Duet of Azucena and Manrico (Il trovatore)

Verdi first considered García Gutiérrez's El trovador in 1850, but the work was interrupted by Rigoletto and then by a death: Salvadore Cammarano finished Di quella pira eight days before he died in July 1852, and Leone Emanuele Bardare completed the text. The premiere at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853 was followed by roughly 229 productions worldwide within three years. The plot is notoriously tangled — an abducted child, a mother burnt, two brothers who do not know one another — and the score answers it with music of almost unbroken directness and unusual demands on four voices.