Nabucco

Composer Giuseppe Verdi became famous overnight, in Italy and elsewhere, thanks to his third opera. In fact, on March 9 1842, at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan he created his masterpiece: Nabucco. Disillusioned and disappointed by the failure of his previous work (“Chi i bei dì m'adduce ancora”) and shaken by successive grieving, he rediscovered hope and inspiration by reading the text of the librettist Temistocle Solera. He decided to write a patriotic opera which reflected the political situation of Milan at the time under Austrian domination. The famous choir of the Hebrew slaves “Va’, pensiero, sull’ali dorate” ("Go, thought, on wings of gold" in English) has become a hymn to freedom, known and sung all over the world. This “music of an eager soul”—a feeling that would dominate Verdi’s following three operas—has completely bewitched critics and public alike thanks to its dramatic verve, together with its musical aesthetic inherited by the romantic bel canto tradition.