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• Late Romantic
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(Ar-i’-go Bo-e’-to) 1842–1918 Italian composer and librettist Boito furnished the librettos for two of Verdi’s greatest Shakespearean masterpieces, Otello (1884–86) and Falstaff (1893). The premiere of his own operatic masterpiece Mefistofele, at La Scala, Milan (1868), was greeted with whistles due to the work’s extreme length (over five hours) and Germanic influences. As a result Boito for a while signed his work ‘Tobia Gorrio’, as in his libretto to Ponchielli’s La gioconda (‘The ...

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• Classical Era
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(Lo-ren’-tso Da Pon’-te) 1749–1838 Italian librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte was born in Ceneda (now Vittoria Veneto); his real name was Emanuele Conegliano – he took the name Da Ponte when he and his family converted from Judaism. Da Ponte initially trained for the priesthood, but his political and sexual liberalism and his obvious literary gifts led him in a different direction. He was offered the position of court poet in Vienna (1783–91) where ...

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• Classical Era
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• Poet

(Pi-et’-tro Met-ta-shta-syo) 1698–1782 Italian librettist and poet Metastasio was the leading Italian librettist of his era, and creator of the tradition of a particular kind of serious opera. He was born in Rome, worked initially there and in Venice, and settled in Vienna in 1730 as poet to the imperial Habsburg court. He wrote numerous texts for music, elegant and mellifluous in style, of which the most famous were his 27 for three-act ...