Voltaire

Voltaire, born François-Marie Arouet, was a French writer and philosopher of the Enlightenment and the author of Candide. He wrote in almost every form, and knew the Bastille and exile in England before settling at Ferney, near Geneva. His works include seven librettos, among them a Samson for Rameau abandoned under church opposition, but his mark on opera came through his tragedies, full of extreme situations and clashes of faith and race. Over seventy operas of the decades around 1800 were based on them alone, among them Rossini's Tancredi and Semiramide, Bellini's Zaira and Verdi's Alzira.