Verdi was almost single-handedly responsible for revolutionizing Italian Opera in the second half of the 19th century.

The son of an innkeeper, young Giuseppe's musical talent was recognized early on. He was not sufficiently prepared to gain acceptance into the prestigious Conservatory of Music in Milan, so he found teachers who would teach him privately. As he studied, he absorbed as much as he could from Milan's rich operatic atmosphere.

His first opera, Oberto (1839) was performed with moderate success in Milan's famous opera house, La Scala. But his second work, a comedy entitled Un Giorno di regno (King for a Day) was a flop. At the same time as this artistic disappointment, Verdi's two children died in infancy, followed closely by the death of his wife Margherita. Given the proximity of these tragedies, it is no wonder that Verdi waited more than fifty years before he wrote another comedy.

Verdi's first big success was the opera Nabucco (1842). The political significance of this work, disguised in a quasi-biblical setting, resonated with the Italian public who saw in the story their own aspirations for freedom and a unified nation. Although Verdi's operas of this period are often raw in their energy and rarely break from the already stale operatic conventions of the time, there are many glimpses of his genius. Macbeth (1847), based on the famous play by Shakespeare, demonstrates Verdi's ability to create a darkly-colored tragedy in which the strong characterizations do not distract from the epic quality of the work.

As Verdi matured, not only did his music become more original and characterful, but his choice of subject matter reflected his strong political and social ideas. Works such as Rigoletto (1851) and La Traviata (1853) tell the story of outcasts who are crushed by a brutal and narrow-minded society.

Verdi's final two works, Otello and Falstaff (both based on Shakespeare) were written after fifteen years of retirement from the operatic stage. They dispense with the conventional sectionalized structure that had been used to write operas since Monteverdi in the early 1600s. Instead of separate arias, recitatives and ensembles, the music flows without interruption, reflecting the dramatic needs of the moment. By the time of his death, Verdi was already something of a deity in the operatic world, and his best-known works immediately became part of the standard repertory.