Boito, Arrigo (1842-1918)

Italian poet and composer. He wrote libretti for several composers as well as for himself, including those of Verdi's Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). Boito is most often heard today as Verdi's late librettist, although his own opera Mefistofele (1868) is one of the finest musical settings of the Faust legend.

Boito was born in Padua and studied at the Milan Conservatory. At first he worked as a journalist in Milan and Paris, and served under Garibaldi in Austria. He travelled much in France, Germany, and Poland, and produced his Faust opera, Mefistofele, at La Scala, Milan. It proved a failure but was more successful when played in shorter form in 1875. His only other opera, Nerone, was not produced until 1924, six years after his death. He also wrote the opera Ero e Leandro, but destroyed the music (the libretto was set by Giovanni Bottesini and later by Luigi Mancinelli) and he wrote a libretto on Hamlet for Franco Faccio. Boito published songs, novels, critiques, and dramas; of his verse the longest piece is Re Orso, a narrative poem describing the atrocities of the Minotaur.