About the work
La Fiamma ("The Flame") is an opera in three acts by Ottorino Respighi, to a libretto by Claudio Guastalla after the play "Anne Pedersdotter" by Hans Wiers-Jenssen. It was first performed in 1934 at the Teatro Reale dell'Opera in Rome. Respighi, famous for his richly coloured orchestration, transposes the action to Byzantine Ravenna and unfolds a dark drama of desire, witchcraft and guilt.
Plot
Silvana, the young wife of the ageing exarch Basilio, lives unfree under the stern watch of her mother-in-law Eudossia. When her stepson Donello returns, Silvana is seized by forbidden love. She discovers that — like her own mother, who was burned as a witch — she possesses the secret gift of kindling desire. With this "flame" she wins Donello; but Basilio dies of horror when he senses the truth. Accused of witchcraft before the court, Silvana is denied and betrayed by Donello himself; abandoned to death, her flame goes out.
Cultural significance
La Fiamma was Respighi's greatest stage success and internationally his most performed opera. The work unites the orchestral splendour of the "Pines of Rome" with dramatic force and Byzantine colour. After decades of relative oblivion it is being rediscovered today — most prominently at the Deutsche Oper Berlin — and prized as a striking example of Italian opera between late Romanticism and modernism.