Aria of Wally (La Wally)

La Wally was Catalani's last opera, first performed at La Scala on 20 January 1892; he died of tuberculosis the following year, at thirty-nine. Luigi Illica's libretto comes from Wilhelmine von Hillern's novel Die Geier-Wally, set in the Tyrolean Alps and ending in an avalanche. Toscanini conducted the work repeatedly, defended its lyrical manner against the verismo that was displacing it, and named his daughter Wally. The heroine's first-act aria, in which she resolves to leave her father's house for the mountains, is the one page of the score that has never left the repertoire.