Arrigo Boito was an Italian composer, librettist, and poet of the later 19th century, born in Padua, trained at the Milan Conservatory, and based mainly in Milan, where he later also directed the Parma Conservatory from 1889 to 1897. He composed sparingly, completing only one opera, Mefistofele (1868, revised 1875), but achieved greater renown as a librettist, writing the texts for Verdi’s Otello and Falstaff and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, as well as poetry and criticism under the pseudonym Tobia Gorrio. He died in Milan in 1918 and was buried at the Cimitero Monumentale.

Though his own compositional output was limited, Boito exerted profound influence on late-19th-century Italian opera through his librettos for Verdi’s final masterpieces, drawing the aging composer back to Shakespearean subjects and helping shape the more integrated musico-dramatic style of Otello and Falstaff. As a leading figure of the Scapigliatura movement, he also brought a distinctly literary sensibility to Italian opera, and he is remembered today primarily as one of the finest librettists in the operatic tradition.

Sources:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrigo_Boito