About the work
Edgar is an opera by Giacomo Puccini with a libretto by Ferdinando Fontana, freely based on Alfred de Musset's verse play La Coupe et les lèvres (1832). Puccini finished composing the original four-act version in 1887, and it premiered on 21 April 1889 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. After a poor public reception, Puccini cut it down to three acts in 1892 and revised it again in 1905.
Plot
The story is set in Flanders in 1302, during the wars against France. Young Edgar is torn between the devoted Fidelia and the seductive Tigrana; he first lets Tigrana lure him into a dissolute life, then turns to Fidelia and goes off to war. Believed killed in battle, he reveals himself to be alive, whereupon the jealous Tigrana stabs Fidelia to death.
Cultural significance
The premiere was a failure and the opera received only a handful of performances; Puccini later distanced himself sharply from the work, dismissing it as "reheated soup." He later reused some of the discarded music in Tosca, and the original four-act version was long thought lost until it was rediscovered in 2007 and performed in a reconstructed staging in 2008.