About the work
Il falegname di Livonia, ossia Pietro il Grande, czar delle Russie is a two-act opera buffa by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Gherardo Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini, drawing on Felice Romani's text for Giovanni Pacini's opera of the same subject and on Alexandre Duval's comedy Le menuisier de Livonie. It premiered on 26 December 1819 at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice for the opening of the carnival season – only Donizetti's fourth opera to reach the stage, but the first to receive more than one production.
Plot
In the late seventeenth century, the carpenter Carlo poses as a nobleman and encounters Tsar Peter and his wife Catherine travelling incognito. The local magistrate Ser Cuccupis mistakes Peter for a nobleman named Menshikov and has Carlo arrested. Documents then reveal that Carlo is actually Catherine's brother; the romantic entanglements are resolved, and the company sets off for Saint Petersburg.
Cultural significance
The opera reached about seven productions by 1827 before falling into obscurity. It returned to the stage only through a reconstructed edition premiered in Saint Petersburg in 2003 and a production at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in 2004.