About the work
Il re alla caccia is a dramma giocoso in three acts by Baldassare Galuppi to a libretto by Carlo Goldoni, based on Michel-Jean Sedaine's text for Pierre-Alexandre Monsigny's opéra-comique Le roi et le fermier (Paris, 1762). It premiered in autumn 1763 at the Teatro San Samuele in Venice.
Plot
An English king meets the virtuous miller's daughter Giannina while out hunting. The nobleman Fidelingh, who had tried to seduce her, is punished by the king, while Giannina's beloved Giorgio is raised to noble rank. The opera ends with three weddings under royal blessing.
Cultural significance
In his Mémoires, Goldoni notes that the story of a king disguised among common people also appears in French versions by Sedaine and Collé and in an English play by Dodsley, and ultimately derives from Calderón's Spanish comedy El alcalde de Zalamea. The opera thus shows how closely eighteenth-century European stage literature reworked the same narrative material across borders.