Giuseppe Verdi examines this opera, the quality of the libretto preoccupies him over several pages, as much for the unsuitability of Maffei as a librettist as his lack of skill in crafting Schiller's story into an acceptable libretto. He stresses the fact that Maffei's strengths lay in the field of translation, mostly from the German and English literature, and Baldini sums him up as "neither a poet nor a good man of letters ... who found himself at the centre of cultural currents to which he was contributing nothing really vital". Implicit, therefore, is the notion - as noted in the quotation from Basevi below under "Music" - of whether composer and librettist were really suited to each other. Musicologist Julian Budden, who describes Maffei's libretto as "indigestible", agrees with this assessment when he states that, along with Salvadore Cammarano, the librettist employed by the composer for the first time in 1845 to write Alzira, there was "an exaggerated regard on Verdi's part for the librettist" and he continues: "such complaisance [from the composer] was a bad sign." Performance history 19th century While never entirely successful elsewhere, perhaps (at least in part) for the inconsistencies and excesses of its libretto, following its premiere performances, stagings in Italy were quite numerous until 1862, with performances having been given in about 17 Italian cities, including three in Milan (two of which were at La Scala) between 1849 and 1862. Budden notes that the opera did not do well on the continent, although it was translated into French, Hungarian and German and given in Russia under the title Adele di Cosenza "before it joined Alzira in the limbo of Verdi's least performed operas". 20th century From the 1970s on, the work has begun to reappear in the repertoire. A staged production in 1972 at the Rome Opera was recorded that November, with some outstanding singers of the era who included Boris Christoff, Gianni Raimondi, Renato Bruson and Ilva Ligabue. In New York, a concert performance was given by the Opera Orchestra of New York in February 1975. Other 1970s examples include a September 1976 performance in the Coliseo Albia in Bilbao, with Matteo Manuguerra and Cristina Deutekom appearing in major roles. La Scala in Milan presented the opera in 1978 under Riccardo Chailly. In Australia in June/July 1980 at the Sydney Opera House Richard Bonynge conducted performances - which featured Joan Sutherland as