In 1909 Vittorio Gnecchi completed, after more than two years of work, the composition of La Rosiera, a tragic idyll set in the eighteenth century on a libretto taken from On ne badine pas avec l’amour by Alfred De Musset.
Performances in 1930
First staged only on February 16, 1927 at the Reussisches Theater in Gera, it was revived in its entirety in stage form on November 23, 1927 in Pilsen, Czechoslovakia, on March 31, 1928 at the Volksoper in Vienna, conducted by Ludwig Kaiser, and on November 28, 1929 in Barmen, Germany.
The Teatro Comunale Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste put it on the bill for the 1930-31 season, conducted by Giuseppe Baroni; the Teatro Alighieri in Ravenna on June 14, 1932 (with repetitions on the 5th and 7th), under the direction of Giuseppe Del Campo.
The Baron of Salency, plans the wedding between his son Perdicano and his niece Camilla, just out of college. But the enterprising and bold Perdicano is rejected by the reluctant and timid Camilla. He then turns to Rosetta, Camilla's milk sister, who is seduced by the young man. Camilla becomes jealous, but not wanting to admit that she is in love with her cousin, she proposes to close herself in a convent. The second act opens with celebrations for Perdicano and Rosetta, about to be elected Queen of the Roses of the village, but she is disturbed by the tension between Perdicano and Camilla. The latter, now blind with jealousy, convinces Rosetta to attend a pathetic scene that she herself will act with her cousin. In front of Perdicano, however, Camilla can not pretend and passionately reveals her true feelings of love. Rosetta, realizing that she has been the victim of a cruel game, decides to kill herself. On the staircase of the castle covered with roses, where Camilla and Perdicano, will parade as happy spouses, Rosetta kills herself with the rose scythe. Faced with her blood and aware of their responsibilities, the two young people feel guilty and part ways forever.
Another opera, another style, as Gian Giacomo Manzutto, music critic from Trieste, underlined:
"Gnecchi looked for a counterpart, which would allow him a softer treatment in the subject and in the technique. After having drawn on the greatness of the epic tragedy, he wanted to try his hand at an idyll. So, from the strong overwhelming passions he shifted to more tenuous ones, caressed by a gentle romantic breath which he found in the delicate work by De Musset, whose light sensual touch is embellished by ideals of high poetry.
In this way he could paint in pastels, he could detach himself a little from the setting of the musical drama of Monteverdi's origins, he could approach our nineteenth-century classics: melodramas with playful figures enriched by a dusting of sparkling modernity. He could alternate the caricatured laughter with tenacious accents of love, turning a laugh into a spasm of pain, like bursting from the lips of the betrayed when approach of the happy couple’s wedding. He was still able to draw from popular sources, enchantments of folkloristic taste, in dances of great almost peasant, inventive simplicity. Here therefore the fundamental elements of the "Rosiera", exquisite picture breathing a sweet sense of poetry".
