Macbeth is an opera in four acts by
Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian
libretto by
Francesco Maria Piave and additions by
Andrea Maffei, based on
William Shakespeare's
play of the same name. Written for the
Teatro della Pergola in Florence, it was Verdi's tenth opera and first given on 14 March 1847.
Macbeth was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage. Almost twenty years later,
Macbeth was revised and expanded in a French version and given in Paris on 19 April 1865. After the success of
Attila in 1846, by which time the composer had become well established,
Macbeth came before the great successes of 1850 to 1853 (
Rigoletto,
Il trovatore and
La traviata) which propelled him into universal fame. As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as an adaption of
King Lear (as
Re Lear) were never realized, but he wrote his two final operas using
Othello as the basis for
Otello (1887) and
The Merry Wives of Windsor as the basis for
Falstaff (1893).