Giuseppe Verdi (1813) It was on this date, October 10, 1813 – the same year as Richard Wagner – that Italian opera composer Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was born in Roncole, Duchy of Parma, which was then under the occupation of Napoleon's army. This self-described "peasant from Roncole" began his education with local priests before […]

Boito’s only completed opera, “Mefistofele,” based on Goethe's “Faust,” infuriated the Italian clergy by his frivolous treatment of religion.

It is characteristic of the teaching of European history that it assumes the general populace acquiesced in all the ideas of a church that diverged radically from the organization founded under the original gospels.