Piangete voi… Al dolce guidami (Anna Bolena)

Anna Bolena was written in about a month in the autumn of 1830, at Giuditta Pasta's villa on Lake Como, with Felice Romani supplying the verse and Pasta waiting to sing the title role. It opened at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 26 December and carried Donizetti's name out of Italy within two years. Henry VIII discards one wife for her lady-in-waiting; the queen's final scene, moving from a remembered childhood to the sound of the coronation guns, set the pattern for what followed. The opera then left the repertory for most of a century.