The Mistress of the Inn , also translated as The Innkeeper Woman or Mirandolina (after the play's main character), is a 1753 three-act comedy by the Venetian

Republic of Venice

The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...

 playwright Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Goldoni

Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...

 about a coquette

Flirting

Flirting is a playful, romantic, or sexual overture by one person to another subtly indicating an interest in a deeper relationship with the other person, and can involve verbal communication as well as body language...

. The play has been regarded as his masterpiece

Masterpiece

Masterpiece in modern usage refers to a creation that has been given much critical praise, especially one that is considered the greatest work of a person's career or to a work of outstanding creativity, skill or workmanship....

. Frederick Davies describes it as Goldoni's Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing is a comedy written by William Shakespeare about two pairs of lovers, Benedick and Beatrice, and Claudio and Hero....

.

Characters

• Mirandolina, the mistress of the inn
• Baron Ripafratta
• Marquis of Forlipopoli
• Count of Albafiorita
• Fabrizio, a servant of the inn
• the Baron's servant
• Ortensia
• Dejanira

Production history

Eleonora Duse

Eleonora Duse

-Life and career:Duse was born in Vigevano, Lombardy, and began acting as a child. Both her father and her grandfather were actors, and she joined the troupe at age four. Due to poverty, she initially worked continually, traveling from city to city with whichever troupe her family was currently...

 is one of the actresses to have played its lead role, Mirandolina; she gave a command performance

Royal Command Performance

For the annual Royal Variety Performance performed in Britain for the benefit of the Entertainment Artistes' Benevolent Fund, see Royal Variety Performance...

 for Queen Victoria

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....

 at Windsor

Windsor Castle

Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...

 on 18 May 1894.

The play was one of those produced by the world-famous Moscow Art Theatre

Moscow Art Theatre

The Moscow Art Theatre is a theatre company in Moscow that the seminal Russian theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavski, together with the playwright and director Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko, founded in 1898. It was conceived as a venue for naturalistic theatre, in contrast to the melodramas...

 (MAT) in its first season. This production opened in a double-bill with Greta's Happiness by Emilia Matthai on 2 December 1898. It was directed by Constantin Stanislavski, who also played the misogynist

Misogyny

Misogyny is the hatred or dislike of women or girls. Philogyny, meaning fondness, love or admiration towards women, is the antonym of misogyny. The term misandry is the term for men that is parallel to misogyny...

 Ripafratta. Stanislavski directed the play in a second production at the MAT, which opened on 3 February 1914 after 112 rehearsals. He played the role of Ripafratta once more. The artist Alexandre Benois

Alexandre Benois

Alexandre Nikolayevich Benois , an influential artist, art critic, historian, preservationist, and founding member of Mir iskusstva , an art movement and magazine...

 provided the scenic design

Scenic design

Scenic design is the creation of theatrical, as well as film or television scenery. Scenic designers have traditionally come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, but nowadays, generally speaking, they are trained professionals, often with M.F.A...

 for this production, which was conceived as a showcase for the actress Olga Gzovskaya.

Adaptations

In 1773 the Venetian

Republic of Venice

The Republic of Venice or Venetian Republic was a state originating from the city of Venice in Northeastern Italy. It existed for over a millennium, from the late 7th century until 1797. It was formally known as the Most Serene Republic of Venice and is often referred to as La Serenissima, in...

 composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

 Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

 and the librettist

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...

 Domenico Poggi adapted the play as a three-act dramma giocoso

Dramma giocoso

Dramma giocoso is the name of a genre of opera common in the mid-18th century. The term is a contraction of "dramma giocoso per musica" and is essentially a description of the text rather than the opera as a whole...

. In 1800 the German composer Simon Mayr

Simon Mayr

Johann Simon Mayr , also known in Italian as Giovanni Simone Mayr or Simone Mayr was a German composer.- Life :...

 and Italian librettist Gaetano Rossi

Gaetano Rossi

Gaetano Rossi was an Italian writer who wrote opera libretti for several composers including Mayr, Rossini, Donizetti, Mercadante, Pacini, and Meyerbeer.-Biography:...

 adapted it as a two-act dramma giocoso. The American composer Henry Kimball Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley

Henry Kimball Hadley was an American composer and conductor.-Life:Hadley was born into a musical family in Somerville, Massachusetts...

 adapted it as a one-act comic opera

Comic opera

Comic opera denotes a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending.Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, opera buffa, emerged as an alternative to opera seria...

 called Bianca

Bianca (opera)

Bianca is a one act opera by American composer Henry Kimball Hadley. The opera's libretto was an English-language adaptation of Carlo Goldoni's comedy The Mistress of the Inn by Grant Stewart...

, which was first performed in 1918. Bohuslav Martinů

Bohuslav Martinu

Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

 also produced an operatic version, his three-act Mirandolina

Mirandolina

Mirandolina is a comic opera in three acts by Bohuslav Martinů, with a libretto by the composer after Carlo Goldoni's comedy The Mistress of the Inn ....

, which was first performed in 1959.

Sources

• Balthazar, Scott L. 1992. "Mayr, Simon." In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0333734327.
• Banham, Martin, ed. 1998. The Cambridge Guide to Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP. ISBN 0521434378.
• Benedetti, Jean. 1999. Stanislavski: His Life and Art. Revised edition. Original edition published in 1988. London: Methuen. ISBN 0413525201.
• Boardman, Herbert R. 1932. Henry Hadley: Ambassador of Harmony. Georgia: Banner P.
• Davies, Frederick, trans. 1968. Four Comedies. By Carlo Goldoni
  Carlo Goldoni
  Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty...
  
  . London: Penguin. ISBN 0140442049.
• Hartnoll, Phyllis, ed. 1983. The Oxford Companion to the Theatre. 4th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. ISBN 0192115464.
• Rice, John A. 1992. "Salieri, Antonio." In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. Ed. Stanley Sadie. London: Macmillan. ISBN 0333734327.
• Worrall, Nick. 1996. The Moscow Art Theatre. Theatre Production Studies ser. London and NY: Routledge. ISBN 0415055989.