About the work
Il bravo, ossia La Veneziana is a three-act opera by Saverio Mercadante to a libretto by Gaetano Rossi and Marco Marcello, based on the play La Vénitienne by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois, itself drawn from James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Bravo. It premiered at Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 9 March 1839.
Plot
In sixteenth-century Venice, Carlo is forced to serve the Council of Ten as a masked assassin, the "bravo", as punishment for murdering his wife, while his father is held hostage to secure his obedience. He becomes entangled in intrigue around the young Violetta, who turns out to be the daughter of his wife Teodora, believed dead; Teodora ultimately takes her own life.
Cultural significance
The opera was among Mercadante's greatest successes and was quickly staged across Italy and abroad; its dramatic structure is considered a forerunner of Verdi's later Rigoletto. Its revival at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca in 1990 sparked renewed scholarly and artistic interest in Mercadante's operas.