Giuseppe Verdi’s opera set in ancient Babylon and featuring “Va, pensiero” is Nabucco.
The opera premiered at Milan’s La Scala on 9 March 1842. Its Italian title is shortened from Nabucodonosor, the name of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. The story combines biblical material with fictional personal conflicts involving the Babylonian king, his daughters, and the Hebrew captives.
“Va, pensiero,” sung by the enslaved Hebrews, is the opera’s best-known chorus. Its text expresses longing for the homeland, and it became strongly associated with Italian cultural identity during the Risorgimento. The chorus is sometimes informally called the “Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves.”
Nabucco was Verdi’s third opera and the work that established him as a major Italian composer. It is often confused with Verdi’s later biblical opera, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, but that work concerns medieval crusaders rather than Babylon.