Alzira is an opera by Giuseppe Verdi in a prologue and two acts on a libretto by S. Cammarano, commissioned by the impresario Vincenzo Flauto, manager of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, where the first performance took place on 12 August 1845. The subject was taken from Voltaire's drama, Alzire ou les Americains (1736) of which, however, Massimo Mila observes, «nothing remains in Cammarano's libretto». In particular, the operatic transposition cancelled out the taste for the exotic in French dra...