After the composition of his opera 'Aida' and of the Requiem, Verdi withdrew completely to the Villa Sant‘ Agata and considered this to be the end of his career as a composer. It took a bit of cunning and persistence of his publisher Giulio Ricordi to persuade him to work on a new opera: the trick being to make the subject of 'Otello' by Shakespeare, whom he valued, even admired greatly, tempting to him. The result was the next-to-last opera of the Italian master, created in the course of seven ...