About the work
Il turco in Italia is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Felice Romani, reworked from an earlier text by Caterino Mazzolà. It premiered on 14 August 1814 at Teatro alla Scala in Milan.
Plot
In Naples, the poet Prosdocimo, looking for material for a comedy, observes the Turkish prince Selim flirting with the unhappily married, coquettish Fiorilla, while her husband Geronio and her admirer Narciso grow jealous and Selim's former lover Zaida also appears. After confusion at a masked ball, Selim is reunited with Zaida, Fiorilla reconciles with Geronio, and Prosdocimo has found his comic plot.
Cultural significance
The opera is often seen as a counterpart to Rossini's earlier success L'italiana in Algeri, sending a foreigner to Italy instead of the reverse. It failed with Milanese audiences in 1814, who accused Rossini of merely repeating himself, and only a twentieth-century rediscovery — including a celebrated 1950 Rome production with Maria Callas as Fiorilla — secured its place in the repertoire.