(also referred to as the Palazzo Cavalli, after its architect) which he had bought in 1845; Strepponi joined him there a month later, for what was to be a difficult period in both their lives. It was from Busseto that Verdi then began work on the score of this opera, having received the libretto from Cammarano on 13 August. In October he left for Naples, accompanied by Antonio Barezzi, whom he continued to refer to as his "father-in-law". Distinctive elements of the libretto When music writer Charles Osborne describes the libretto as "inadequate as an adaptation of Schiller's excellent play [but] Cammarano's Luisa Miller is, in its own right, a very fine libretto", he continues by comparing it with Cammarano's previous libretto for La battaglia di Legnano, which contrasts: the domesticity of the story as opposed to the larger, public nature of the earlier opera. Verdi's Luisa Miller, his first attempt at portraying something of bourgeois "respectability" on the stage, is a direct predecessor of La traviata, which deals, amongst other things, with bourgeois hypocrisy. Baldini makes a similar point when he comments in his 1970 book The Story of Giuseppe Verdi that the opera "is in every sense a bourgeois tragedy [and] it feeds on the extraordinary fascination we have for everyday violent crimes. Nothing so far written by Verdi comes close to the concept of realism" and he also comments on the essentially "private" nature of the opera; before Luisa, "something had always been raging, striving beyond the limits of private interests," Performance history 19th century The premiere, on 8 December 1849, was well received, although for Verdi, the experience of dealing with the authorities at the San Carlo Opera in Naples caused him to vow never to produce another opera there. In fact, he never did, in spite of having initially written Un ballo in maschera for that house. In Italy following the premiere, Luisa was given in Rome in 1850 and in Venice, Florence and Milan again up to 1852. The US premiere was staged by the Caroline Richings Company at the Walnut Street Theatre in Philadelphia on 27 October 1852 with Caroline Richings in the title role. This was followed on 3 June 1858 by the first UK presentation at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. 20th century and beyond While not as popular as the most often performed of Verdi's works such as Rigoletto, La