page_title: Ernani
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Ernani / Performance history / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: English: Engraved portrait of Sophie Löwe (1812–1866), artist unknown (circa 1840) Source: http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/id?1270182Català: Gravat amb el retrat de Sophie Löwe (1812–1866), d'autor desconegut (ca 1840)
context_page_description: Ernani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the 1830 play Hernani by Victor Hugo.
  Verdi was commissioned by the Teatro La Fenice in Venice to write an opera, but finding the right subject took some time, and the composer worked with the inexperienced Piave in shaping first one and then another drama by Hugo into an acceptable libretto. As musicologist Roger Parker notes, the composer "intervened on several important points, insisting for example that the role of Ernani be sung by a tenor.
  Ernani was first performed on 9 March 1844 and it was "immensely popular, and was revived countless times during its early years". It became Verdi's most popular opera until it was superseded by Il trovatore after 1853. In 1904 it became the first opera to be recorded completely.
context_section_description: Budden sums up the opening night success of Ernani:  nothing "prevented [the opera] from being a tremendous success.  With it, Verdi's fame took a new leap which carried it at once across the boundaries of Italy. For better or worse, he was now a world composer [.....and] wherever there was an Italian opera house, Ernani arrived sooner or later."  However, it was not all smooth sailing: due to Hugo's opposition, the first performances in Paris at the Théâtre des Italiens two years later required a change of title - to Il Proscritto - and a change of characters' names: "The practice was followed in other cities where the names Victor Hugo and Hernani smacked of revolution."  In Palermo in 1845 it became Elvira d'Aragona and in Messina in 1847 the title became Il proscritto ossia Il corsaro di Venezia. Overall, Ernani was staged in one form or another up to the mid-1850s, with "32 theatres [giving] the work in 1844, 60 in 1845, and at least 65 in 1846, not including revivals in houses that had already presented it."
  The United Kingdom premiere, the first of Verdi's operas to be translated into English,  took place at Her Majesty's Theatre in London on 8 March 1845 followed on 13 April 1847 by its US premiere in New York.
caption: Sophie Löwe, the first Elvira
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