Simon Boccanegra

Simon Boccanegra
Opera by Giuseppe Verdi
First edition libretto for the 1881 revision
Librettist	Francesco Maria Piave, original version, 1857 Arrigo Boito, revisions for Teatro alla Scala, 24 March 1881 (1881-03-24)
Language	Italian
Based on	Antonio García Gutiérrez's Simón Bocanegra (1843)
Premiere	12 March 1857 (1857-03-12); La Fenice (Venice)

Simon Boccanegra (Italian: [siˈmom ˌbokkaˈneːɡra]) is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Simón Bocanegra (1843) by Antonio García Gutiérrez, whose play El trovador had been the basis for Verdi's 1853 opera, Il trovatore.

Simon Boccanegra was first performed at Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 12 March 1857. Given the complications of the original plot and the generally poor popular response - although the critical one was more encouraging - the opera dropped out of favour after 1866. Finally, 23 years later, Verdi's publisher persuaded the composer to revise the opera, with text changes to be prepared by Arrigo Boito, the librettist who aspired to work with the aging composer on a project which eventually became a new opera, Otello, but to which Verdi had not totally committed at that time.

The revised version of Simon Boccanegra, with the now-famous Council Chamber scene, was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 24 March 1881. It is this version which is the one most frequently performed today.

Musicologist and author Julian Budden points to three projects which the composer had in mind when, at the beginning of 1855, he turned down an invitation from La Fenice to write a new opera for them for the following year. He responded: "the chief obstacle is my unshakable determination not to bind myself anymore to a definite period for either the composition or the production". While that approach did not turn out to be practicable at that time, it was an ultimate goal and, in aiming to achieve it, his partner of the previous four years, Giuseppina Strepponi greatly encouraged it when she wrote to him at the time of his frustrations two years earlier when working in Paris on Les vêpres siciliennes.