play in Italy at that time. "A story like that should stir every man with an Italian soul in his breast" was how the librettist described it. "Conceived in the springtime of Italian hopes" (as Budden describes the initial enthusiasm for the work), by the time Cammarano produced a final libretto it was early 1849 and it was also clear that the Austrians had not been permanently routed from Lombardy. The premiere was set for late January 1849, some last-minute adjustments were made, and Verdi traveled to Rome before the end of 1848. At this point in the rise of Italian nationalism, Rome under Pope Pius IX was in turmoil and the Pope was held prisoner (without his Swiss guards), but he managed to escape to the south, hoping to negotiate his return. Within days of Battaglias totally sold-out premiere, Rome had become a republic, accelerated by the passions inflamed amongst its inhabitants by (amongst other things) the opera's final chorus of freedom: "Italia risorge vestita di Gloria, invitta e regina qual'era sarà" / "Italy rises again robed in glory!, Unconquered and a queen she shall be as once she was!". Performance history19th centuryInitial reactions at the premiere were ecstatic by all accounts (as noted above). Charles Osborne adds to some of the details of the premiere when he describes the house as "packed to the rafters" and continues by stating that "Verdi's music roused the entire house to a frenzy of enthusiasm" with cries of "Viva Verdi!" and "Viva Italia" coming from the audience when the words of the opening chorus – Viva Italia! Sacro un patto / Tutti stringe I figli suoi / "Long live Italy!. A sacred pact binds all her sons") – were heard. But, as writer John Black notes in his study of Cammarano, "For all its appeal to the spirit of the times – or perhaps because of it, as conditions of order were re-established – it was not widely revived during the ten years that followed" the premiere since, after initial performances around Italy, the opera fell foul of the Austrian censors, as much as anything caused by what musicologist Roger Parker describes as "perhaps its too intense association with a particular historical period" or, as Budden puts it, [it had] "the taint of a pièce d'occasion somewhat to the composer's mortification." "Even before the premiere, Ricordi was in touch with Cammarano about