About the work
La rondine is a three-act opera by Giacomo Puccini with an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Adami, based on a German-language operetta by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert. Vienna's Carltheater commissioned Puccini to write an operetta in 1913; he composed instead a work between operetta and comic opera, finishing the score in 1916. Because of the First World War the premiere could not take place in Vienna and was given instead on 27 March 1917 at the opera house in Monte Carlo, with Gilda Dalla Rizza in the leading role.
Plot
In the Paris and Riviera of the Second Empire, the fashionable Magda is kept by her banker lover Rambaldo. In disguise, she meets the young, naive Ruggero at the Bullier dance hall and falls in love with him. The couple move to the Riviera and plan a future together, but when Ruggero's mother welcomes their marriage, Magda can no longer hide her past: to spare Ruggero a scandal, she leaves him and returns to Rambaldo.
Cultural significance
Publisher Tito Ricordi initially rejected the score as too close to Lehár, so Puccini sold it to the Sonzogno publishing house instead. Despite a warm reception at its premiere, La rondine remained one of Puccini's least performed operas throughout his life; he revised it repeatedly until his death without settling on a definitive version.