Trivia Operatica

Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention about La Gioconda: Arrigo Boito's published libretto contains a few lines that Ponchielli didn't set to music. One of those lines, for the bass, Alvise, was:

La morte è il nulla e vecchia fola è il ciel!

Which, translated, means "Death is nothingness and heaven is an old wives' tale."

The line was cut from La Gioconda, but Boito liked it so much that ten years later he used exactly the same line in his libretto for Verdi's Otello, at the end of Iago's aria. This time the line made the final cut.