The earliest Verdi criticism, chronicling the successes and failures of his first operas, appeared in music journals, at first on the Italian peninsula and eventually throughout Europe and the Americas. La gazzetta musicale di Milano held a particularly important position as the house journal of Verdi's principal publisher, Ricordi. As early as 1846, the Gazzetta reprinted a series of reviews by B. Bermani, hailing the young composer – who at the time had written only half a dozen operas – as a major figure who stood out among his contemporaries through his “exquisite taste, an untiring elegance, and [a] marvelous instinct … for effect.” During the following decade, Florentine music critic Abramo Basevi wrote an extensive series of articles about Verdi's operas, which he collected and republished in 1859 as Studio sulle opere di Giuseppe Verdi. Basevi's detailed and systematic discussion of the early and middle operas (through Aroldo) has exerted considerable influence on modern Verdi criticism. Notably, Basevi was the first critic to suggest two different styles or “maniere” in the composer's works, with Luisa Miller as the decisive turning point.

Verdi enjoyed a reputation as the undisputed living master of Italian opera during the latter part of the nineteenth century, and during this period the quantity of critical writings about his music continued to expand prodigiously. New and fertile territory for music criticism included such diverse topics as his changing musical style, historical position, and the relationship of his music and aesthetic ideals to those of Richard Wagner and the new verismo composers. These topics engendered lively debate that was not always favorable to Verdi, since many critics, particularly outside Italy, held fast to the belief that Wagnerian aesthetics were intellectually superior to the “popular entertainment” of Italian opera.