Salvadore Cammarano

Salvadore Cammarano (also Salvatore) (born Naples, 19 March 1801 – died Naples 17 July 1852) was a prolific Italian librettist and playwright perhaps best known for writing the text of Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) for Gaetano Donizetti. For Donizetti he also contributed the libretti for L'assedio di Calais (1836), Belisario (1836), Pia de' Tolomei (1837), Roberto Devereux (1837), Maria de Rudenz (1838), Poliuto (1838), and Maria di Rohan (1843), while for Giuseppe Persiani he was the author of Ines de Castro. For Verdi he wrote Alzira (1845), La battaglia di Legnano (1849) and Luisa Miller (1849), but after he died in July 1852, Verdi worked with Leone Emanuele Bardare to complete the libretto for Il trovatore (1853). Cammarano also started work on libretto for a proposed adaptation of William Shakespeare's play King Lear, named Re Lear, but he died before completing it; a detailed scenario survives. His father, Giuseppe, was a painter and set-designer. His son, Michele, was also a painter.