Music by Giacomo Puccini
Libretto by Ferdinando Fontana
March 19 | 7:30PM
March 21 | 2:00PM 

Performances at The OperaDelaware Studios
Sung in Italian with English supertitles
Running time: 1 hour

Before Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and La Bohème, there was Le Villi. This electrifying debut of twenty-five-year-old Giacomo Puccini is proof that one of opera's greatest voices arrived fully formed. Rooted in the same dark folklore that inspired the ballet Giselle, Le Villi  is a gothic revenge story of breathtaking ferocity. After a young woman dies from a broken heart, the forest fairies (the Villi) are invoked to seek out the heartbreaker and force him to dance until he dies. Don't miss this rarely performed masterwork when OperaDelaware brings Le Villi to The OperaDelaware Studios on March 19 and March 21.

Every legend has a beginning. Puccini’s began with a ghost story.

the Cast of Le villi

Giacomo Puccini's Le Villi was written in 1884 and it announces, with startling confidence, exactly the kind of composer Puccini would become. Written to a libretto by Ferdinando Fontana and rooted in Central European folklore, it might best be described as a vengeful ghost story and a gothic romance with some of the most ravishing music Puccini ever wrote.

The opera opens in celebration. Roberto and Anna are newly engaged, surrounded by family and guests, and the future feels radiant. But Roberto must leave before the wedding to collect an inheritance in Mainz, and Anna cannot shake a feeling of dread. She fears his love will not survive the distance. Roberto comforts her by saying she may doubt her God, but she should never doubt his love, and he sets off on his journey.

But Roberto does not return. Enchanted by a seductress along the way, he forgets Anna entirely. She waits through summer, autumn, and winter, until she dies of a broken heart.

This is where the legend takes hold. The Villi are the fairies of Central European folklore, spirits of women who died of grief and abandonment. Their laws are simple: when a woman dies of a broken heart, the one who broke it must dance until he dies. Anna's father, consumed by grief and righteous fury, calls upon them to deliver justice. Roberto, now penniless and abandoned by the very seductress who ruined him, returns home when news of Anna's death finally reaches him. 

The Villi stalk him through the forest. He tries to pray and finds the words will not come for the curse has sealed his throat. Then Anna appears. Not the Anna he left at the altar, warm and worried and alive, but something colder and more terrible. She has transformed into a spirit of vengeance, naming every night she waited, every season she endured, every moment of the suffering he caused. As Roberto begs, Anna listens. And then she calls the Villi to begin.

Le Villi is Puccini at the very beginning. His style is raw, ferocious, and already magnificent even at the young age of 25. The opera is rarely performed, which makes OperaDelaware's production an unmissable opportunity to hear the first opera the greatest composer of his generation ever wrote.