Verdi left Italy at the end of May 1847, accompanied by his long-time assistant and student Emanuele Muzio, with his work for London completed, except for the orchestration, which he left until the opera was in rehearsal.
The libretto As Gabriele Baldini in The Story of 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 [REF].