Generali: Cecchina suonatrice di ghironda

A few weeks after Rossini made his debut at the San Moisè opera house in Venice with La cambiale di matrimonio; (with libretto by Gaetano Rossi); on 26 December 1810 the same venue hosted Cecchina suonatrice di ghironda; (another libretto by Gaetano Rossi); by an older composer Pietro Generali (1773?-1832). Both works were a farsa – a one-act form that was not necessarily comic. Cecchina in fact belongs to the ‘sentimental’ genre of then newly successful novels; with comedy traditionally confined to a few scenes featuring a pair of bass characters: The action centres on a love-affair made difficult by social differences between the soprano Cecchina; a young woman also from Savoy who has made her fortune on the streets of the French capital; and the tenor Enrico; a noble disguised as a penniless painter. The basic plot is the same one which Rossi would later propose to Donizetti with Linda di Chamounix (1842).