BOITO, ARRIGO, Italian poet and composer, was born at Padua on Feb. 24, 1842, and died at Milan on June 1 o, 1918. While still very young he went to Milan and entered the Con servatoire, where he studied under Muzzaccato. Here he made friends also with Franco Faccio, who collaborated with him in writing a cantata, The Fourth of June, and a mystery, The Sisters of Italy, performed at the Conservatoire in 1861 and 1862. Im bued with the "advanced" tendencies of Wagner, Liszt and others, he fell much under the influence at Milan of Emilio Praga, a leading modernist of the day, alike in poetry and music. And here he projected and in due course achieved one of the most important and characteristic of his own productions in the shape of his Me fisto f ele, whose reception however by the public on its first production in 1868 was anything but favourable. Seven years later it was revived successfully at Bologna. Boito treated the Faust legend in a spirit far more nearly akin to the con ception of Goethe than is found in Gounod's "Faust," but, in spite of some attractive pages, his opera lacks cohesion and dramatic interest and suggests little real inspiration. Nor can much more be said for his only other opera, Nero, which having been withheld from the public by the fastidious composer for years and years was finally produced at Milan (six years after his death), in 1924. For here again the high aim and ambition of the composer are more apparent in his work than any really gen uine and noteworthy creative power. Much happier were Boito's achievements as a librettist in which capacity he takes rank second to none. Of unsurpassable excellence are the "books" of Otello and with which he provided his friend Verdi, while those of Ponchielli's La Gioconda and Faccio's Hamlet were also from his pen. His fine translations of Rienzi and Tristan and his ad mirable original verse and other writings testify to the exceptional powers of his mind. Both Oxford and Cambridge universities gave BoIto the honorary degree of Doctor of Music.