Virginia (Mercadante)

Virginia is an opera, a tragedia lirica, in three acts by composer Saverio Mercadante. The Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano is based on Vittorio Alfieri's tragedy of the same name. Alfieri's play was in turn taken from a story in Livy's Ab Urbe condita. Although initially written for performance in 1850 at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, the subject matter of Mercadante's opera was objected to by the Bourbon government censors and performance was banned outright. That decision was widely ridiculed, not just in Italy, but throughout Europe. After the fall of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in 1861, the ban on the opera no longer existed.

The work finally had its premiere on 7 April 1866 at the Teatro di San Carlo.^[1] Although not the last opera composed by Mercadante, it was the last of his operas to reach the stage. Virginia has been rarely performed since its premiere, but a recent 2009 recording of the work was released on the Opera Rara label.^[2]