About the work
Il macigno is an opera in two acts by Victor de Sabata, with a libretto by Alberto Colantuoni. It premiered on 31 March 1917 at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, conducted by Ettore Panizza with Carmen Melis and Giuseppe Danise, and remains the only full-length opera by a composer far better known as a conductor.
Plot
Deep hatred divides two rival mountain villages. Driade and Iberto, each from one of the two communities, fall in love and flee together; in revenge, their fellow villagers send a huge boulder (macigno) crashing down the mountainside, burying both of them.
Cultural significance
For a 1935 performance in Turin the work was expanded to three acts and retitled "Driada"; the original orchestral score was lost in the 1943 bombing of Milan, leaving only the piano-vocal score and libretto. Commentators have repeatedly placed its fatal love story between feuding villages alongside works such as Catalani's "La Wally" and d'Annunzio's "La figlia di Iorio."