ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century Italian opera is often equated with the combination of La Scala and Verdi, regardless of the fact that between 1845 and 1887 not a single opera by Verdi was premiered in Milan;1 and despite extensive research on the repertoire of Italian theatres, for most people “opera in Italy” still means the middle and later Verdi, some Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, as a curiosity possibly Giordano’s Andrea Chénier and Ponchielli’s La Gioconda, and since the fi ne secolo Puccini, Leoncavallo and Mascagni. While this is an accurate refl ection upon “Italian opera in the world,” it is a distortion of what was happening on the Italian stages between Unifi cation and Fascism, contributing to the stereotype of Italians obsessed with their own operatic, culinary and criminal culture, mentally sealed off from what is happening outside the peninsula.2 There were countless Italian stage composers whom we have forgotten (often for good reasons); and impresari as well as local administrations were keen to internationalise the repertoire of their theatres.
