Luisa Miller was composed in Paris and Busseto in 1849 to a libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, based on Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. It was first performed on 8 December at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, and though initially the success was mediocre, later performances were more warmly received. With this opera Verdi opened a completely new phase of his artistic career.

Things did not of course happen overnight, with no antecedents: Luisa Miller develops ideas which had already been important in the ‘galley years’: but there is something here which is essentially different from any previous opera. On the surface, we might find similarities between Luisa and I due Foscari, because in both there is a crowded economy of musical action within a tender, intimate circle of family relationships; but in terms of artistic value the opera is comparable only to Nabucco, Ernani and Macbeth. It is, in short, the fourth Verdi opera which may be taken completely seriously: and up to this point he had written fourteen.

As often occurs, the subject matter and the libretto which Cammarano drew from it do not help us to understand Verdi's intentions. Situations like the one which closes Luisa Miller may have been horrifying, but they were not as remote, abstract or rhetorical as those usually favoured by Verdi up to this point (and this includes, in my opinion, even the geometric symmetry of Ernani and the supernatural elements of Macbeth).