Stiffelio

Stiffelio is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, from an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois. The opera was first performed on 16 November 1850 at the Teatro Grande, Trieste. The original plot of Stiffelio excited vigorous censorship, since it involved a Protestant minister of the church with an adulterous wife, and a final church scene in... more

Stiffelio is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, from an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois. The opera was first performed on 16 November 1850 at the Teatro Grande, Trieste. The original plot of Stiffelio excited vigorous censorship, since it involved a Protestant minister of the church with an adulterous wife, and a final church scene in which he forgives her with words quoted from the New Testament. There were two reworkings of the opera, the first in 1851 as Guglielmus Wellingrode (with the hero a German Prime Minister), and the second, in 1857, as the four-act opera Aroldo, a more radical alteration with the hero as an English Crusader, and with the final scene entirely replaced by a wholly new fourth act. Stiffelio is believed to have received its first British performance in an English language production at the Collegiate Theatre, London by the University College London... less