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Arrigo Boito (February 24, 1842 – June 10,
1918) was an Italy|Italian poet, novelist and
composer, best known today for his opera
libretto|libretti and his own opera, Mefistofele.

Born in Padua, Boito studied music at the Milan
Conservatoire. The premiere of his only finished
opera, Mefistofele, based on Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe|Goethe's Faust, came in 1868. The premiere
was badly received, provoking riots and duels over
its supposed "Wagnerism", and it was closed by the
police after two performances. But Boito's revised
and drastically cut version (which also changed
Faust from a baritone to a tenor) was a great
success, and it is still frequently performed and
recorded today. Other than this work, Boito wrote
very little music, completing but later destroying
another opera, Ero e Leandro, and leaving a
further opera, Nerone, incomplete at his death.
Excluding the last act, for which he left only a
few sketches, it was finished by Arturo Toscanini
and Vincenzo Tommasini and premiered at Il Teatro
alla Scala in 1924. Mefistofele is the only work
of his performed with any regularity today.

As well as writing the libretti for his own
operas, Boito wrote them for other composers, the
most notable examples being for Giuseppe Verdi's
Falstaff (opera)|Falstaff and Otello, and (as
"Tobia Gorrio") for Amilcare Ponchielli's La
Gioconda.

Boito was director of the Parma Conservatoire from
1889 to 1897. He died in Milan and was interred
there in the Cimitero Monumentale.