Opera by Gaetano Donizetti
La romanziera e l'uomo nero (also known as La romanzesca e l'uomo nero) is an 1831 one-act farsa with music by Gaetano Donizetti and an Italian libretto by Domenico Gilardoni, possibly based on the 1819 play "La donna dei romanzi" by Augusto Bon. Other suggested sources include "L'homme noir" (1820) by Eugene Scribe and Jean-Henri Dupin and "Le coiffeur et le perruquier" (1824) by Scribe, Édouard-Joseph-Ennemond Mazères and Charles Nombret Saint-Laurent.
Performance history.
The opera was premiered on 18 June 1831 at the Teatro del Fondo, Naples, and there was only one further performance. The words and music of the arias and ensembles have survived, but the spoken dialogue has been lost. The opera's music was performed in 1982 at the Camden Festival, and in Fermo in 1988. In November 2000, staged performances took place in Rovigo with dialogue re-created by Michelangelo Zurletti from the Scribe plays on which the opera may have been based.
Of this work Ashbrook writes:
The plot is a satire on Romanticism: in the "rondo"-finale Antonina assures her father that she will give up willows, cypresses, urns and ashes, and take up more appropriate pursuits like singing and dancing and going to the opera.
He also points out that Filidoro's canzonetta is a parody of the Gondolier's song from Rossini's "Otello".
References.
Notes
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Cited sources