Alzira is the seventh work and the sixth opera to be published in the
critical edition of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi. Composed during the
middle of the very productive period of Verdi's first large-scale
successes, Alzira premiered at Naples on August 12, 1845. Cammarano's
libretto is based on a play of Voltaire, who used a real incident in
sixteenth-century Peru during the Spanish conquest to shape a critique
of the morality of the noble savage as against Christian values. The
inherent conflicts and exotic setting appealed to Verdi's dramatic
sense, and in its best moments the music of Alzira fully realizes his
potential as a masterful composer for the theater.
Because the success of the premiere was not repeated, Alzira fell out
of the repertory and no orchestral score was ever published. The
critical edition, based on Verdi's autograph score and important
secondary sources, provides the first reliable full score of the work.
It is complemented by an introduction tracing the opera's genesis,
sources and performance history and practices. Together with the
detailed critical commentary, discussing problems and ambiguities in the
sources, the edition provides scholars and performers alike with
unequalled means for interpretation and study of this poorly known work.
