Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901): Il Trovatore (Highlights)

Verdi's very successful career as the leading composer of Italian opera of his time spanned a period of some fifty years, culminating in the Shakespearean operas of his old age, Otello and finally, in 1893, Falstaff. The opera Il Trovatore was written in 1852, ten years after his first great success with Nabucco, and first performed at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19th January the following year. The text by the conservative Salvatore Cammarano was based on the play Il trovador by the Spanish romantic writer Antonio García Gntiérrez and was completed, after Cammarano's death in July 1852, by Leone Emanuele Bardare. The opera was given in Paris in Italian in December 1854 at the Théâtre des italiens and in January 1857 a French version was mounted at the Paris Opéra. In order of composition Il Trovatore follows Rigoletto and precedes La traviata, on whi