Italian Opera Choruses

The leading figure in Italian opera from the 1840s for much of the rest of the nineteenth century, Giuseppe Verdi won his first great success with the opera Nabucco, staged at La Scala, Milan, in 1842. The libretto, by Temistocle Solera, had already been rejected by Otto Nicolai, now remembered primarily for his opera The Merry Wives of Windsor, or at least for its overture. The story of Nebuchadnezzar (Nabucco) has its derivation in the Bible, notably in the Book of Jeremiah. It deals with the Babylonian attack on Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple, followed by the captivity of the Jews in Babylon. Complications ensue with the rivalry of Nebuchadnezzar's daughter Fenena and the supposed elder daughter of the king, Abigaille, ending in the defeat of the latter, the restoration of Nebuchadnezzar's wits, after a bout of madness, and his conversion to Judaism. The Chorus of Hebrew Slaves, Va, pensiero, in which