Mercè, dilette amici (Ernani, Atto I) (Ernani)

Piave doubted that Victor Hugo's Hernani would pass the censors — a king hiding in a cupboard, among other difficulties — but the directorate of La Fenice approved the subject, and the opera was first performed there on 9 March 1844. It was Verdi's fifth, and it carried his name beyond Italy: by 1846 at least sixty-five theatres had staged it. Hugo objected to the Paris productions, which appeared as Il proscritto with the characters renamed. The drama turns on an oath sworn to a horn call — an outlaw, a king and an old nobleman claiming the same woman.