page_title: Beatrice di Tenda
section_title: Performance history
hierarchical_section_title: Beatrice di Tenda / Performance history
context_page_description: Beatrice di Tenda is a tragic opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini, from a libretto by Felice Romani, after the play of the same name by Carlo Tedaldi Fores.
  Initially, a play by Alexandre Dumas was chosen as the subject for the opera, but Bellini had reservations about its suitability. After he and Giuditta Pasta had together seen the ballet based on the very different play, Tedaldi-Fores' Beatrice Tenda, in Milan in October 1832, she became enthusiastic about the subject and the composer set about persuading Romani that this was a good idea. Romani, who had his own concerns, the principal one being the close parallels with the story told in Donizetti's Anna Bolena, an opera which had established that composer's success in 1830. Against his better judgment, he finally agreed, although he failed to provide verses for many months.
  Although unsuccessful at its premiere in Venice in 1833, Bellini felt that he had counteracted the horror of its story "by means of the music, colouring it now tremendously and now sadly".
context_section_description: 19th century
  Beatrice di Tenda received its first performance at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 16 March 1833 with Giuditta Pasta in the title role. The following year, it was staged at the Teatro Carolino in Palermo on 1 March with Marietta Alboni, Giovanni Basadonna, and Ignazio Marini in the major roles. There, it was well received. Bellini was pleased.
  So my Beatrice was well received? I am pleased....I myself did not believe [it] deserving of the fate that befell it in Venice, and I am convinced that outside reasons induced the audience to disapprove of it...
  However, Venice's "fiasco" was relative because the opera was staged again at La Fenice in 1838, 1843, 1844 and then again in 1871. After it had come to Naples in 1834, initially at the del Fondo in July and then at the Teatro di San Carlo in November, Milan followed in February 1835 with 12 performances. Then came Rome, Messina, Bologna, Trieste where it was given under the name of Il Castello d'Ursino.  Performances continued in Italy throughout the late 1830s and into the 1840s with some significant singers of the time appearing in major rules.  These included Caroline Unger and Giuseppina Strepponi.
  Outside Italy it was premiered in Vienna in March 1836, and also in London, Prague, Berlin (in German), Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, and Paris. In 1842 the American premiere of Beatrice was staged in New Orleans at the St Charles Theatre on 5 March 1841 followed by a New York presentation at a later date. It was also the first Bellini opera to be staged in Buenos Aires, in 1849. However, like many other bel canto operas, Beatrice practically disappeared from the stage after the 1870s.
  20th century and beyond
  At the centenary of the first performance, the opera was staged at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania in January 1935, with Giannina Arangi-Lombardi singing the Countess. It took until April 1966 before it was heard there again under Vittorio Gui with Leyla Gencer singing the title role.
  Beatrice di Tenda was revived in 1961 by the American Opera Society in New York with Joan Sutherland, Enzo Sordello, Marilyn Horne and Richard Cassilly under Nicola Rescigno, and in the same year at La Scala with Sutherland and Raina Kabaivanska and with Antonino Votto conducting. La Fenice presented the work again in January 1964 with Leyla Gencer.  The 1960s saw occasional presentations.
  Since that time the title role has been assumed by a number of other prominent sopranos including, Mirella Freni, June Anderson, Edita Gruberová, Mariella Devia.
caption: Soprano Giuditta Pasta sang in the Venice premiere
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