Giacomo Puccini

La Rondine

LA RONDINE (THE SWALLOW) is a comic opera composed by Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924), with the Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, translated and adapted from a German libretto by Alfred M. Willner and Heinz Reichert. Magda, the mistress of the wealthy Rambaldo, meets the poet and fortune teller, Prunier at a party and is intrigued by his reading that she is a "swallow" and needs true love to be happy. Emboldened by this revelation, she meets and falls in love with Ruggero and leaves Rambaldo but returns to him at the end of the opera when she realizes that Ruggero's family would not accept her past career as a courtesan. La Rondine premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Monaco in March 1917. Puccini made three versions (1917, 1920, 1921) of this work but died before clearly deciding on a final version. This edition is the original 1917 version. Instrumentation: 3(3rd d.Picc).2+EH.2+BCl.2: 4.3.3+BTbn.0: Timp: Perc(6-7): Hp:Clst:Pno: Str (4.4.3.3.3 in set): Vocal Soli (14 roles, SSSSSATTTBBBBB): Chorus.