This is the town in northern Italy where Giuseppe Verdi spent boyhood and young manhood and where he began the musical career that placed the most golden light of symphony and song on the operatic stages of the world.Tourists visiting Italy, including opera devotees, are not likely to include this part of the Po Valley on their itinerary. Many of the chartered opera tours make a half day pilgrimage to Busseto and the nearby village of Le Roncole, where Verdi was born, and to Sant' Agata, his very private manor three miles northwest of Busseto. The valley is flat, green and monotonous, a rural enclave that lacks the splendorous treasures that one finds in Rome, Milan, Venice and Florence, those big, beautiful cities each less than a half day's trip to Busseto. Why linger here while so much beauty awaits elsewhere?But why did the foremost composer of Italian opera, whose fame and fortune gave him entry to the drawing rooms of Europe, choose to spend the bulk of both his productive and idle time in these unchanging towns, fields and orchards?

The answer had to be that the tranquility of mind and freedom concentrate sought by the composer were present here as nowhere else. A traveler seeking the same objectives will find this area of Emiglia Romana little changed since Verdi's death in 1901. A rhythmic ease spreads through the hot afternoons and at nightfall a communal gaiety pervades through the streets and piazzas. Bicycles and motor bikes, favored by all ages as the vehicles of choice, outnumber cars. On one noonday Saturday, an old man riding an electric wheelchair could be seen hogging the middle of the main street, leading an impatient block-long line of motor vehicles in his wake. Nothing like that occurs in Rome or Milan.Busseto is a town of about 8,000 persons, half of whom live in narrow, stucco row homes and apartments on winding, cobble-stone alleys. On summer nights, the people sit on doorsteps or at the outdoor cafes. Tourists expecting an evening's serenade from the aspiring, local tenor may meet disappointment in Busseto and for that matter, most of Italy. (Gondoliers in Venice don't make a habit of it either.) But, an omniscience of opera seems to be Busseto's backdrop. There is an over all, day to day awareness of the music of Verdi represented in posters, portraits and busts in, it seems, in nearly every shop window, restaurant, school and gas station. The merchants do not huckster their idol, although one locally made cake, "Spongata", comes packaged in an octagon-shaped box bearing a gilt entwined picture of Verdi with images of his birthplace and country estate. As a souvenir, it wears well on the shelf of any entertainment cabinet.On the dining room walls of the Albergo Sole, one of the two hotels in town, are perfectly kept posters of the 1913 Centennial of Verdi's birth, plus old handbills of famous performances at La Scala in Milan, which is only one hour by autostrada to the northwest and two hours by train. Autographed photos of famous singers who dined in the hotel ristorante provide some good companionship to surprisingly exquisite meals.

Two young, dark haired brothers, Bruno and Ivo Gavazzi, own the hotel. Bruno, the manager, is married to an Englishwoman and is one of the few entrepreneurs in town fluent in English. Ivo is a quiet man who attends the sparkling kitchen. An award-winning chef, his culinary accomplishments have been honored During our three week visit to Italy covering 3,000 miles, nowhere did we have better meals than from the kitchen of Ivo Gavazzi. Our third floor room with private bath was modest but comfortable at $10 a night. Breakfast and dinner for two on a typical day cost about $22.50. The hotel is closed during August.Busseto's other hotel is named "I Due Foscari" after Verdi's ill received sixth opera. Owned and operated by Carlo Bergonzi, the very popular tenor and ardent Verdi interpreter, it is a three story Florentine building located about a block from the former home of Antonio Barezzi, the grocer and wine merchant who was the young Verdi's first benefactor and then his father-in-law.The hotel has 20 rooms, with rates in 1979 of about $16 for a double and $12 for a single. It closes during the last three weeks in January and for another three weeks at the end of July.Adjacent to Bergonzi's hotel is the Rocca dei Marched Pallavicino, a weathered but durable building which contains in one wing the town's opera house, duly named Teatro Verdi. Seating 500 persons, with three horseshoe tiers of boxes facing a small stage, it is La Scala in miniature. The theater was opened in 1869, when Verdi was 53. Many an international artist has graced its tiny stage. Toscanini may have conducted the smallest orchestra of his fine career there when the opera house presented La Traviata and Falstaff during the Verdi Centennial.Despite its size, the art adornment so typical of Italian buildings everywhere is not lacking in Teatro Verdi. The ceiling frescoes of laughing and weeping angels were painted by Levi Gioacchino.Though no regular, professional opera season is sponsored in the theater, an annual competition for young singers is held there each June. The musical experience also shows up on the outskirts of town, where new, modern homes line streets named "Donizetti", "Mozart", "Wagner", "Bellini".On the south side of town, at the end of a lane flanked by tall, sentinel cypresses, stands the Busseto Civico Museo, containing two floors of Verdi mementos. They include the piano upon which he wrote his first performed opera, "Oberto". The piano graced the drawing room of Barezzi's house and many times the then young composer played for Barezzi's red haired daughter, Margherita, who became Verdi's first wife. She died in 1836, four years after their marriage and within two years of the deaths of their two infant children. It was a most particularly tragic period in Verdi's life.

