Greetings. G. Verdi.” Three days later Ricordi wrote about the “inauguration” of the spalletta and enclosed in the letter a jokey receipted invoice which I reproduce below:
“Milan, August 22, 1890
Illustrious Maestro, Indeed… You do everything well… even spallette. It is my pleasure to let you know that yesterday it was solemnly inaugurated amidst general enthusiasm!… and there were countless encores” – To tell you the truth I found the bill a little… expensive: mais à tous seigneur, tout honneur!!… and I paid the bill, as you can see from the enclosed receipt! – Once again my sincerest thanks for the shipment. Please accept my respects, Yours devotedly, Giulio Ricordi.”
As can be seen, the publisher had the witty idea of producing in his own printing house a receipt of the “Spalle and spallette Premium Factory… G.V. brand”, complete with a 10 cent stamp and Verdi’s counterfeit signature. This must have amused the old composer, who in those months was busy with the creation of Falstaff: “Everything in the world is a jest! Man was born a great jester,” as the opera’s bittersweet final fugue sings.
Giulio Ricordi’s jest a few years ago deceived scholars at the American Institute for Verdi Studies of New York University, who drew the following conclusion from it. The fake receipt is interpreted as revealing the “successful launching of a new business devoted to the sale of pork prepared at the composer’s Sant’Agata farm.” Quite a blunder. Hopefully no Americans will believe in Verdi as a salami seller!
Pork shoulder also made an appearance in the course of an important evening at Sant’Agata. Abbiati tells us about it: “In early October 1892, Boito and Giulio arrived at the villa, with a puppets’ theatre in their overnight bag. As Verdi had dreamed of almost as a joke, the comedy of Falstaff was performed for the first time, unbeknownst to everyone else, in the billiards’ room. They were up until late in the night and ate two Spalle di San Secondo, one after the other. With plenty of wine, as the Garter Inn demanded.” Act I, Part 1. Inside the Garter Inn. Falstaff: “Hey …Innkeeper! Another bottle.”
Desserts deserve a chapter to themselves. The correspondence with Opprandino Arrivabene is the richest source of evidence about the Maestro’s and his friend’s sweet tooth in incipient old age. These are fragments that we are gleaning out of much more interesting and important contexts, particularly artistic and political ones.
We begin in May 1862 with the dispatch of bread sticks to London, which arrived just as Verdi was about to leave for Paris: “Dear Arrivabene, last night I received the bread sticks with grateful surprise, and I think you very very much for them. Too bad they didn’t get here a few days ago, so that I would have had the time to eat them all.” And he returned to the subject once in Paris. In 1864 it was wafers that were being delivered to Sant’Agata. On December 13, Verdi stated categorically, after sending torrone (nougat): “Almonds should not be peeled (torrone science) they told me the reason but I can’t remember it anymore.” On the 23rd more torrone was sent to the Arrivabene home, directly from Cremona.
On 5 April 5 1865, at the Sant’Agata villa, Verdi told his friend about Black, the dog, nibbling the amaretti biscuits – “truly the eighth wonder of the world” – that he had received from him. On 13 March 1868, Verdi wrote: “Tell me what you would like from Cremona. Torrone, mostarda, or the Torrazzo tower. Devil take it! You don’t want me to send you the Torrazzo tower in a letter, do you?” Arrivabene instead wanted biscuits from Cremona, which the Maestro could not find, but there was no need to despair because he had dispatched his servants “to every corner of the street and if they see a single one go by they will capture it and send it to Florence” – the new capital of Italy where his friend worked as a member of parliament. On the last day of the year a gift arrived in Genoa: “Dear Arrivabene, you are the King of the Troubadours! … when the basket arrived, Peppina and those who were at our house last night lunged hungrily at that pan biscotto and ate too much of it! You were so right to say it’s good, and I didn’t know until now what a precious thing it is.” In March 1871 Verdi went to see him: “I came on purpose to Florence to bring boxes of figs.”
In October 1873, Opprandino asked Verdi in a post scriptum: “If you are at Sant’Agata you will have eaten the sugolo: but I ate it, too, in Rome, where it is unknown. You see that I bring the old customs with me.” Sugolo is the juice of grapes, that rustic pudding of sweet must and flour that today few people make because few people press their grapes at home.
