Vorrei morire

This is one of Tosti's early songs, written in the 1870s when he was still in Italy and teaching at the court in Rome, before the London years that made his name. The text, by Leonardo Cognetti, belongs to a Romantic commonplace — the wish to die at the moment of greatest happiness, in spring, with the beloved present — and Tosti set it strophically, with the same rising phrase closing each verse. It circulates today mainly through tenor recitals and remains far less familiar than his Neapolitan songs.