Giuseppe Verdi took great care crafting his musical representation of the tender and caring, but sometimes complex, relationships between fathers and their children. These scenes occur throughout his operas and are often of great poignancy. What more magnificent music can we find than the Rigoletto/Gilda duets, the marvelous Simon Bocanegra/Amelia Recognition Scene, the fatherly Germont/Violetta and Germont/ Alfredo scenes from La Traviata.

Many have attributed Verdi’s preoccupation with the paternal relationship to the fact that he lost his two young children, before they had reached two years of age, within a period of fifteen months and the subsequent death of his young wife less than one year later.