Ricci: Il Birraio di Preston

Luigi Ricci (1805-1859) composed around thirty operas, four of which were written in collaboration with his brother Federico; he tried his hand at serious melodrama - which was perhaps not very congenial to him, and in which he had less luck - and semi-serious melodrama, where he immediately enjoyed great success with Chiara di Rosenberg, given at La Scala in Milan in 1831, which was to have wide and lasting diffusion in Europe.

But it is above all the comic operas, among which there are many highly successful works, that ensure Ricci an international reputation. His pronounced flair for comedy, ability to master plots, and taste for the surreal meant that Ricci - right from his first approaches to the genre - was immediately identified as the champion of post-Rossini opera buffa.

Ricci's particularly happy musical vein and his richly lively writing make him the leading Italian exponent of a tradition that might have seemed obsolete in the 1840s, but which still Donizetti - with L'elisir d'amore and Don Pasquale - had been able to reinterpret and revitalize. At least until Falstaff, Ricci would have very few rivals in his genre.