Among the many photos in the museum is one of Arrigo Boito, the librettist for the final operas, Otello and Falstaff. Verdi's death mask, as well as a plaster cast of his right hand, rest in a case. Trivia buffs will notice that the middle finger of his hand is the same length as the forefinger and ring finger.Biographers have noted that, as a youth, Verdi regularly hiked the three miles of back roads to and from Le Roncole, the town of his birth. Today, the twisting road is paved, but weaves through the same fields, kept verdant in this valley of little summer rainfall by powerful water guns fed by irrigation ditches.Besides the asphalt roads, the sole modern intrusion on Le Roncole Verdi, as the town is now known, is a gas station sitting catty corner from the large, brick and mortar Verdi farmhouse which his parents operated as a tavern. Less than a block away is the village church where Giuseppe experienced his first introduction to the world of music. Whether legend or fact, the church's six story bell tower signifies a most vital episode in his life. The story is told that weeks after his birth in 1813, Luigia Verdi clutched her son to her breast and fled to the tower to escape marauding Russian soldiers, who with the invading Austrian Army, were plundering the northern Italian countryside. While the two hid in the belfry, many other townspeople were killed and robbed and women raped in the church below.Pietro Baistrocchi was the church organist who gave Giuseppe his first music lessons. When Baistrocchi died, Verdi succeeded him as village organist. He was 12 years old. We had the unusual experience of climbing the old wooden steps to the loft, bending nearly double in order to duck beneath the loft floor and squeeze through the narrow opening. The size of the perch led us to believe that the organist had to be a skinny little fellow. The old church is visible from the window of the room where Verdi was born in the farmhouse only about 150 yards to the east. It is a sunny, large room, now nearly bare of furniture. A curiosity is its ceiling, which is actually the attic floor -- large, flat bricks resting on huge, wooden beams. Admission to the birthplace, now a national shrine, is 1,000 lire (about $1.25) and the ticket is good for entry into the other Verdiani showplaces in Busseto and Sant' Agata. Angela Demalde, a plump, cheerful woman, is the caretaker and guide to the house in Le Roncole. Like most natives in this out of the way village, Signora Demalde speaks no English, but refuses to permit a paltry language barrier stand in the way of communication. After a highly animated five-minute presentation, we understood that Verdi's parents were innkeepers.Even lacking the common ground of language, the mutual desire to share the heritage of Verdi only seems to intensify the natural warmth of these generous people. It becomes clear why the composer chose to live among them rather than in elegant salons and palaces of Europe that were his for the bidding. He stayed most of his life in the Po Valley, even during the period when the gentry frowned upon him sharing his home with his mistress, Giuseppina Streponi, at Sant' Agata for several years before they legalized their bond through marriage. But the 50 acre villa also provided a seclusion vital to genius. The large, stuccoed manor house, kept painted a dull yellow, was built by him shortly after he purchased the estate in 1848.Three downstairs rooms presently are open to the public as well as the fastidiously shaded grounds and pond. The ceilings of the rooms are 12 feet high and the furnishings, kept as he and Giuseppina left them, are ponderously Victorian, with canopied beds, heavy oak desks and mantles. There is the piano upon which he composed Falstaff and Aida. A picture of his beloved Shakespeare is on the wall and in Giuseppina's room is a small portrait of their little dog, Lulu.There are many medallions and personal belongings of the composer, including the gloves, pince nez, white bow tie and cigar holder that he wore in the Senate in 1861 during the short period when he represented Busseto in the first Italian Parliament. Perhaps his election to the Senate was a mere gratuity afforded a favorite son, but he held a lifelong interest in politics, particularly in opposition to Austrian domination of Italy, and it never lacked for fervor. Many of his musical compositions were sung in the streets of Milan and other cities as rallying songs of patriotism. The name, "V E R D I" was painted on walls both as a salute to him and a code cry in support of "Vittorlo Emmanuele Re d'Italia".A small servant's room in Sant' Agata is now furnished with the bed, chamber pot and wash stand of Suite 107 108 of the Hotel Milan where Verdi died, just a few blocks from La Scala.Verdi daily walked the sandy paths through the woods surrounding the house and gardens of Sant' Agata, listening for the hollow, calming sound of mourning doves and at night, the darker mysterious hoots of owls. Near the pond, Verdi had constructed a grotto beneath a large mound of earth. Reached by a dark, cool tunnel, its haunting interior, a silent room, proffered the ghosts of Radames and Aida without the slightest nudge of imagination.A trip to the Verdi sites in the Po Valley cannot be rounded out without visits to Milan to La Casa di Riposa, the home for retired musicians which he built and funded and which also contains his tomb and that of Giuseppina. The La Scala Theatrical Museum, located on the second floor adjoining the famed opera house, contains two large rooms devoted to Verdi alone. Included is the old chocolate colored spinet which Verdi's father bought for him to play in the Le Roncole farmhouse.A hand written note on the back of the spinet documents the first recorded appreciation and critique of the talent that was to enthrall millions of opera lovers:"By me Stefano Cavalletti, new jacks and plectra were made and a pedal adapted all of which I have done as a gift, because of the keen interest of this boy Giuseppe Verdi in learning to play this instrument and this is sufficient for me. Anno Domini 1821."Verdi was eight years old.