orig. Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito
born Feb. 24, 1842, Padua, Lombardy-Venetia
died June 10, 1918, Milan, Italy
Italian composer and librettist.
As a composer, he is remembered for his opera Mefistofele (1868). He wrote the text for Giuseppe Verdi 's Inno delle nazioni (1862) and revised the libretto for his Simon Boccanegra (1881), tasks that led to his writing the celebrated texts for Verdi's masterworks Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). He was also the librettist of Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda (1876). His own opera Nerone was left unfinished at his death.