On 10 April 1879: “Dear Verdi, Happy Easter to you and to Signora Peppina! But don’t eat too much lamb.” On April 14, Arrivabene ended his letter thus: “And now, to turn to a most prosaic kind of ideas, I add that in the past couple of days even the tomatoes (one of the very few things that have turned out well this year, which has borne almost no fruit) made me think of you. My housekeeper says that the best tomato preserves sold in Rome come from Parma! I knew that for many years now the best tenors have been coming from there (Paganini, Gardoni, Calzolari, Noudin, Campanini, Barbaccini, etc.), but I have just found out now about tomato preserves.” And in a word play on the Italian word for tomato, pomodoro: “By an association of ideas I wish that you will preserve yourself not “pomo”, but man of gold, and that you will preserve me in your affection, and I am going to end the letter now because I’m about to receive the visit of a great friend of mine (he says) whom I don’t know. Goodbye.” This is a lovely account of the rising fame of Parma’s tomato preserves.
Near Christmas a gift arrived in Genoa: “a small basket with a piece of something sweet inside”. It was a “countryside ice cream,” a kind of torrone that Verdi said “would be really delicious if it wasn’t too fragrant.” To reciprocate the gift, candied fruit was sent from Genoa: “Dear Arrivabene, I never dreamed of contradicting you. Living as I do among sweet things, I never realized that Romanengo knew how to glaze so deliciously every kind of fruit. Some people in Paris, who had received these creations of Romanengo’s, told me about them this spring. I wanted to share the discovery with you. That’s all.” Romanengo was a pastry cook in Genoa and the Maestro was often seen going into the pastry shops to buy for his young cousin Maria sweets she had spotted in the shop window.
The last sweet reference from Arrivabene was on December 1881: “Dearest Verdi, What did you go to Milan for? Not to take music there, because you tell me you are not doing anything. To write music? I don’t think so nor, apparently, to listen to it. But it must have been something very compelling to take you away from the sun of Genoa. Could it be the Christmas panettone, which you wanted to enjoy fresh out of the oven? And yet it’s probably better when it is somewhat aged. Enough: the thing is that the newspapers say you are in Milan and I rejoice about it because this means that Signora Peppina is fully recovered.” Verdi had not gone to Milan for its panettone, but for the secret revision of Simon Boccanegra and for his new opera Otello.
Panettone leads us to what Tito and Giulio Ricordi used to send the Maestro every Christmas. It was always a panettone, “enormous in size”, “immense”, as Giuseppina Strepponi wrote.
When Verdi began the long process of composition of Otello, which lasted from 1879 to 1887, the panettone from the Ricordi family had the task of alluding to, encouraging, and conveying best wishes for the rapid completion of the opera. How? By covering it with chocolate, placing small figures on top of it, and decorating it with witty writings.
Let’s start with Christmas 1880. Giuseppina wrote to signor Giulio: “The reason we didn’t thank you sooner is that the arrival of the Panettone was considerably delayed. When it arrived, or rather, was brought into the house, with all the solemnity due to its size, we had already celebrated Christmas and digested the lunch, too. In light of this serious predicament, we thought it best to leave it closed in its temporary dwelling, from which is will come out on Saturday, the 1st of 1881, surrounded by its simple bags full of sweets. Thank you, dear Giulio, and thank you to Papà and Mamma for these Milanese sweets, equal and perhaps superior to any gastronomic sweets that the country of the greediest Universe can offer.
The bags surrounding the panettone contained chocolate sweets whose shapes were clear symbols. There was the sun, representing Verdi himself, who lights up everyone’s life, including his publisher’s; there was an anchor, symbol of the publisher’s salvation; there was the Genoa cross to signify the ongoing revision of Simon Boccanegra, doge of Genoa; and there was the lion of Saint Mark, that is, Othello, the Moor of Venice.
The following year the panettone was truly “magnificent”: it was surmounted by a chocolate doll, a small naked Moor, a miniature Othello. Soon everyone at the table noticed that the figure was missing something from between its legs, in fact the legs themselves were missing. General hilarity! Muzio told Tito about it: “Dearest friend, last night we discovered that your Otello is female, they forgot el maneg (the handle) as Porta says, I think. I told the Maestro that it’s up to him now to make him a man, clothe him and put him on his feet. Am I right?”
