His personal affairs also limited his professional work. These revisions are seen largely in the expansion of the role of Leonora.įor Verdi, the three years were filled with musical activity work on this opera did not proceed while the composer wrote and premiered Rigoletto in Venice in March 1851. There followed, slowly and with interruptions, the preparation of the libretto, first by Cammarano until his death in mid-1852 and then with the young librettist Leone Emanuele Bardare, which gave the composer the opportunity to propose significant revisions, which were accomplished under his direction. It began with his January 1850 approach to Cammarano with the idea of Il trovatore. The premiere took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853, where it 'began a victorious march throughout the operatic world,' a success due to Verdi's work over the previous three years.

It was García Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as 'a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident.' Il trovatore ('The Troubadour') is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El trovador (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez.

La opera il trovatore