Oh patria!… Di tanti palpiti (Tancredi)

Tancredi opened at the Teatro La Fenice on 6 February 1813, less than a month after Il signor Bruschino, and carried Rossini's name beyond Italy. Gaetano Rossi based the libretto on Voltaire's tragedy Tancrède; the overture was taken over from La pietra del paragone. Di tanti palpiti spread through Venice so quickly that it was soon being sung in the streets, and Rossini was still teased about it decades later. For Ferrara he wrote an alternative ending that keeps Voltaire's death scene instead of the conventional lieto fine — a version recovered only in the twentieth century.