Performance History
The opera underwent many revisions and changes of title over the years, with a performance history nearly as convoluted as its plot. Its first version premiered with the title Otto mesi in due ore at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples on 13 May 1827, and was performed 50 times in its first season. In 1831, it was presented in Florence by Luigi Astolfi to only limited success as Gli esiliati in Siberia. In 1832, Donizetti revised the opera somewhat, adapting the original soprano role of Elisabetta for the popular Austro-Hungarian contralto, Caroline Ungher. He revised the opera further for its premiere in Livorno in 1833.
Between 1838 and 1840 Donizetti substantially re-worked the opera again, adding new music, for a longer version, Élisabeth ou la fille de l'exilé which was intended for performance in Paris. The new French libretto was written by Adolphe de Leuven and Léon-Lévy Runswick. The American musicologist Will Crutchfield has suggested that by this point, it had now a become virtually a separate opera from Otto mesi in due ore, although clearly retaining many elements of the original. However, the new work was never staged in Donizetti's lifetime. Donizetti subsequently offered the Italian version, Elisabetta, to Her Majesty's Theatre in London. Likewise, this version was never performed in his lifetime.
The Italian composer Uranio Fontana, who claimed to have been a pupil of Donizetti, attempted to resurrect the French version after Donizetti's death. However according to Will Crutchfield, Fontana did not have access to Donizetti's revised score, which by this time had ended up in London. Instead, he tried to set the original score of Otto mesi to the longer De Leuven and Brunswick libretto and composed the missing music (over half the opera) himself. The Fontana version premiered at the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris in 1853.
Read more about this topic: Otto Mesi In Due Ore
Famous quotes containing the words performance and/or history:
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)
“Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.”
—Aristotle (384–322 B.C.)