About the work
La tempesta is a three-act Italian-language opera with a prologue by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Eugène Scribe (Italian version by Pietro Giannone), freely adapted from Shakespeare's The Tempest. Felix Mendelssohn had originally been approached but rejected Scribe's text; Halévy took on the composition instead. It premiered on 8 June 1850 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London, with Henriette Sontag as Miranda, Carlotta Grisi as Ariel and Luigi Lablache as Caliban.
Plot
The magician Prospero conjures a storm that shipwrecks travellers, including the King of Naples, on his island. His spirit Ariel watches over the young love between Miranda and Ferdinand, while the enslaved Caliban schemes against Prospero. In the end a wedding resolves the entanglements, with only Caliban excluded from the reconciliation.
Cultural significance
Despite a premiere night judged a success by the press and one of the most prominent casts in London, La tempesta vanished from the stage after just 13 performances. It was not staged again until Wexford Festival Opera revived it to open its 2022 festival.