Attila

Abstract One of the inconveniences that Verdi had to endure after the success of Ernani was the importunity of Giovannina, wife of the publisher Francesco Lucca, Ricordi’s chief rival in Milan. Her husband, it seems, could not sleep for thinking of all the money he was losing through not having an opera of Verdi’s to publish. ‘When we are in bed,’ she told the composer, ‘he does nothing but sigh and groan all night.’* At the time Verdi got rid of her by a coarse joke. But by January the following year Muzio was able to announce that ‘the editor Lucca has at last got the ownership of an opera of the Signor Maestro’s; it will be the one for Venice for carnival next year.