La romanzesca e l'uomo nero (also known as La romanziera e l'uomo nero) is a one-act farsa

Farsa

Farsa is a genre of opera, associated with Venice in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It is also sometimes called farsetta....

 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...

. Domenico Gilardoni 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...

, probably basing it on L'homme noir (1820) by Eugene Scribe

Eugène Scribe

Augustin Eugène Scribe , was a French dramatist and librettist. He is best known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" . This dramatic formula was a mainstay of popular theater for over 100 years.-Biography:...

 and Jean-Henri Dupin and Le coiffeur et le perruquier (1824) by Scribe, Edouard Mazères and Charles Nombret Saint-Laurent. It was composed in 1831.

Performance history

The opera was premiered on 18 June 1831 at the Teatro del Fondo

Teatro del Fondo

The Teatro del Fondo is a theatre in Naples, now known as the Teatro Mercadante. Together with the Teatro San Carlo, it was originally one of the two royal opera houses of the 18th and 19th-century city....

, Naples

Naples

Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of 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

Camden Festival

Camdem Festival was an annual spring festival held in London, England, of which opera was the central feature.Founded in 1954 and continuing until 1987, it was originally called the St Pancras Festival until 1965. It specialised in the revival of long-forgotten operas, some of which subsequently...

, and in Fermo

Fermo

Fermo is a town and comune of the Marche, Italy, in the Province of Fermo.Fermo is located on a hill, the Sabulo with a fine view, on a branch from Porto San Giorgio on the Adriatic coast railway....

 in 1988. In November 2000, staged performances took place in Rovigo

Rovigo

Rovigo is a town and comune in the Veneto region of North-Eastern Italy, the capital of the eponymous province. -Geography:...

 with dialogue re-created by Michele Zurletti from the Scribe plays on which the opera was based.

Of this work Ashbrook

William Ashbrook

William Ashbrook was an American musicologist, writer, journalist, and academic.Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ashbrook earned a BA in English literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1946 and a MA in the same field from Harvard University in 1947...

 writes "The plot is a satire on Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

: 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

Canzonetta

In music, a canzonetta was a popular Italian secular vocal composition which originated around 1560...

 is a parody of the Gondolier's song from Rossini's Otello

Otello (Rossini)

Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello....

.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 18 June 1831
The Count (il Conte)	bass Bass (voice type) A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...	Gennaro Ambrosini
Antonina, his daughter	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...	Luigia Boccabadati Luigia Boccabadati Luigia Boccabadati was an Italian operatic soprano.Born in Modena, Boccabadati made her professional opera debut at the Teatro Regio di Parma in 1817. She then appeared in opera houses in Venice and Rome. She performed the roles of Giulietta in Nicola Vaccai's Giulietta e Romeo and the title...
Chiarina, his niece	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...	Marietta Gioia-Tamburini
Fedele, hoping to marry Chiarina	tenor	Francesco Salvetti
Carlino, the son of a friend of the Count	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...	Lorenzo Lombardi
Filidoro, the man in black (l'uomo nero)	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...	Antonio Tamburini Antonio Tamburini Antonio Tamburini was an Italian operatic baritone.Born in Faenza, then part of the Papal States, Tamburini studied the orchestral horn with his father and voice with Aldobrando Rossi, before making his debut as a singer, aged 18, in La contessa di colle erbose . He went on to become one of the...
Tommaso, his uncle	bass	Gennaro Luzio
Trappolina, Antonia's governess	soprano	Anna Manzi-Salvetti
Giappone, the Count's majordomo	bass	Tauro
Nicola, a servant	bass

List of musical numbers

Scene	Description	Performed by	First lines of sections
1	Introduction Introduction (music) In music, the introduction is a passage or section which opens a movement or a separate piece. In popular music this is often abbreviated as intro...	Giappone, Carlino, Il Conte, Fedele, Chiarina, Trappolina, Tommaso	"Vi prego, avanti avanti" ... "M'insulta, corbella!"
2	Cavatina Cavatina Cavatina is a musical term, originally a short song of simple character, without a second strain or any repetition of the air...	Antonia, Tommaso, Trappolina	"Oh Elodia solitaria"
3	Canzonetta Canzonetta In music, a canzonetta was a popular Italian secular vocal composition which originated around 1560...	Filidoro	"Non v'e maggio dolore"
3	Duet	Antonia, Filidoro	"Ciel! Fia ver? Mio Filidoro!" ... "Ahi la mia nascita" ... "Fuggir da queste mura"
4	Trio Trio (music) Trio is generally used in any of the following ways:* A group of three musicians playing the same or different musical instrument.* The performance of a piece of music by three people.* The contrasting section of a piece in ternary form...	Tommaso, Chiarina, Fedele	"Cinque sensi appena nato" ... "L'occhietto semi-chiuso"
5	Duet	Chiarina, Filidoro	"Che paura! Che paura!" ... "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!"
6	Trio	Nicola, Antonia, Tommaso/ Tommaso, Nicola, Trappolina	"Fuggiam, fuggiam!" ... "Ei stresso! La mia vittima" ... "Destrieri infocati"
7	Rondo Rondo Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...  finale	Antonia, Conte, Fedele, Carlino, Filidoro/ Filidoro, Antonia, All	"Si, colpevole son io" ... "Lascio l'ombre ed I fantasmi"

Recordings

Year	Cast: (Antonia, Chiarina, Fedele, Carlino, Filidoro, Tommaso)	Conductor, Orchestra, Chorus	Label
2000	Elisabetta Scano, Adriana Cicogna, Bruce Ford, Paul Austin Kelly Paul Austin Kelly Paul Austin Kelly is an American opera tenor and former rock musician who also writes, records and performs music for children.He was born in Kingston, New York.-Musical beginnings:... , Pietro Spagnoli, Bruno Praticò	David Parry David Parry (conductor) David Parry is an English conductor who is particularly known for his work within the field of opera. Described as "a man of the theatre with whom directors love to work; he is good with singers; he knows the British opera world like the back of his hand... , Academy of St Martin in the Fields	Audio CD: Opera Rara Opera Rara Opera Rara is a British record label, founded in the early 1970s by Americans Patric Schmid and Don White to promote concerts of rare and/or forgotten operas by Giacomo Meyerbeer and Donizetti and such other "bel canto" composers as Giovanni Pacini, Saverio Mercadante, and Federico Ricci.The... Cat: ORC19
2000	Patrizia Cigna, Claudia Marchi, Giovanni Gregnanin, Patrizio Saudelli, Alessandro Calamai, Gian Paolo Fiocchi	Franco Piva, Orchestra Filarmonica Veneta "G. F. Malipiero", Coro del Teatro Sociale di Rovigo Rovigo Rovigo is a town and comune in the Veneto region of North-Eastern Italy, the capital of the eponymous province. -Geography:...	Audio CD: Bongiovanni Cat: GB 2287/88-2 (2 CDs) Recorded live on 25 and 26 November 2000