Verdi sold the score of _Nabucco_ to Ricordi for 3000 Austrian liri, or £102, of which, by the terms of the contract, Merelli the _impresario_ was to share one half. He generously returned Verdi 1000 liri.
In the year 1846 _Nabucco_ was brought to London. Mr. Benjamin Lumley elected to open the season with it. Her Majesty's theatre had been newly painted and embellished, and all London was on the tiptoe of excitement at the prospect of the inauguration of the new _salle_. No more striking novelty than _Nabucco_ could have been selected, perhaps, since the work had already become popular on the Continent, and had in some places created a _furore_. The English public, it should be stated, already knew Verdi through _Ernani_, which opera, as the reader will learn later on, had been performed in London the previous year, and had startled the susceptibilities of our critics. The object in presenting this _Nabucco_ by Verdi was to afford the public an opportunity of a further judgment upon the ear-arresting composer of _Ernani_. In obedience to a prevalent sentiment precluding the slightest connection of a Biblical subject with stage representation, _Nabucco_ had to be rechristened. It received the _alias_ "_Nino, Re d'Assyria_," and was brought forward.
"In a popular sense," writes Mr. Lumley, "the opera was a decided success; the choral melodies especially suiting the public taste. The libretto, although faulty in many respects, was dramatic, and afforded scope for fine acting and artistic emotion. _Nabucco_, in short, floated on the sea of the Anglo-Italian stage where, whilst one current was always rushing towards novelty, another tended to wreck all novelty whatever, in the interests of so-called 'classicism.' Much had been done to place the opera with splendour on the stage, but though it pleased on the whole, no decided success attended the venture of the two new ladies. Sanchioli, wild, vehement, and somewhat coarse, attracted and excited by her 'power, spirit, and fire,' but she failed to charm. As a 'declaiming, passionate vocalist' she created an effect; but the very qualities which had rendered her so popular with an Italian audience, acted somewhat repulsively upon English opera-goers. The lack of refinement in her style was not, in their eyes, redeemed by the merit of energy. The electric impulse that communicated itself to the Italians, fell comparatively powerless on the British temperament. Sanchioli, however, was in many respects the 'right woman in the right place' in this melodramatic opera. The other lady, Mademoiselle Corbari, though destined in after times to please greatly as an _altra-prima_ on the Anglo-Italian stage, and though she was considered from the first charming, even 'fascinating' in her simplicity and grace, was not yet acknowledged as a leading vocalist. The nervousness and inexperience of a novice, which she showed at that stage of her career, somewhat lessened the success due to a sweet voice and feeling style, though the prayer allotted to her character Fenena, was encored nightly. Fornasari pleased those who remained of his old enthusiastic admirers, by his emphatic dramatic action and vigorous declamation, and thus far worked towards the success of Verdi's opera."[5]