Though I Lombardi alla prima crociata (The Lombards on the First Crusade) was Verdi's fourth opera in order of composition—following two lesser works and Nabucco—it was his first to be staged in the United States, at Palmo's Opera House, in New York, on March 3, 1847. But before then, on at least three occasions in New York, excerpts had been sung in concerts. And the earliest of these, on May 12, 1846, was possibly the first public performance of any Verdi music in the United States. At the city's Apollo Theater, the Italian artist Rosina Pico, just back from Havana, where his Ernani and I Lombardi shortly would receive their hemispheric premieres, introduced the composer to New York audiences by singing “Ernani involami” and, from the last act of I Lombardi, Giselda's ecstatic assertion that a vision of her beloved in paradise was not a dream, “Non fu sogno!”

Pico sang the Lombardi aria again on May 20 in Castle Garden, at a concert of the New York Philharmonic, which was widely reviewed because it presented in its second part the U.S. premiere of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To precede the symphony, the Philharmonic offered not one but three overtures, a piano concerto, and three operatic arias, two by Donizetti and one by Verdi. And Pico with “Non fu sogno!” was reported to have “sung gloriously” and won “a rapturous encore”—though the New York lawyer George Templeton Strong, who was present and “sadly disappointed” in the symphony, described the arias in his diary as merely “some tolerabiles ineptia from Verdi and Donizetti.”

The other selection from I Lombardi sung in public before the opera's premiere was the “conversion” trio for soprano, tenor, and bass that closes act 3, “Qui posa il fianco” (Here set yourself down). A young Muslim prince, dying and in love with Giselda, a Christian, for her sake converts and is baptized by a hermit with water from the River Jordan. A solo violin introduces the scene with a miniature concerto—opening statement, three tiny movements, and coda—and, even after the voices enter, the violin continues to interject its message of hope and salvation. In the United States, this trio would surpass even the Crusaders’ chorus of lament, “O Signore dal tetto natio,” as the opera's most frequently excerpted number.