Stiffelio

Stiffelio is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi, from an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play Le pasteur, ou L'évangile et le foyer by Émile Souvestre and Eugène Bourgeois. The opera was first performed on 16 November 1850 at the Teatro Grande, Trieste.
The original story line of Stiffelio excited vigorous censorship for various reasons, 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. "In Italy and Austrian Trieste ... a married priest was a contradiction in terms. Therefore there was no question of a church in the final scene...."