Another year went by and it was Muzio again who wrote about what happened: “What a beautiful panettone, and right at the moment of serving dessert. During the day the Maestro was saying that it hadn’t arrived yet, and I would answer that it would. Back home from a walk: you see it isn’t here, the same answer it will come. At seven in the evening we hear the bell ring, the Maestro and I cry out the panettone, Signora Peppina and De Amicis say no; so the Maestro and I bet one soldo and the servant announces the well-known chest. The Maestro sees it and exclaims there’s a statue inside; we all say it’s the statue of Otello. After opening the chest very carefully, the monster is placed on the table; Verdi unties the knots, removes the cover and half Otello is revealed. We all cried out in amazement, and drank to its standing up on its legs within a year, and I hope I will be attending once more the great ceremony of Otello in chocolate and in music.”
Instead, 5 more years went by and there were several repetitions of the scene with the little Moor, the chocolate milk, the African, as Otello was referred to by the Maestro and his publisher.
As well as the gift of the panettone, which often provoked fake outbursts of anger from Verdi, there was that of the Easter dove cake. In April 1895 Verdi wrote in thanks: “…I had better thank you for this beautiful Goose that we will eat today… Pardon! Pardon! Pardon! Greatly Pardon! I mistook a Dove loaded with precious stones for a Goose!!! Heavens above! When my wife heard about it … God save us…”
Now a brief mention of fish, which Verdi must have liked as he had it delivered from the seaside or it was sent to him by the Venetian doctor Cesare Vigna, like that time in the autumn of 1873 when a case arrived with oysters and a wrapped bundle of fish from Chioggia. The Maestro sent his thanks from Sant’Agata: “As the telegraph will already have told you we have received and eaten the fish and found it delicious. The only thing is, you sent such an amount that there was a danger that I would send for you, not to eat the fish, but to treat the problems caused by overeating.” There were several more shipments from Vigna to Sant’Agata.
Abbiati below gives us a glimpse into a happy, convivial evening at the villa. It was 1884, the time when Otello was very slowly coming into being and Verdi did not like talking about it. On the other hand, there was endless talk about the culinary art, as Verdi, once past 70 years of age, seemed to confirm the statement by the writer Manzoni, about gluttony being like vanity, a vice that grows with age. On a starry night, Boito told how the elegant French moralist Saint-Evremond – perfect Epicurean and unparalleled gourmand – had invited a friend, an anti-litteram Voltairian, to eat soles, and had asked him whether he preferred cooked in oil or in butter. His friend chose butter and Saint-Evremond chose oil, so the latter ordered his cook to cook the fish half one way and half the other. But as soon as the order was given, Saint-Evremond’s guest had a heart attack and dropped down dead.
Saint-Evremond lost no time, and looking into the kitchen shouted: “Cancel that order… cook all the soles in oil!” Everyone burst out laughing at this story and Verdi naturally commented: “A plate of soles is indeed worth a Voltairian…!” Several accounts agree that throughout his life the Maestro loved good cuisine and good conversation. He was once heard to say: “I suffered enough privations in my early years.” But did he really say that? And are the following, extremely sophisticated dishes that Alberto Cougnet wrote had been reported as the Maestro’s favourite dishes, really what Verdi enjoyed? Reported by whom and where we are not told in the issue of Scena Illustrata dedicated to Verdi (November 1913): delicious crayfish escalopes, prawn slices to accompany a dish of maccheroni with butter and parmesan, white truffle slices sauteed with tomato puree, poached eggs on a bed of pureed mushrooms and spring onions.
Dr Vincenzo Lo Scalzo has pointed out to me the repeated presence of Verdi’s name in the immense international repertoire of “Guide culinaire”, first published in 1902. This may be due to the relationship established between Verdi and the legendary Escoffier and his school, as well as a tribute to the Maestro’s sophisticated taste.
We find: “Consommé Verdi”, a regular consommé garnished on the side with small meatballs made with chicken, cream and spinach sautéed in butter, sprinkled with Parmesan and cooked in butter and a veal fond.
“Oeufs Verdi”, slightly scrambled eggs with Parmesan cheese and finely diced truffles in buttered moulds lined with truffle slices, then cooked in a bain marie and served on toast fried in butter.
