"Operettizzare" Donizetti: il caso della "Figlia del reggimento"

On the basis of wide-ranging statistical surveys, recent pioneering studies on operetta in Italy of the second half of the 19th century have shown that the repertoire of the tour companies involved in the diffusion process of the genre built their repertoires drawing on two main sources: from one side, operettas imported from France performed in the original language or, more frequently, translated; on the other hand, new operettas composed in Italian by Italian composers (De Lucca, 2019; Oliva, 2020). Less known is the fact that sometimes they also appeared on the billboards of operetta companies titles of the Italian comic opera repertoire of the more or less recent past. This re-contextualization within theatrical spaces and repertoires other than the original ones it also entailed a re-semantization? In other words, what were the cultural spin-offs of that we could call the “operatization” of an Italian opera? Based above all on the discourses developed by the Italian periodical press of the time, my speech will attempt to answer these questions by reflecting on the case of circulation, over the years Seventies and Nineties of the nineteenth century, of a famous title of the Donizetti catalog in the repertoires of Italian Operetta Companies: "La figlia del reggimento".