La vita è inferno all'infelice… O tu che in seno agli angeli (La forza del destino)

Verdi wrote La forza del destino for the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in Saint Petersburg, where it was first given on 10 November 1862, to a libretto Piave drew from the Duke of Rivas's Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, with one scene borrowed from Schiller. Dissatisfied, Verdi revised it for La Scala in 1869: Ghislanzoni supplied new text, a full overture replaced the short prelude, and Alvaro was left alive at the end instead of throwing himself from a cliff. That 1869 score is the one performed today — war, pilgrimage and coincidence, bound by a single recurring motif.