X-Nico

4 unusual facts about Felice Romani


Domenico Gilardoni

For a later production, which was to open the new Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa on 7 April 1828, Bellini substantially altered the music and specifically rejected a request by Gilardoni to revise the libretto, preferring instead Felice Romani, whom he regarded as the superior poet.

Druid

For its libretto, Felice Romani reused some of the pseudo-druidical background of La Sacerdotessa to provide colour to a standard theatrical conflict of love and duty.

Opera provides a barometer of well-informed popular European culture in the early 19th century: in 1817 Giovanni Pacini brought druids to the stage in Trieste with an opera to a libretto by Felice Romani about a druid priestess, La Sacerdotessa d'Irminsul ("The Priestess of Irminsul").

Eugenia Tadolini

Verdi's view of her unsuitability for roles like Lady Macbeth was similar to that expressed 10 years earlier by Felice Romani who saw her in Bellini's La straniera.


L'esule di Granata

The Italian libretto was by Felice Romani based on the rivalries between the Zegridi and the Abenceraggi factions in the last days of the kingdom of Granada.


see also

Salvadore Cammarano

Medea (Saverio Mercadante), from an original libretto by Felice Romani