LA FINTA GIARDINIERA

(The Pretended Garden-Girl)
Libretto Giuseppe Petrosellini
(Running time 2 hours 15mins with interval)

 18 year old Mozart wrote home excitedly to his mother in Salzburg: "My opera (La Finta Giardiniera) was such a success it is impossible for me to describe the applause". 

www.galleontheatre.co.uk
          
In comic opera fashion of this time, La Finta Giardiniera features a conjunction of upper and lower class characters, the eponymous gardener Sandrina, being a Marchesa in search of her lover, Count Belfiore, who believes he had killed her in a lover's quarrel. She disguises herself as a gardener and enters into the service of Don Anchise, who immediately becomes infatuated by the pretty Garden-Girl and proposes marriage. The story follows Count Belfiore and Marchesa. Violante is disguised as the gardener Sandrina and confronts Belfiore, who is by this point engaged to Arminda, niece of Don Anchise. In a fit of jealousy Arminda kidnaps Violante. When Violante is found both she and Belfiore nearly go mad until eventually Violante decides to forgive Belfiore.


 

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