Don Carlo

The Paris Opéra commissioned Don Carlos and Verdi delivered five acts with a ballet, to a French libretto after Schiller. The score proved too long for the last suburban trains, and cuts were made before the premiere on 11 March 1867 — the beginning of a revision history unmatched in his output. An Italian translation followed at once; in 1884 Verdi produced a four-act version for La Scala without the Fontainebleau act, and in 1886 a five-act hybrid appeared in Modena. No single authoritative text exists, and houses still choose between them.