About the work
The Sailor's Return is a romantic opera in three acts by Franz von Suppé, with a libretto by Anton Langer. It premiered on 4 May 1885 at the Stadttheater Hamburg, posthumously for the librettist, who had already died in 1879, and is one of Suppé's rare serious stage works.
Plot
The sailor Pietro returns to a Dalmatian harbour town after twenty years of military service. The mayor Quirino wants to force the young Nicolò into conscription so that he himself can marry Nicolò's fiancée Jela. When Pietro recognises his long-lost love in Jela's singing voice and realises Jela is her daughter, he re-enlists in the navy to spare Nicolò and give the young couple a future.
Cultural significance
The opera was well received in Hamburg but was soon forgotten in Germany; its original score was long thought lost after being destroyed in 1943, until a conductor found a copy in an American archive in 2007. Since then the work has seen occasional Croatian revivals, in Split and Rijeka among other cities, and a complete recording in 2016.