Giuseppe Verdi’s Ernani is a vibrant adaptation for the lyric stage of one of the most flamboyant dramas by the French poet. Both the composer and his librettist have combined Hugo’s verbal eloquence with the right musical temperament. Perfect example of Grand opera with chorus, the magnificent Act III is above all the first time Verdi draws the very precise contours of what is about to become a type of voice in itself: the Verdi-baritone. In Ernani he starts to focus as never before on the psychological side of his characters. All his operas after Ernani will follow the same path in his perpetual quest of the truth.