Boito

Otello, a lyric drama in four acts, with a book by Arrigo Boito, proved the second of the composer's matured period works.

Boito's libretto is, perhaps, the best written and planned book ever presented to a composer.

M. Boito is equally celebrated in his own country as musician and as poet.

This, one of the few passages in the libretto not immediately derived from Shakespeare, is a triumph on Boito's part.

Then follows a charming episode, another of Boito's interpolations, in which a band of Cypriotes bring flowers to Desdemona.