one. Still raging, Rolando storms out to lead the Milanese troops into battle, but as he leaves, he locks the tower door on Arrigo and Lida, declaring that Arrigo will suffer a fate worse than death: the infamy of being absent from the battle in which he had promised to fight, and so will lose his honour. As trumpets signal the beginning of the battle, Arrigo, in desperation, leaps from the tower into the moat, shouting "Long Live Italy!". Lida remains in anguish. Act 4 – "To Die For the Fatherland!" A square in Milan The assembled people sing a prayer for victory. Imelda assures Lida that Arrigo survived his leap from the tower and Lida prays for the safety of both Arrigo and her husband (Ah se di Arrigo e Rolando / "Ah! If I recommend to Thy care the lives of Arrigo and Rolando".) As the people begin a hymn of victory, city officials enter the church to confirm the defeat of Barbarossa's troops by the Lombard League, declaring that Barbarossa was wounded by Arrigo. But, in the middle of the victory celebrations, a group of Knights of Death enter bearing the mortally wounded Arrigo. Rolando receives Arrigo's assurance that Lida is innocent and that she had always acted honourably. Reconciling with Lida, he forgives Arrigo, who with his last breath, proclaims that "Italy is saved!" Music Overall, Julian Budden sees this opera in musical terms as "the most consistently accomplished that Verdi ha[d] yet written" and adds that several musical elements exist here "as being designed and scored with an attention to detail for which one looks in vain in Attila or I masnadieri". A writer then working in England, Budden finds that the opera had "better press" in that country than in Italy and he quotes from supporting statements by Verdi biographers Toye (p. 290, 1931) and Osborne (p. 198, 1969). Roger Parker is impressed by the opera's "inner working and its sheer scale [which] far outstrip any of Verdi's previous efforts", largely agreeing with Budden in this account. Since Baldini notes that Italian critics and writers were far less enthusiastic about this opera than the English ones (and maybe because he is Italian), he notes that there are only three of the "young Verdi's best-constructed, most thoughtful pages, but these saving graces are infrequent": he then names these as the overture, the Chorus of the