About the work
La serva padrona is a two-part intermezzo by Giovanni Paisiello, setting the same libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico that Giovanni Battista Pergolesi had already made famous in 1733, expanded with additional numbers for Paisiello's version. As Kapellmeister at the court of Catherine II, Paisiello wrote the work to celebrate the name day of the future Tsar Alexander I; it premiered on 10 September 1781 (30 August by the Julian calendar then used in Russia) at the palace of Tsarskoye Selo near St Petersburg.
Plot
The clever servant Serpina wants to persuade the wealthy but indolent Uberto to marry her. She pretends she is about to marry a rough soldier named Tempesta in order to make Uberto jealous. The ruse works: afraid of losing his housekeeper, Uberto agrees to marry Serpina himself — the supposed soldier turns out to be a servant in disguise.
Cultural significance
Paisiello himself feared he could not compete with Pergolesi's setting of the same text, already famous across Europe for almost fifty years, but his version was well received at the Russian court and staged in several European cities. It shows how a popular buffo libretto kept being reset for new audiences across the decades.