author
Arrigo Boito
1842–1918
A poet, composer, and master librettist, this Italian artist helped shape late 19th-century opera. He is best remembered for his own dramatic opera Mefistofele and for the words he wrote for Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff.
1 Audiobook
Novelle e riviste drammatiche
by Arrigo Boito
About the author
Born in Padua on February 24, 1842, Arrigo Boito grew into one of Italy’s most versatile literary and musical figures. He studied at the Milan Conservatory and built a reputation not just as a composer, but also as a poet, critic, and man of letters.
His most famous original work is the opera Mefistofele, unusual in that he wrote both the music and the libretto himself. Boito is also closely linked with some of the greatest operas in the repertory because he supplied the librettos for Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff, bringing a sharp literary intelligence and theatrical instinct to both works.
Boito died in Milan on June 10, 1918. Today he is remembered as a rare creative figure who could move with ease between poetry and music, leaving his mark both as a composer in his own right and as one of opera’s finest librettists.