Verdi didn’t want to compose anymore…

If you’ve read our article about Aida, you should know how reluctant Verdi was to write anything anymore. By that time, he thought he had done his share of composing. His almost 30 titles, which mostly had been successes, had made him famous. And they had made him rich.

After the new Italian nation, formed in the 1860s, Verdi tried politics. In 1874 he became a Senator for life, without spending much time in Rome though. Remember, he hated traveling. He was very busy building his estate, Sant’Agata, he conducted and supervised his compositions and he composed Messa di Requiem in 1874.