ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 explores Strepponi’s long relationship with Verdi, from their time together in Paris in 1847 until her death in 1897. Having distanced herself from Camillo Cirelli and her declining Italian operatic career, Strepponi turned to an emotional reliance on Verdi, whose career her endorsement had facilitated. Decade by decade, the intellectually gifted Strepponi, an exceptional communicator on and off the stage, subsumed her theatrical aspirations in nurturing the career of the emotionally vulnerable and irascible composer. She would continue to experience the thwarted self-display and subservient sacrifice which possessed echoes of operatic roles with which she had been associated.
