Felice Romani

• 1. Introduction

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  Nearly one hundred opera librettos carry Felice Romani's name. Born in Genoa on the 31st of January 1788, he trained first as a lawyer and scholar before turning to the stage. Critics and historians placed him between two giants: Metastasio before him and Boito after. Composers including Bellini, Donizetti, and Rossini competed for his verses. Some of the works he supplied words for became permanent fixtures of the repertoire. What shaped a poet who could satisfy composers of such different temperaments? And what finally drove the most celebrated of those working partnerships apart?

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• 2. The Scholarly Foundation

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  At the University of Genoa, Romani translated French literature and studied law alongside it. He and a colleague also produced a six-volume dictionary of mythology and antiquities. That project included research into the history of the Celts in Italy. Most of the librettos Romani later wrote drew on French literary sources. Some turned to mythology as their foundation.

  From Genoa, Romani appears to have traveled to France, Spain, Greece, and Germany before arriving in Milan around 1812 or 1813. He had already declined a post at the University of Genoa. In Milan, he turned down a second prestigious offer: the position of court poet in Vienna. He chose instead to write two librettos for the composer Simon Mayr. That pair of works earned him an appointment as the official librettist for La Scala. In spite of his deep familiarity with French literature, Romani never agreed to take work in Paris.

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• 3. The Bellini Partnership

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  Vincenzo Bellini described in a letter to Francesco Florimo, written on the 4th of August 1834, exactly what he required from a libretto. He needed dramatic, even extravagant situations expressed in verses designed to portray the passions in the liveliest manner. Romani delivered exactly that. Between 1827 and 1833, the two produced seven operas together. They were Il pirata, La straniera, Zaira, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, La sonnambula, Norma, and Beatrice di Tenda. Bellini was clear about what the partnership meant to him. He is quoted as having said: "Give me good verses and I will give you good music."

  The collaboration fell apart over Beatrice di Tenda in 1833. Romani failed to deliver the text on time, and the missed deadlines caused a serious rupture between them. Bellini's next opera, I puritani, used a libretto by Carlo Pepoli. After that project, Bellini declared he would write no further Italian operas with any librettist other than Romani. He never had the chance. He died less than a year after I puritani premiered. Romani responded with an obituary in which he expressed his deep regret over their falling out. Gaetano Donizetti was staging his own Romani libretto that same year, with Lucrezia Borgia reaching audiences in 1833.

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• 4. A Wider Circle

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  For Gioachino Rossini, Romani supplied three librettos: Aureliano in Palmira, Il turco in Italia, and Bianca e Falliero. Aureliano in Palmira reached the stage in 1813; Bianca e Falliero in 1819. For Gaetano Donizetti, Romani wrote Anna Bolena and L'elisir d'amore. The latter he adapted from a French text, Eugène Scribe's Le philtre. He also reworked a libretto he had originally written for Adalbert Gyrowetz. Verdi later used that text for his early comedy Un giorno di regno, first performed in 1840.

  The libretto for Francesca da Rimini attracted at least eleven composers, with settings spanning 1823 to 1857. Individual texts were renamed, revised, and handed to new composers across the decades. Caterina di Guisa, for instance, was first staged in 1833 and set by eight more composers in the years that followed, the last arriving in 1868.

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• 5. After the Stage

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  In 1834, Romani accepted the editorship of the Gazzetta Ufficiale Piemontese. He used the post to contribute literary criticism and held it for most of the rest of his life. One break came between 1849 and 1854, but he returned after it and stayed until his death. A volume of his lyric poems appeared in 1841. His last libretto, Cristina di Svezia, was composed for Sigismond Thalberg in 1855. Romani died in Moneglia, in the Ligurian region of Italy, on the 28th of January 1865. He was three days short of his seventy-seventh birthday. His Colombo libretto was set to music for the final time in 1869, four years after he was gone.

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