Nabucco

If circumstances are to be believed, Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar), the opera that effectively launched Verdi’s career, almost did not get written. The failure of his previous opera Un giorno di regno (King for a Day) in 1840, coincident with the death of his wife and two children, left him unwilling to compose, and it was the persistence of impresario Bartolomeo Merelli that coerced him into setting Temistocle Solera’s libretto in the summer and fall of 1841. The premiere at Milan’s La Scala on 9 March 1842, proved a huge success, and though there were dissenting voices—notably the composer Otto Nicolai (who had turned down the libretto in the first instance)—Nabucco became the template for mid-19th-century Italian opera poised between the stylisation of “grand opera” and the immediacy of verismo. Taking place in Jerusalem and Babylon, the scenario concerns the Israelites’ captivity, Nabucco’s descent into madness and his conversion to Judaism and subsequent freeing of the Jews—liberally drawn from various Biblical sources but featuring several major roles. Most notable is that of Abigaille, sung at the premiere by Giuseppina Strepponi, who later became Verdi’s second wife. The overture enjoyed popularity in the concert hall, while “Va, pensiero” (“Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves”) became ubiquitous at Italian funerals and patriotic occasions—even being proposed as an alternative national anthem.