Verdi's Nabucco Premieres: The Opera That United Italy
Verdi didn't want to write another note. His wife and two children had just died within months of each other, and his second opera flopped so badly he'd sworn off composing forever. But impresario Bartolomeo Merelli shoved a libretto about enslaved Hebrews into his coat pocket anyway. When Verdi finally opened it to the chorus "Va, pensiero," he wept—and couldn't stop composing. Nabucco's Milan première turned into a political earthquake: Italians under Austrian rule heard their own oppression in those Hebrew slaves singing of their distant homeland. The chorus became an unofficial anthem of Italian unification, sung at protests and eventually at Verdi's own funeral. The man who'd quit music became the voice of a nation that didn't yet exist.
March 9, 1842
184 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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