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Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio is an opera in two acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on an existing libretto by Antonio Piazza probably called Rocester.

It was Verdi's first opera, written over a period of four years and it was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 17 November 1839. The La Scala production enjoyed "a fair success" and the theatre's impresario, Bartolomeo Merelli, commissioned two further operas from the young composer.


Composition history

During his student days in Milan, Verdi began the process of making connections to the world of music in that city which were to stand him in good stead. These included an introduction by his teacher Lavigna to an amateur choral group, the Società Filarmonica, where he functioned as rehearsal director and continuo player for Haydn's The Creation in 1834, as well as conducting Rossini's La cenerentola himself the following year. 1836 saw his involvement in an April concert celebrating Emperor Ferdinand's birthday; for this he wrote a cantata in the Emperor's honour which received some praise.

But it was after his return to his hometown of Busseto in 1835 to become director of the music school with a three year contract that Verdi took advantage of the connection he had made to the Filarmonica's director, Pietro Massini, informing him in a series of letters from 1835 to 1837 about the progress towards writing his first opera using a libretto supplied by Massini which had been written by Antonio Piazza, a Milanese "journalist and man of letters" . By then it had been given the title of Rocester and the young composer expressed hopes of a production in Parma.

However, Parma was not interested in new works and so approaches were made to Milan. Whether Rocester actually became the basis for Oberto when Verdi was able to return to Milan in February 1839 after fulfilling two and a half years of his contract in Busseto is subject to some disagreement amongst scholars. How much of Rocester remained visible in Oberto is discussed by Roger Parker, who does suggest that "in this shape-shifting tendency, the opera was, of course, very much of its time."

In his recollections in 1881 (quoted in Budden) following his return to Milan from Busseto in 1838, Verdi describes how he was invited to meet the La Scala impresario, Bartolomeo Merelli, who had heard a conversation about the music of the opera between soprano Giuseppina Strepponi and Giorgio Ronconi in which she praised it. Merelli then offered to put on Oberto during the 1839 season and, after its premiere, Oberto was given a respectable 13 additional performances.