Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Comedy in an Age of Tragedy
- 1 Opera Buffa in 1832: Il nuovo Figaro and L'elisir d'amore
- 2 The Ricci Supremacy and the Celebration of Italian Comedy: Un'avventura di Scaramuccia (1834)
- 3 Old Librettos Revisited: Gaetano Rossi and Luigi Ricci's Le nozze di Figaro (1838) and Other Remakes
- 4 Genre in Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale (1843)
- 5 Genre in Giovanni Peruzzini and Lauro Rossi's Il borgomastro di Schiedam (1844)
- 6 “Evviva la Francia”? Nationality, Censorship, and Donizetti's La figlia del reggimento (1840)
- Conclusion: The Ricci Legacy, Crispino e la comare (1850), and Post-1848 Opera Buffa
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
2 - The Ricci Supremacy and the Celebration of Italian Comedy: Un'avventura di Scaramuccia (1834)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 December 2013
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Comedy in an Age of Tragedy
- 1 Opera Buffa in 1832: Il nuovo Figaro and L'elisir d'amore
- 2 The Ricci Supremacy and the Celebration of Italian Comedy: Un'avventura di Scaramuccia (1834)
- 3 Old Librettos Revisited: Gaetano Rossi and Luigi Ricci's Le nozze di Figaro (1838) and Other Remakes
- 4 Genre in Gaetano Donizetti's Don Pasquale (1843)
- 5 Genre in Giovanni Peruzzini and Lauro Rossi's Il borgomastro di Schiedam (1844)
- 6 “Evviva la Francia”? Nationality, Censorship, and Donizetti's La figlia del reggimento (1840)
- Conclusion: The Ricci Legacy, Crispino e la comare (1850), and Post-1848 Opera Buffa
- Notes
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Tutto è buon purché si rida …
[All is good so long as one laughs …]
—Felice Romani, Un'avventura di Scaramuccia (1834)Celebrating Italian Identity
More than a decade separates L'elisir d'amore from Donizetti's final opera buffa, Don Pasquale. During that time, Donizetti himself composed only a small handful of other comic works—two one-act works for the Teatro Nuovo in Naples (Il campanello and Betly, both 1836) and La Fille du régiment for the Opéra Comique in Paris (1840). Thus it was Luigi Ricci who by the mid-1830s stood as the leading champion of opera buffa in Italy. For the remainder of his career, his operas were either comic or semiserious, with the sole exception of the 1845 opera seria, La solitaria delle Asturie, composed for Odessa. The success of Il nuovo Figaro soon led to new commissions to create comic operas for several Italian cities, including Rome, Turin, and Milan. Pivotal in establishing Ricci's supremacy was Un'avventura di Scaramuccia, to a new libretto by Felice Romani, premiered at La Scala on March 8, 1834.
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- Information
- Laughter between Two RevolutionsOpera Buffa in Italy, 1831-1848, pp. 57 - 88Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2013