Il campanello or Il campanello di notte (The Night Bell) is a melodramma giocoso, or opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

, in one act by Gaetano Donizetti

Gaetano Donizetti

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...

. The composer wrote the Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 after Mathieu-Barthélemy Troin Brunswick and Victor Lhérie's French vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 La sonnette de nuit. The premiere was on June 1, 1836.

Performance history

The opera was presented in Italian at the Lyceum Theatre in London on 6 June 1836 and in English on 9 March 1841. It was also given in in English in 1870. It was first performed in Italian in the US in Philadelphia on 25 October 1861; this production went on to New York three days later. An English translation was seen in that city on 7 May 1917.

Today, it is very rarely presented.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 1 June 1836 (Conductor: - )
Serafina, a young bride	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Amalia Schütz
Don Annibale di Pistacchio, an apothecary, her husband	bass	Raffaele Casaccia
Spiridione, Don Annibale's servant	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Madama Rosa, Serafina's aunt	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
Enrico, Serafina's cousin	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Giorgio Ronconi Giorgio Ronconi Giorgio Ronconi was an Italian operatic baritone celebrated for his brilliant acting and compelling stage presence. In 1842, he created the title-role in Giuseppe Verdi's Nabucco at La Scala, Milan.-Career:...

Synopsis

Time: Early 19th century

Place: Naples

Don Annibale Pistacchio, an old apothecary, has just married the young Serafina. Enrico, Serafina's former lover, constantly interrupts the wedding night by showing up in several disguises and calling at Pistacchio's drugstore by ringing the night bell, asking the unfortunate groom to fill a preposterous list of prescriptions.

Recordings

• 1946: Simonetto/Scarangella/Truccato Pace/Mercuriali/Capecchi/Bruscantini, live in Turin (Cetra)
• 1963: Gracis/Bruno de Sanctis/Rafanelli/Guggia/Rinaldi/Mariotti. (Deutsche Grammophon)
• 1979: Amaducci/Devia/Casoni/Gaifa/Nucci/Taddei, live in Bregenz (HRE)
• 1983: Bertini/Baltsa/Casoni/Gaifa/Romero/Dara, (CBS)
• 1995: Carminati/Taliento/de Mola/Casalin/Nucci/Dara, live in Turin (Ricordi)
• 1996: Larkin/Bender/Kokolus/Powell/Sims/Hepler, 1996, live in New York (Newport)

External links

• Libretto (Italian)