About the work
Melodramma semiserio in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a libretto by Jacopo Ferretti about the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first performed on 9 September 1833 at the Teatro Valle in Rome with Giorgio Ronconi in the title role.
Plot
At the court of Ferrara, the poet Tasso falls victim to two courtiers who misrepresent his love poems to the duke. After seven years of imprisonment he is released, but news of the death of his beloved Eleonora finally drives him into madness.
Cultural significance
The work spread rapidly across Italy and Europe as far as London and Rio de Janeiro and stayed in the repertoire into the 1880s before nearly disappearing in the twentieth century. Occasional modern revivals, including in 1974, 1985 and 2014 in Bergamo, have since drawn renewed attention to the fate of the historical poet Tasso as a bel canto subject.