Salvadore Cammarano

Who was Salvadore Cammarano?

Salvadore Cammarano was a prolific Italian librettist and playwright perhaps best known for writing the text of Lucia di Lammermoor for Gaetano Donizetti.

For Donizetti he also contributed the libretti for L'assedio di Calais, Belisario, Pia de' Tolomei, Roberto Devereux, Maria de Rudenz, Poliuto, and Maria di Rohan, while for Giuseppe Persiani he was the author of Ines de Castro.

For Verdi he wrote Alzira, La battaglia di Legnano and Luisa Miller, and finished his libretto for Il trovatore when he died in July 1852,but it was expanded by Leone Emanuele Bardare. Cammarano also started a libretto for a proposed adaptation of the William Shakespeare play King Lear, named Re Lear, but he died before completing it; a detailed scenario survives.