Va, pensiero (Nabucco)

After the failure of Un giorno di regno and the deaths of his wife and two children, Verdi had resolved to stop composing; Bartolomeo Merelli pressed Temistocle Solera's libretto on him and the score followed. Nabucco reached La Scala on 9 March 1842 and was given a further fifty-seven times that autumn, an unprecedented figure for the house. The chorus of exiled Hebrews, Va, pensiero, moved quickly out of the theatre and into public memory, and later into the mythology of the Risorgimento. Verdi himself said his career effectively began with this work.