Giuseppe Verdi

Giuseppe Verdi poured the whole soul of a nation into music, and his chart reads like a hymn to balance, duty and hidden depth. Born near Busseto in 1813 to a family of modest means, schooled through the kindness of a local patron, he rose to dominate Italian opera after Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti. His Sun in Libra, the sign of the Scale, is the artist who shines by finding symmetry and beauty in the subtlest things, and who weighs two sides of every human heart; that Sun sits in the sixth house, the Lion King of daily craft, work and discipline, and Verdi was nothing if not the tireless workman of melody. His Aries Moon, placed in the twelfth house, is a fierce, driven warrior-heart dissolved into the collective and the unseen, which fits a private, almost hermetic man who nonetheless became the voice of the Risorgimento: the chorus Va, pensiero from Nabucco became an anthem of unification. He gave the world Rigoletto, Il trovatore, La traviata, Aida, the Requiem, and late in life Otello and Falstaff. A Gemini Ascendant lent the quick, versatile messenger's mask. He shone through service, and the music still sings.