Before Luisa Miller was staged in Naples, Verdi had offered the San Carlo company another work for 1850, with the new opera to be based on Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse from a libretto to be written by Salvadore Cammarano.

[2] Verdi had returned to Busseto with many ideas in mind, among them a new opera for Venice, which included a request for a draft scenario from Piave based on Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse.

"[3] At the same time, it appears that Verdi continued to be fascinated by Le Roi s'amuse, a play which Budden notes as having been banned at its first performance: "it was, politically speaking, dynamite" but he adds that the Venetian censors had allowed Ernani.

Musicologist Roger Parker in Grove describes it as: Budden basically agrees, stating that "[Verdi] was tired of stock subjects; he wanted something with genuinely human, as distinct from melodramatic, interest.

As the premiere approached, both librettist and composer were called before the president of the theatre commission on 13 November, given that the organization had received demands for changes from the censor, which included a threat to block the production entirely if these were not met.

The original story line of Stiffelio, involving as it does a Protestant minister of the church with an adulterous wife, and a final church scene in which he forgives her with words quoted from the New Testament, was impossible to present on the stage, and this created these censorship demands for various reasons: "In Italy and Austrian Trieste ... a married priest was a contradiction in terms.

Furthermore, in act 3, Lina would not be allowed to beg for confession, plus as Budden notes, "the last scene was reduced to the most pointless banality" whereby Stiffelio is only permitted to preach in general terms.

In the introduction to the critical edition[6] prepared in 2003 by Kathleen Hansell, she states quite clearly that "The performance history of Stiffelio as Verdi envisioned it literally began only in 1993.

"[7] She might have added "21 October 1993", since this was the occasion when the Metropolitan Opera presented the work based on the discoveries which had been found in the composer's autograph manuscript by musicologist Philip Gossett the previous year[8] and which were eventually included in the critical edition prepared by her for the University of Chicago in 2003.

To begin with, a revised version of the opera, entitled Guglielmo Wellingrode (with the hero a German minister of state),[2] was presented in 1851, without either Verdi or his librettist Piave being responsible for it.

[10] As early as 1851, it became clear to Verdi that given the existing censorship throughout Italy, there was no point in Ricordi, his publisher and owner of the rights to the opera, trying to obtain venues for performances before the composer and librettist together had any opportunity to revise and restructure it more acceptably.

[11] However, in her research for the critical edition, Hansell notes that in 1856 Verdi angrily withdrew his opera from circulation, reusing parts of the score for his reworked 1857 version, the libretto also prepared by Piave: it was renamed as Aroldo and set in 13th century Anglo-Saxon England and Scotland.

[9][12] A new performing edition, prepared for Bärenreiter from microfilm of the Naples copyist's score, was obtained in order to restore the composer's intentions as far as possible.

This was the basis of performances at Naples and Cologne, but it cut material (especially from the act 1 overture and choruses) and it added in sections from Aroldo, which were not in the original score.

This became the source of the UK premiere in an English language production given by University College Opera (then the Music Society) in London in 1973.

[13] The American stage premiere was given by Vincent La Selva and the New York Grand Opera on 4 June 1976 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Richard Taylor as Stiffelio and Norma French as Lina.

[22] In 1985–1986 the Teatro La Fenice in Venice mounted back-to-back productions of Aroldo and Stiffelio (the latter in a version similar to that described above) in conjunction with an international scholarly conference which was held in that city in December 1985.

Refusing to learn by opening the packet who was involved, he throws the letters into the fire, much to the relief of Lina and Raffaele, the two parties of the incident.

Secretly, Raffaele communicates to Lina that he will leave instructions as where they may next meet in a note placed inside a locked copy of Klopstock's Messiah in the library.

He tells her of the sin he has witnessed (Vidi dovunque gemere – "Everywhere I saw virtue groaning and oppressed"), in particular denouncing married women who are unfaithful to their husbands.

He pressures her to remain silent in order to cover up what she has done and thus preserve appearances and family honor (Ed io pure in faccia agli uomini – "So before the face of mankind I must stifle my anger").

Eventually, Stankar tells her to put on a brave face and hide her grief (Or meco venite – "Come now with me; tears are of no consequence").

She demands that he return her wedding ring and her letters, which he had taken, and then immediately asks him to leave forever (Perder dunque voi volete – "Then you wish to destroy this unhappy, betrayed wretch").

Filled with conflicting emotions, Stiffelio drops his sword and asks God to inspire his speech to his parishioners, but almost immediately thereafter declares that he can never forgive his wife and curses her.

Stiffelio confronts Raffaele and asks him what he would do if Lina were free, offering him a choice between "a guilty freedom" and "the future of the woman you have ruined".

Jorg tells Stiffelio, who is not convinced that he has the emotional fortitude or focus of mind to deliver a sermon after the events of the last 24 hours, to open the Bible to a random page and let God inspire him.

For example, when comparing both versions, Osborne states that act 1, scene 2 of Stiffelio "is almost Otello-like in its force and intensity, while Kimball states directly that "Verdi's music, in keeping with the dramatic theme, is as boldly unconventional as anything he had composed"[34] and he continues, in referring to the Bible reading scene in the finale, that it: Osborne agrees when he describes the narrative and musical action moving in tandem in the last act: Gabriele Baldini's The Story of Giuseppe Verdi deals with Stiffelio and Aroldo together, so the former gets rather limited mention.