Music in Bologna, musicians in Bologna.
The Maestro and the Singer. Giuseppe Verdi’s letters to Maria Waldmann (1873-1900), exhibition held at the G.B.Martini Conservatoire in Bologna, on the occasion of the Symposium "Tu che le vanità. Bologna per Giuseppe Verdi" arranged by Piero Mioli (14-21 December 2001).

In 2001, on the occasion of the centenary of Giuseppe Verdi’s death and within the meeting “Tu che le vanità. Bologna per Giuseppe Verdi”,  the Conservatoire of  Bologna has arranged for an exhibition of the original manuscripts of Giuseppe Verdi’s letters to Maria Waldmann, also promoting the publication of the complete catalogue of all autographs.
The  pages of the catalogue report some of the most significant texts so far published on the  Verdi-Waldmann correspondence, preceded by a short portrait of Maria Waldmann sketched by Gino Monaldi, biographer and chronicler of 1800s. Moreover there are reproductions of  documents about the circumstances of the purchase of the collection of letters by “G.B.Martini” Conservatoire in Bologna kept in the administrative archives of the institution. There follows finally an unabridged transcription of the letters, based on the edition by Luzio in 1936 and complete with original notes and, where possible, also with some extracts of Waldmann’s letters to Verdi, today kept care of Verdi-Carrara heirs in Sant’Agata.
For the sake of completeness, I have reproduced also the texts of Verdi’s five letters which are not included in the collection of the Bologna Conservatoire; two among these are particularly remarkable: the one recently identified by Adriano Cavicchi in the Massari Fund within the State Archives in Ferrara (20 March 1891) , and Giuseppe Verdi’s  last one written to Maria Waldmann before dying, opn 22 December 1900; his autograph was presented by the singer herself to the Municipal Library in Ferrara, on the Maestro’s death.
The collection owned by the Conservatoire in Bologna includes on the whole ninety-four autograph letters, among which as many as eighty-nine written by Giuseppe Verdi (four of them including some lines by Giuseppina Strepponi), three written by Giuseppina Strepponi and two by Teresa Stolz. The collection is complete with seventyfour  Giuseppe Verdi’s autograph envelopes with original stamps. It is necessary to note that about a half of the correspondence refers to the years when the artistic collaboration between Verdi and Waldmann was the most intense, that is to say between 1873 and 1880: this is surely also the most interesting section of the whole corpus, in which stand out the most relevant biographic information; the correspondence between about 1880 and 1900 appears to be less relevant from a historical-documentary point of view, yet of great interest.
The exhibition of Verdian autographs promoted by the Bologna Conservatoire includes some of the most significant letters in the Verdi-Waldmann correspondence; the exhibition, open from 14 to 21 December 2001, consists of five sections: The preparation of the Requiem Mass (1873-74), The ideal interpreter of Aida and of the Mass (1874-75), Waldmann’s quitting the stage and her wedding (1876-79), Towards Otello (1880-87), Verdi’s old age (1888-1900).

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