Verdi’s Exceptional Women: Giuseppina Strepponi and Teresa Stolz

This investigation offers new perspectives on Giuseppe Verdi’s attitudes to women and the functions which they fulfilled for him. The book explores Verdi’s professional and personal relationship with women who were exceptional within the traditional socio-sexual structure of patria potestà , in the context of women’s changing status in nineteenth-century Italian society. It focusses on two women; the singers Giuseppina Strepponi, who supported and enhanced Verdi’s creativity at the beginning of