BOITO, ARRIGO (b. Padua, Italy, 24 Feb 1842; d. Milan, 10 June 1918 )
Boito was himself an operatic composer but it's for his work as Verdi's librettist that he's best remembered.
His earliest libretto was written in Paris for his lifelong friend Faccio, with whom he'd studied in Milan. While there Boito met Verdi for the first time, although they do not seem to have got on. Still thinking of himself as a composer, Boito then returned to Italy where his own opera, Mefistofele, was a failure at La Scala, Milan, in 1868.
Although a revised version was successful in 1875, Boito accepted that his real talent was for libretti. He had already produced a text based on Shakespeare's play Othello. This was intended for Verdi, who had expressed noncommital interest in the idea in Paris. Now, in 1881, at Verdi's request, he completely revised the existing text of Simon Boccanegra for its triumphant première at La Scala that year.
As a result Verdi took up the earlier idea and went on to compose his masterly Otello at the age of seventy-one. After a certain amount of friction and misunderstanding at the outset of their relationship, Boito and Verdi became ideal creative partners.
Falstaff followed Otello in 1893, and they began working on an unfinished King Lear. Verdi also urged Boito to continue his own work as a composer. He did begin a new opera, Nerone, but it was never completed.
It was the text for Falstaff, Verdi's last opera, that was Boito's masterpiece. In it he gave the ageing genius material through which to express a mature, humane, yet ironic view of life. His successful transferance of Shakespeare's work both to another language and another medium is remarkable. His wit is generous and sly and his stagecraft unquestionable.
