Editing Giuseppe Verdi (section)

==Personality==
Not all of Verdi's personal qualities were amiable. John Rosselli concluded after writing his biography that "I do not very much like the man Verdi, in particular the autocratic rentier-cum-estate owner, part-time composer, and seemingly full-time grumbler and reactionary critic of the later years", yet admits that like other writers, he must "admire him, warts and all...a deep integrity runs beneath his life, and can be felt even when he is being unreasonable or wrong".{{sfn|Rosselli|2000|p=7}}

Budden suggests that "With Verdi...the man and the artist in many ways developed side by side." Ungainly and awkward in society in his early years, "as he became a man of property and underwent the civilizing influence of Giuseppina,...[he] acquired assurance and authority."{{sfn|Budden|1993|pp=148–149}} He also learnt to keep himself to himself, never discussing his private life and maintaining, when it suited him, legends about his supposed 'peasant' origins, his materialism and his indifference to criticism.{{sfn|Budden|1993|p=153}} Gerald Mendelsohn describes the composer as "an intensely private man who deeply resented efforts to inquire into his personal affairs. He regarded journalists and would-be biographers, as well as his neighbours in Busseto and the operatic public at large, as an intrusive lot, against whose prying attentions he needed constantly to defend himself."{{sfn|Mendelsohn|1978|p=110}}

Verdi was never explicit about his religious beliefs. Anti-clerical by nature in his early years,{{sfn|Budden|1993|pp=2–3, 9–10}} he nonetheless built a chapel at Sant'Agata but is little recorded as attending church. Strepponi wrote in 1871 "I won't say [Verdi] is an atheist, but he is not much of a believer."{{sfn|Rosselli|2000|p=161}} Rosselli comments that in the Requiem "The prospect of Hell appears to rule...[the Requiem] is troubled to the end," and offers little consolation.{{sfn|Rosselli|2000|pp=162–163}}