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Temistocle Solera was arguably the most important collaborator of Verdi's early years, and a poet whose experience and authority he greatly respected. In a letter to Guglielmo Brenna of 15 November 1843, the composer stated his confidence in Solera, while expressing reservations about Francesco Maria Piave's lack of experience:
For my part I would never like to annoy a poet by asking him to change a verse; and I have written the music for three librettos by Solera, and if you compare the original, which I have kept, with the printed librettos, you would find only a very few verses changed, and these because of Solera's own conviction. But Solera has already written five or six librettos and knows the theatre, theatrical effect, and musical form. Sig. Piave has never written [for the theatre] and is naturally deficient in these things.1
Nor was this Verdi's only attestation of esteem for Solera. Even long after their artistic partnership had ended, he stated that if Solera had put his head to it, he could have become 'the first melodramatic poet of our time'.2
It is significant that in his 1843 letter to Brenna, Verdi praised Solera not only for the librettos he had set to music himself, but also for his practical experience and knowledge of theatrical conventions. Solera also earned Verdi's respect for his work as house poet and composer at La Scala, where he presented two of his own works - Ildegonda (1840) and Il contadino d'Agliate (1841), both of which were warmly received by Milanese audiences.3
For all his high opinion of Solera's artistry, however, Verdi found it difficult to work with a man who, in biographical accounts and correspondence, appears to have been as stubborn, quick-tempered and unreliable as he was brilliant. A glimpse into the conflicts that arose between the two men comes from Verdi himself, who late in his life remembered how, at the time of Nabucco, he had to resort to extreme remedies to convince the librettist to replace a weak love duet for Fenena and Ismaele that originally followed the chorus, 'Va, pensiero':
He asked me what I wanted instead of the duet, and then I suggested to him...