ABSTRACT
Ferdinando formally returned to Florence after fifteen years in exile late in the summer of 1814 under provisions of the Treaty of Parma, signed on April 10 of the same year. News of the treaty was quick to reach Florence, and the change in Ferdinando's status appeared almost immediately on the title page of an opera libretto in which he was singularly identified as the Grand Duke of Tuscany; his other titles, Archduke of Austria, Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia, etc., were omitted. Under both Ferdinando and Leopoldo the social fabric of Florentine society proved to be extremely flexible, embracing as it did a constantly shifting combination of local aristocracy and a large number of such foreigners who could afford to travel, on the one hand, and especially those acceptable to the resident upper-class society on the other.
