Pietà, rispetto, amore (Macbeth)

Verdi began Macbeth in September 1846 because the baritone Felice Varesi was available; Andrea Maffei had proposed the play, and Piave worked from Carlo Rusconi's prose translation, since Verdi did not read Shakespeare in the original until after the premiere. It was his tenth opera and the first Shakespeare he set. The first performance, at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence on 14 March 1847, was well received. He rewrote much of it for Paris in 1865 — new music for Lady Macbeth, a rebuilt third act, a ballet — and that version disappointed him. Recognition came only in the twentieth century.