“Chi il bel sogno di Doretta” from La rondine

La rondine (The Swallow)
Music: Giacomo Puccini
Libretto: Giuseppe Adami

Ailyn Pérez, soprano
Doug Peck, music director

After the 1910 premiere of La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), Giacomo Puccini (1958-1924) needed a subject for a new opera and began a search that frustrated him for several years. When attending the Vienna premiere of Fanciulla in the fall of 1913, the directors of the Karlstheater proposed a new commission for Puccini—his first operetta, which he completed in two years. A Vienna premiere was impossible, given that Austria and Italy were now fighting against each other in the first World War.  The piece’s premiere, an opera in its final form, rather than an operetta, took place in Monte Carlo with great success in 1917. 

The “swallow” of the title is courtesan Magda de Civry, the mistress of a wealthy businessman in 1850s Paris. She falls in love with a young man from the country and begins living with him, but eventually she’s compelled to reveal her past to him and leaves him to return to her old life, like a swallow returning to its nest. The opera’s most famous aria occurs early in Act One; at a party in Magda’s home, the poet Prunier improvises a story about a girl named Doretta, for which he has no ending. In her aria, Magda suggests one—Doretta finds happiness in a student’s love for her. She concludes, “What do riches matter if true happiness blossoms?” Puccini has given a thrilling opportunity to sopranos possessing the necessary floating top notes for these soaring phrases. 

Photo: Todd Rosenberg