“Filets de sole Verdi”, sole fillets on a bed of maccheroni with a cream, cheese, lobster meat and truffle sauce, covered with Mornay sauce and glazed.
“Poulet sauté Verdi”, chicken sauteed in butter and placed in the centre of a Piedmontese risotto overlaid with alternating slices of foie gras and truffles. To be served with a glaze of reduced Asti wine and brown veal fond.
“Salade Aida”, a salad of curly white chicory (in an amount making up half of the dish), peeled tomatoes, thinly sliced artichoke hearts, julienned small peppers and slices of egg white, the whole covered with boiled egg yolk passed through a sieve with large holes to obtain “vermicelli” and dressed with a little mostarda.
Verdi’s last years, after Giuseppina’s death and when his health dramatically declining, were very sad for a mind that remained lucid, lively and interested. He confessed: “My hand is shaking and writing tires me, as does reading, walking and any occupation whatsoever. The consequence of youth?” and “I need a pair of legs that could carry this useless body… at any price.” “I eat little and don’t put on weight. Occasionally I sleep well, but such nights are infrequent.”
He now preferred staying in Milan, in the apartment reserved for him at the Grand Hotel et de Milan, from where he wrote grouchily to his cousin in May 1898: “Dearest Maria, every day I tell myself: Tomorrow I’m going to Sant’Agata. The next day I say the same thing, and so that tomorrow never comes. I delay my arrival partly because here I have no business to attend to: no stewards trying to make me believe what I don’t believe; no cook who makes me eat poorly; no coachman; no Guerino and many others to worry me. Material worries are deadly, unbearable to me. Here, on the other hand, I have no business to disturb me; no cook to poison me, instead good friends on whom I can rely, a rich and splendid cuisine, a hundred servants ready to do anything for me and not a word of complaint from anyone! What do you think? Isn’t it better?”
Giovanni Cenzato, drawing from the account of Umberto Bertolazzi, who was the Maestro’s favourite waiter in the Hotel, has recorded the menus that were being offered in the hotel shortly before Verdi’s demise.
On September 28, 1900, when the composer was about to turn 87: “Rice and chicken livers – Trout à la Hollandaise – Veal stew with vegetables – Ox tongue – Brussels sprouts – Roast chickens – Salad – Crème caramel – Pastries.”
On 7 January 1901, exactly twenty days before his death: “Risotto alla certosina – Boiled seabass with mayonnaise – Braised ox – Lamb cutlets – Meats parmigiana – Roast turkey – Salad – Dessert – Fruit – Rum ice cream”
The last menu, reproduced as a facsimile, bears Giuseppe Verdi’s initials at the top and includes: “Spring soup with gratin crust – Grilled trout à la maître d’hôtel. – Beef tenderloin with vegetables – Game Bread – Asparagus en branche – Spit-roasted spring turkey – Strawberry ice cream – Pastries – Dessert”.
It is dated January 20, the day before the apoplectic stroke that would end Verdi’s life seven days later, when he surely went to a special place was reserved for him at the dazzling table of singing and performing angels. The futurist poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti reported, in a Paris newspaper, the grand state funeral held in Milan under the heading “The funeral of a god.”
On 18 April 2001, at the Grand Hotel et de Milan, the Milan delegation of the Italian Academy of Cuisine prepared the menu served in the Maestro’s apartment on 20 January 1901. This gala evening was in honour of the President of the Italian Academy of Cuisine, Count Giovanni De Capnist, and of Countess Angiola. Here is the menu, with the original dishes followed by the “reinterpreted” ones:
Julienne au crôute (Spring soup with gratin crust). Truite grillèe à la maitre d’hôtel (Grilled small trout à la maître d’hôtel), Pain de gibier (Cold pheasant and deer bread). Dindonneau à la broche (Spring turkey skewers in gelatine). Asparagus en branche. Beef tenderloin with vegetables. Raspberry ice cream. Dessert and pastries (Milanese pudding dedicated to Princess Margherita, Petit fours – Small pastries). Wines: Champagne – Bouzy Verzenay and Bouzy Brice, 100% Nebbiolo wine – Torre della Sirena (Barriques) 1999, Conti Sertoli Salis. Marsala Wine.