Trivia

Brother of writer Camillo Boito.

Author of what are considered two of the greatest librettos ever written for the operatic stage, those for Giuseppe Verdi's "Otello" and "Falstaff". Both operas were adapted from plays by William Shakespeare, and are the most faithful operatic treatments of Shakespeare up to that time. In "Otello", based on "Othello", Boito omitted the scenes with Brabantio (Desdemona's father), but otherwise retained as much of Shakespeare's original play as possible, even down to the act divisions. Some of Boito's lines were actual Italian translations of Shakespeare's original dialogue. For "Falstaff", Boito was as faithful to the play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" as possible.