The greatest Italian opera composers had a deep love for fine dining
Gioachino Rossini has long been regarded in the collective consciousness as the quintessential composer-gourmand, and indeed he was the one who, from his Parisian salon, managed to spread the marvelous Italian gastronomic tradition across Europe, blending it with modern French cuisine and projecting it into the future. However, the passion for fine dining was widespread among Italian musicians, especially the opera composers. After all, to quote Rossini himself, "eating, loving, and singing are nothing more than the acts of this comic opera called life; anyone who lets it slip by without enjoying it is a fool." And while the master from Pesaro displayed his love for food through his generous figure, musicians with a leaner physique, such as Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi, were no less indulgent, evidently benefiting from a more favorable metabolism. Verdi’s meal, consumed about twenty days before his death at the Grand Hotel et de Milan, has become legendary. It included around ten courses, among them braised ox, roast turkey, and rum ice cream. Verdi, like Rossini, was also an ambassador of Italian food abroad, bringing to Paris, during the grand banquet held after the triumph of “Don Carlo”, a risotto alla milanese, which, with the addition of truffle shavings, became famous as "risotto alla Verdi." He was deeply attached to the dishes and wines of his homeland, from cured meats (“Culatello” and “Spalla di San Secondo”) to the "Lambrusco that fizzes in the stomach." But once he became wealthy and famous, he developed a taste for fine wines, and in Genoa, where he spent his winters, he learned to love fish, personally purchasing it from the market stalls. Fish, naturally, was also enjoyed by Vincenzo Bellini, a Sicilian who trained artistically in Naples, as well as by the greatest violinist in history, whose "Ravioli alla Paganini" have found their way onto the menus of many restaurants. Soups, game, and traditional Tuscan dishes were the favorites of Puccini and Mascagni, the latter also fond of the dessert known as “Peach Melba,” after the maestro from Livorno fell truly in love with the singer Nellie Melba, to whom this ice cream dish is dedicated. And at the end of the meal, the inevitable coffee that all were fond of—from Puccini to Donizetti to Verdi, who carried his own coffee machine across Europe to make it himself. He would drink up to sixteen cups a day, perhaps a bit too many, but for him, it was "a balm that preserves man," which allowed him to remain in good health until almost 88 years of age and to be remembered as one of the greatest opera composers of all time. Cuisine, like music, speaks to the identity of a people. And it is precisely from this encounter between Belcanto and gastronomic tradition that the inspiration for Tasting Opera is born.
Roberto Codazzi, musicologist and writer, artistic music director of the Museo del Violino in Cremona and scientific director of Tasting Opera
