Nabucco Overture

Nabucco, a retelling of the biblical story of Jewish exile under the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, was Giuseppe Verdi’s first major operatic success, and was written reluctantly, following a difficult period in the composer’s life. Having lost his young wife, Margherita, in the summer of 1840, and seeing his second opera, Un giorno di regno, fail disastrously, closing after only a single performance in September 1840, Verdi was left understandably depressed and prepared to give up on music altogether. However, Bartolomeo Merelli, who ran the famed Milan opera house, La Scala, urged Verdi to write another opera. Verdi wrote Nabucco in 1841, and it was an instant commercial and critical success upon its premiere in 1842.