About the work
Maria di Rohan is a three-act melodramma tragico by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the French play Un duel sous le cardinal de Richelieu (1832) by Lockroy and Edmond Badon. It premiered on 5 June 1843 at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna to unanimous acclaim from press and public.
Plot
In the Paris of Louis XIII, Maria di Rohan is secretly married to Enrico, Duke of Chevreuse, who has wounded a nephew of Cardinal Richelieu in a duel. Riccardo, Count of Chalais and Maria's former lover, unknowingly secures Chevreuse's pardon. When a love letter and a portrait expose the earlier affair, the jealous Chevreuse takes revenge.
Cultural significance
The opera already shows Donizetti moving toward the terser, dramatically pointed style that anticipates Verdi. Popular in the nineteenth century, it fell largely out of view in the twentieth and has been staged more often again only since productions such as Geneva (2001) and the Bergamo Festival (2011).