Verdi: Stiffelio

Verdi's 'Stiffelio' is a tense moral drama in which a Protestant minister learns of his wife's betrayal and is torn between a thirst for revenge and his religious duty of forgiveness. These themes of adultery and divorce were social taboos in 1850, and 'Stiffelio' was met with such censorship and disapproval that it was soon withdrawn becoming 'most unjustly neglected of Verdi's operas'.