Il Bacio (The Kiss)

Luigi Arditi was best known in his lifetime as an opera conductor, not least in London: “He can conduct anything,” Shaw wrote of him, “and come off without defeat.” He was also a considerable composer although he is remembered now not for his several operas but for just a handful of songs. The most familiar of them is Il Bacio which he dedicated to the soprano Marietta Piccolomini – in tribute, it seems from its Traviata waltz-time style, to her status as the most famous Violetta of her day.