Stiffelio January 11, 2010

'Stiffelio' is Verdi's rarely performed and daring opera about faith, jealousy and redemption. At the time Verdi composed it, 'Stiffelio' was considered to be an opera of scandalous subject matter. He based the opera on the play 'Le Pasteur' by Souvestre and Bourgeois, which had only recently been completed when the composer set to work. The alarming story of a wife's betrayal of her Protestant husband sent the Imperial Austrian censors at Trieste to work and shocked the audiences at its 1850 premiere, all of which caused the opera to virtually disappear from the stage for nearly one hundred years. Following the failure, Verdi revised the opera and retitled it 'Aroldo,' which had its premiere in 1857. In the 1960s, 'Stiffelio' returned to the stages of the world's opera houses, with audiences more appreciative of its musical richness and dramatic force.