Felice Romani

Felice Romani (Genoa, 1788 – Moneglia, 1865) was an Italian poet, librettist and teacher of literature and mythology, and one of the most sought-after librettists of his day. He wrote for the leading opera composers of the early Italian Romantic period, above all Bellini and Donizetti, and is often regarded as the finest Italian librettist between Metastasio and Boito.

Born into a middle-class family in Genoa, he was expected to study law, and he did, first in Pisa and then at the University of Genoa, while his real pleasure lay in literature. During his studies he translated French writing and, with a colleague, compiled a six-volume dictionary of mythology and antiquity that even covered the history of the Celts in Italy. That grounding in French and classical material runs through his libretti. Most draw on French sources, and many, Norma among them, borrow from myth or ancient history. He travelled in France, Spain, Greece and Germany, and around 1812 or 1813 settled in Milan, where he made friends with leading figures in literature and music. He turned down a post as court poet in Vienna in order to devote himself to opera.

Romani rarely invented his own plots. He kept a close eye on the Paris stage and adapted works that had already proved popular, a risky habit at a time when copyright was barely enforced. The best-known case is Lucrezia Borgia, drawn from a play by Victor Hugo. After its first Paris performances in 1840, Hugo obtained an injunction against further staging, and the opera was revised, retitled and moved to the Ottoman East. His partnership with Bellini was the most productive of his career. Bellini wanted vivid, even extravagant, dramatic situations in his verse, and Romani supplied them. The two later quarrelled, but when Bellini died only months after the premiere of I puritani, Romani wrote an obituary expressing regret for their disagreements.

In 1834 he became editor of the Gazzetta Ufficiale Piemontese, for which he also wrote literary criticism, and he held the post until his death, apart from a break between 1849 and 1854. His lasting legacy lies in the librettos he left to Italian opera of the early nineteenth century, many of which are still performed, and in his role as a bridge between literature and the musical theatre of his time.