Private Life
She was the mistress and later the fiancée of the conductor and composer Angelo Mariani. That relationship ended around 1871 but there were a number of complicating factors that led up to it. Mariani had formerly been a good friend of Verdi's, but they parted company in 1871 after Mariani's indecision when he was asked by Verdi to conduct the premiere of Aida in Cairo. Stolz was accused of having an affair with Verdi, but whether this charge is true cannot be said with certainty (Grove says "There is no evidence at all that there was an affair between Verdi and the singer"). Verdi did spend an unusual amount of time working with her leading up to the Milan premiere of Aida in 1872. Mariani died of cancer in 1873. On 4 September 1875, a Florence newspaper, the Rivista independente, published the first of five articles with intimate details of her private life, and accused her of immoral relations with both the late Mariani and with Verdi. What can be said with confidence is that Stolz's break with Mariani came with the encouragement of both Verdi and his second wife Giuseppina Strepponi, the supposedly wronged party, who had herself previously referred in her letters to the "continual deception" of Stolz. It was a very complicated affair, made even more complicated by the publication of supposed letters by Strepponi in which she refers to "my dear friend Teresina ... who has always behaved as a faithful friend should". These letters are now known to be forgeries; and the exact truth of the matter has been debated ever since. Stolz became Verdi's companion after Strepponi's death in 1897, but whether this was platonic or romantic is not known.
She died in Milan in 1902, the year after Verdi, and is buried there.
She had identical twin elder sisters, Francesca (Fanny) and Ludmila (Lidia), both singers. They both lived openly with her former teacher, the conductor and composer Luigi Ricci, who married Ludmila, but maintained a relationship with Francesca. By Ludmila, Ricci had a daughter Adelaide (Lella) Ricci, who was also a singer. Lella (Teresa's niece) became pregnant (possibly to Bedřich Smetana), but had an abortion and died as a result of complications, aged 21.
By Francesca, Luigi Ricci had a son, also Luigi Ricci (Teresa's nephew), who was a conductor and composer. He inherited Teresa Stolz's estate, and changed his name to Luigi Ricci-Stolz.
Her grand-nephew through a different part of the Stolz line was the composer Robert Stolz.
Read more about this topic: Teresa Stolz
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