The Operas

Abstract

La fedeltà premiata is a dramma giocoso in three acts, written to commemorate the opening of the new Eszterházy opera house. The house was to be completed in 1780, but the opening, and along with it Haydn's new work, was put off until February 25 of the following year. La Fedeltà was to become one of Haydn's most successful comedies, and it stayed in the repertory in Eszterháza until 1785. The composer subsequently reworked La Fedeltà into two other versions—one a shortened two-act version, and the other a German-language version that was produced in both Vienna (where it was attended by Emperor Franz Joseph II) and Bratislava.

The libretto, by Giambattista Lorenzi, is a revised version of his earlier work, L'infeldeltà fedele, which was set by Cimarosa in 1779 (Haydn owned a copy of Cimarosa's score, and made reference to it in several sections of La fedeltà premiata). To make his new version Lorenzi rethought (and in two cases combined) some of the characters, and gave the piece, which had originally been full of regional dialect and coarse humor, a more refined mood. The final product is an effective combination of comic and serious elements, much like that seen in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and it drew from Haydn some of his best operatic writing.

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