Confused beginnings

A father and his daughter

"He is a rude, uncivil scoundrel"

Intolerable losses

Another loss and a fiasco

"Little by little the opera was composed"

The galley years

"Signore Maestro"

Verdi, man of property

Queen Victoria is not amused

"The hour of liberation has sounded"

Verdi sets tongues wagging

The opera is "repugnant, immortal, obscene"

A rift in the Verdi family

A question of identity

"Without you, I am a body without a soul"

The Bear of Busseto

Verdi, gentleman farmer

"Verdi is my tyrant"

A wedding at last

A soprano impresses Verdi

"I am an almost perfect Wagnerian"

An opera for Cairo

"The all-powerful corruptor of Italian artistic taste"

Scandal and comedy

"One button more, one button less".