In his ‘storia di Milano dal 1836 al 1848’ Antonio Ghislanzoni, future librettist of Aida, gives a pungent description of the city at the time of Verdi’s arrival there. Capital of the Austrian province of Lombardy-Venetia, it had become an Italian Vienna, a walled city of some 150,000 inhabitants marked by hedonism, political torpor and—until the hygienic reforms of 1844–5—dirt.
Bread and circuses were the order of the day.
The coronation of the Emperor Ferdinand I in September 1838 had provided the occasion for a round of public entertainments, open-air balls lasting far into the night, equestrian and acrobatic displays—all referred to by Verdi as a ‘bordello’. Austrian soldiery was everywhere in evidence; police vigilance unceasing.
But in general the lives of ordinary citizens were rarely interfered with. From the safety of exile Mazzini might preach rebellion; the romantically minded might nourish their dreams of Italian unity on the writings of Pellico, Guerrazzi, Tommaso Grossi and Manzoni; intellectuals might glance with envy across the border to the Kingdom of Piedmont where, through the activities of Massimo D’Azeglio, Carlo Alberto had granted a constitution. But, says Ghislanzoni, ‘men who chafed at the foreign yoke were few.
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