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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
But the journey to Milan was not merely a honeymoon. Verdi also wished to re-establish his contacts in a city where, as he must have realised, he would be offered his first chance of success, particularly since Massini had promised to perform the opera which he had recently finished on Piazza's libretto.
The duties of maestro di cappella called him back to Busseto, and his conscientiousness in fulfilling these can be seen in the annual reports of pupils who gave public concerts, and in his constant appearances at the head of the worthy Philharmonic Society during the frequent musical events which took place in the city and surrounding countryside.
This period also includes his first publications: in the winter of 1838 the Milanese publisher Canti brought out Verdi's first printed work, the Sei Romanze (Six Romances). They are true chamber music although, as Oberdorfer points out,
with strong dramatic overtones […] full of the later Verdi. In the third, ‘In solitaria stanza’, the words ‘dolci s'udiro e flebili gli accordi d'un liuto’, repeated three times, contain a hint of Leonora's cavatina from Act I of Il Trovatore; in the fifth, ‘Meine Ruh' ist hin’ from Goethe's Faust (‘Perduta ho la pace’), we hear, in 3/8 time, a distinct echo of ‘Tutte le feste al tempio’ from Act II of Rigoletto; and in the sixth, also from Faust, ‘Ach! neige, du Schmerzensreiche’ (‘Deh pietoso, o Addolorata’), there is an anticipation of ‘Chi mi toglie il regio scettro’ from the Act II finale of Nabucco, as well as a vaguer reference to Radames' cry at the end of Act III of Aida, ‘Io son disonorato’.
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