Nabucco

Nabucco was Verdi's third opera and reached La Scala on 9 March 1842 under its original title Nabucodonosor. Its biblical subject — the Jews carried into captivity in Babylon — met the political mood of Italy in the 1840s, and the chorus of the Hebrew slaves became something close to a national hymn. Verdi himself pointed to the opera as the turning point at which his own manner began. The overture, often played on its own, assembles themes from the score, including that chorus and the music of the Israelites' curse on Ismaele.