The Turk in Italy

An insane man, a capricious wife, a jealous friend, a dissatisfied gipsy, an alluring Turk and a poet without inspiration do not completely present the best subject for a opera. On the other hand, the music and the booklet of the Turkish in Italy are as charming one as the other. Gioacchino Rossini writes this opera shortly after Italiana in Algeri. Precisely, the public saw a resemblance between these works. He believed to see one second version of the Italian . Initially, it should be considered that the music of the Turkish was not borrowed of another work, as Rossini had the practice of it. On the other hand, later, it will make use of the beginning of the opening for its opera Otello, ossia It Moro di Venezia.

It is the history of a loved Turk at the same time of a gipsy and an Italian. The poet needs to write a comedy. Not having any source of inspiration, it will try to control the history and to make a comedy of it.

The airs of Fiorilla (the capricious Italian) are exceptional. (Cecilia Bartoli played the part of Fiorilla in a production of the opera in Zurich in 2002.) Unfortunately, there is no melody in the whole work which is known, except some passages of the opening.

The first public representation of It turco in Italia took place with the theater of Scala in Milan on August 14th, 1814.

See too

Operas of Gioacchino Rossini

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