About the work
Eugen d’Albert's „Scirocco“ is an opera in three acts with a libretto by Karl Michael von Levetzow and Leo Feld. It premiered on 16 May 1921 at the Landestheater Darmstadt.
Plot
In a Foreign Legion garrison, soldiers suffer under the heat of the scirocco wind and monotonous barracks life, with the canteen's barmaids their only diversion. Princess Natascha Saratoff is searching for her missing cousin and fiancé and finds him in the legionnaire Dupont, who is in truth called Sascha Saratoff and once fled Paris for the Foreign Legion to escape the dancer Poupoule.
Cultural significance
„Scirocco“ is among d’Albert's lesser-known operas of the 1920s and, unlike his worldwide success „Tiefland“, is almost never staged today.