About the work
Opera semiseria in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, first performed on 12 May 1822 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples. Its source was Louis-Charles Caigniez's melodrama "La petite bohémienne" (1816), itself based on August von Kotzebue's play "Die kleine Zigeunerin"; it was Donizetti's first opera composed specifically for Naples.
Plot
The gypsy woman Argilla uses her role as a fortune-teller to gain access to a castle where the innocent Don Sebastiano is held captive. She frees him, foils a murder plot and reunites the separated lovers Ines and Fernando — in the end it emerges that she herself is Sebastiano's long-lost daughter.
Cultural significance
The work became one of Donizetti's biggest early successes, running for about 50 performances in its premiere year; Vincenzo Bellini particularly praised the second-act septet, whose design later anticipated Donizetti's famous sextet in "Lucia di Lammermoor". Today "La zingara" is among the rarely performed works of his early output.