Giuseppe Verdi

A carte-de-visite portrait of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901), who took his native operatic style to new heights of dramatic expression. In 1842 he wrote the opera Nabucco, followed by Ernani in 1844 and Rigoletto in 1851. Other works include Il Trovatore and La Traviata both in 1853, Aida in 1871, and the masterpieces of his old age, Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893. His Requiem of 1874 commemorates the poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni.

Photographed by André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri of Paris, one of the greatest photographers to work in the carte-de-visite format. Remembered for having been the first to establish photography as a business as well as an artistic craft, his contemporaries considered him the outstanding portrait photographer in France.