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La forza del destino was commissioned to Giuseppe Verdi by the St Petersburg Imperial Theatres in 1861, and premiered in November 1862, at the Bolshoy Kamenny Theatre. The opera was written on a libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, and draws its subject from the Spanish drama Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino, by Ángel de Saavedra, through an Italian version by Faustino Sanseverino, and with insertions of fragments from Schiller’s trilogy Wallengstein. In this paper I analyse the genesis of the opera, considering the typical derivation of Italian operatic librettos from pre-existing literary works, a process that combines mediated and inter-semiotic translation. This allows me to show the artistic resources offered by mediated translation in the field of stage literature. On another level of discussion, given that for the Premiere Apollon Grigor’yev translated the libretto from Italian to Russian, I consider the role of translation on the reception of this subject by the local audience.

Strategies in Translating Italian Librettos in 18th Century Poland Polish dramatic writers of the 18th century very often referred to the European repertoire. The majority of Polish dramas in fact were translations or adaptations of foreign texts. Among Italian sources opera and oratorio librettos were the most important. The paper is an attempt to review Polish translations of Italian librettos in the 18th century, to reconstruct the translators’ motivation and to discover their translation strategies. In the first half of the 18th century a huge part of translated dramas were created by the Jesuits in order to be presented on school stage. Apart from this kind of texts at that time there were also Polish translations whose aim was to accompany performances in Italian language as texts „for reading”. Only in the late 18th century translation were used in performances with original music. Specific circumstances and finality of translations would have a decisive impact on translation strategies which could affect the story, the ideology but also the form of dramas and usually resulted in change of genre. These modifications prove that the translation of theater texts is especially submitted to a pressure of target system cultural context because the target text has to establish a direct contact with the public. Examining the history of translations and the evolution of translator’s approach helps to reconstruct an important share of the history of Polish dramaturgy and to indicate its sources.

While the reception of Italian opera in seventeenth-century France is now well known, questions remain concerning the manner of this repertoire’s acclimation to the court. Despite Mazarin’s efforts to Italianize the French musical landscape, the Italian operas presented at court between 1645 and 1662 were subject to readaptations aimed at their Frenchifying, either artistically or politically. This process took place in phases and in several steps: from 1645 to 1647 it was predominantly concerned with the operas’ text and music, while from 1654 to 1662 reworkings were more invasive, inserting elements from French musical genres, such as the ballet de court. At the same time, as the king reached the age of majority, political interference became clear, particularly after the death of Mazarin. The purpose of this study is to explore the interplay of influences and to show how the object of “Italian opera” was gradually stripped of its significant artistic overtones in response to artistic and political issues specific to the court in the pivotal period of the transfer of power from Mazarin to Louis XIV.

This article returns to the well-known notion of sentimental culture, and specifically, to sentimental opera derived from the English novel. The notion that goodness must triumph, that a poor but honest girl should ‘make good’, and that such goodness should form a binding force between humans, was such a strong force in late 18th-century culture that it has been used as a means to define it as an ‘age’. Among the most important formative work in this ‘sentimental’ style is Richardson’s novel, Pamela, that came to the attention of the writer Isaac Bickerstaffe (1733?-1808) who re-worked it as an English opera, remarking that the piece ‘however trifling in other circumstances, was the first sentimental drama that had appeared on the English stage for forty years’. The work set to music by Samuel Arnold (1740-1802), was representative of a new musical genre, the pastiche opera that incorporated the music of others. From a musical point of view, the opera is not hugely important; in modern day terms, the lack of a single identifiable composer or compositional aesthetic makes it a problematical artistic object to assess today. And yet the very simplicity of the music was the defining attribute that allowed the ‘sentimentality’ of the story to shine through, and did herald a new genre in English opera, the pastiche. This article will argue that the very particular circumstances of an English performance played a vital role in the development of sentimental opera in London.

Based on Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor, Michael Balfe’s Falstaff, created in 1838 for London’s Italian opera audiences, was the work of an Italian librettist, Manfredo Maggioni, and an Irish composer, a first in a theatre where only Italian maestri were commissioned for new works. Balfe’s and Maggioni’s combined efforts resulted in a truly genuine Italian opera buffa. Not only is it sung in Italian but it also respects the structural codes, vocal and scenic practices which make it recognizable as an opera buffa on the aesthetic stage of the time, and above all on the English stage. The issue of rewriting implies here a reflection on the intimately linked processes of production and reception. Through the study of the libretto and score, its contextualization, as well as contemporary accounts, we will be concerned both with questioning the expectations of Falstaff’s London public and with circumscribing the frontiers of an aesthetic category named “Italian opera”. The term defines itself far from the Italian peninsula at the moment when it comes into contact with non Italian-speaking spectators. As a result of cultural exchanges on the European scale, Falstaff aims both at pleasing Her Majesty’s Theatre’s audiences and, if possible, at gaining international fame as an authentic opera buffa. Yet the opera only obtained a “succès d’estime”, and was never performed again. It nevertheless represents an essential step not only in the works of its composer but in the history of opera in England itself.