Il turco in Italia at Barcelona Opera House Gran Teatre Del Liceu

One of the most famous comedies of Rossini

An intricate, fast-moving, light-hearted comic plot and a diabolical tempo: these are the main hallmarks of Rossini´s brilliant score.

This production of Il turco in Italia (Milan, 1814) -- one of the turqueries fashionable in Rossini´s time -- will be the first ever seen at the Liceu. The action is set in Naples, where the poet Prosdocimo is searching for a subject for a play (for this reason the opera has been considered «Pirandellian»). It centres on the romance between the Turkish prince Selim and his favourite concubine, the gypsy Zaida, and on Fiorilla -- a frivolous coquette with a passion for pleasing -- who is married to Don Geronio and has a devoted admirer in Narciso. The Turk falls for Fiorilla but in the end, after numerous misunderstandings sparked off by the characters´ cross-dressing, everything turns out well: the lovers are reconciled and Fiorilla resolves to try to be more circumspect.

Dramma buffo in two acts. Libretto by Felice Romani after an existing libretto of the same title by Caterino Mazzolà. Music by Gioachino Rossini. First performed on 14 August 1814 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan.