of short rhythmic patterns". Cultural references Enrico Caruso once said that all it takes for a successful performance of Il trovatore is the four greatest singers in the world. On many occasions, this opera and its music have been featured in various forms of popular culture and entertainment. Scenes of comic chaos play out over a performance of Il trovatore in the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera (including a quotation, in the middle of the act 1 overture, of Take Me Out to the Ball Game). Luchino Visconti used a performance of Il trovatore at La Fenice opera house for the opening sequence of his 1954 film Senso. As Manrico sings his battle cry in "Di quella pira", the performance is interrupted by the answering cries of Italian nationalists on the upper balcony who shower the stalls area below with patriotic leaflets. In Italian Film in the Light of Neorealism, Millicent Marcus proposes that Visconti used this operatic paradigm throughout Senso, with parallels between the opera's protagonists, Manrico and Leonora, and the film's protagonists, Ussoni and Livia. A staging of act 1, scene 2, of Il trovatore is featured in Bernardo Bertolucci's 1979 film La Luna. Music from the opera was featured on Kijiji in Canada for commercials. Historical references While the story and most of the characters are fictitious, it is set towards the end of a real civil war in Aragon. Following the death of King Martin of Aragon in 1410, no fewer than six candidates staked a claim for the throne. A political meeting, the Compromise of Caspe, found in favour of Martin's sororal nephew Ferdinand. Count James II of Urgell, King Martin's brother-in-law and the closest relative through purely patrilineal line of descent, refused to accept the decision of the Compromise, believing (with some justification) that Martin had intended to adopt him as the heir by appointing him Governor-General after the death of his own son Martin the Younger, and rebelled. A third candidate was Frederic, Count of Luna, bastard son of Martin the Younger, whose legitimization had been sought from the Pope unsuccessfully. As part of the compromise for withdrawing his own claim in favour of Ferdinand, Frederic was granted the County of Luna, one of the lesser titles that his father had held. While neither of the two princes who actually took part in the war appears in the operaneither is