Abstract Verdi, a very private man who hated all forms of publicity, did on one occasion dictate an autobiographical account of his early years to Giulio Ricordi (see p. XXX below) with a view to its inclusion in a forthcoming biography (Anecdotal Life of Giuseppe Verdi by A. Pougin, translated into Italian from the French and expanded by “Folchetto”). The year was 1879, Verdi was sixty-six, and the book appeared two years later. The events covered had taken place in the years 1834-42, so that between them and the interview with Ricardi lay all the composer’s mature operas except the last two, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). By this time, of course, Verdi was an international celebrity, and his brief narrative soon gained wide circulation, becoming part of his official biography. Yet in more recent years, faith in its accuracy has been shaken by one surprising misstatement of fact. After his successful debut with Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio at La Scala in 1839, Verdi had been engaged by Bartolomeo Merelli, the powerful impresario of that theater, to write three new operas, beginning with Un giorno di regno, an opera buffa. “But now,” recalls Verdi, “terrible misfortunes crowded upon me. At the beginning of April my little boy falls ill, the doctors cannot understand what is the matter, and the poor little creature goes off quickly in his mother’s arms. Moreover, a few days after the little girl is taken ill too, and she too dies, and in June my young wife is taken from me by a most violent inflammation of the brain, so that on the 19th June I saw the third coffin carried out of my house. In a very little over two months, three persons so very dear to me had disappeared for ever.