Io l'ho perduta (Don Carlo, Atto I, scene 1) (Don Carlo (four-act version))

Verdi wrote Don Carlos for the Paris Opéra, where it was first performed on 11 March 1867 in five acts with ballet, in French, and at a length the house began cutting before the opening night. He returned to it repeatedly over the next seventeen years. The four-act Italian version, prepared with Charles Nuitter and Angelo Zanardini and staged at La Scala on 10 January 1884, removes the Fontainebleau act and rewrites much of what follows, so that Carlo's first entrance now looks back on a meeting the audience has not been shown. Both versions remain in use.