About the work
Isabeau is a leggenda drammatica in three parts by Pietro Mascagni to a libretto by Luigi Illica, adapting the Lady Godiva legend as retold by Alfred Tennyson. Mascagni wrote the opera under a contract for a concert and opera tour of South America and conducted the premiere himself on 2 June 1911 at the Teatro Coliseo in Buenos Aires, with Maria Farneti in the title role.
Plot
King Raimondo demands that his daughter Isabeau choose a husband through a contest; when she refuses, he sentences her to ride naked through the city and decrees that anyone who looks at her will be blinded. The falconer Folco sees her regardless and is arrested; visiting him in prison, Isabeau falls in love with him and pleads for his pardon. The minister Cornelius incites a mob that lynches Folco, and Isabeau then takes her own life.
Cultural significance
The through-composed, symphonically dense score without closed numbers blends Italian lyricism with Wagnerian harmony and was popular with leading Italian tenors before World War II, then fell into neglect until Opera Holland Park gave its UK premiere in 2018.