Short answers, pulled from the story.
Giuseppe Verdi was an Italian composer, born near Busseto in 1813 and died in 1901, best known for his operas. He came to dominate Italian opera after the era of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti and remains among the most performed opera composers.
Verdi's middle-period peaks were Rigoletto in 1851 and Il trovatore and La traviata, both in 1853. After Aida in 1871 he returned with three late masterpieces: the Requiem of 1874 and the operas Otello in 1887 and Falstaff in 1893.
Verdi showed sympathy with the Risorgimento movement that sought Italian unification, and choruses like Va, pensiero from Nabucco were much in its spirit. Beginning in Naples in 1859, the slogan Viva VERDI spread as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia, long live Victor Emmanuel King of Italy.
Verdi refused to soften Rigoletto's hunchbacked hero, compromising only by replacing a King with a Duke. He also clashed with the Neapolitan censor over the opera that became Un ballo in maschera, breaking his contract and going through litigation before it reached the stage.
Verdi married the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi on the 29th of August 1859 at Collonges-sous-Salève, with only a coachman and a church bell ringer as witnesses. He had earlier married Margherita Barezzi in May 1836, but she died of encephalitis at the age of 26.
Verdi suffered a stroke on the 21st of January 1901 while staying at the Grand Hotel and died on the 27th of January at the age of 87. At the reburial of his body, Arturo Toscanini conducted Va, pensiero with a chorus of 820 singers before a crowd estimated at 300,000.