Le Villi

• Guglielmo Wulf, Forester (baritone )
• Anna, his daughter (Soprano)
• Roberto ( tenor)
• Mountain dwellers, the Willis (chorus )

Le Villi is the first opera of Giacomo Puccini. It was premiered in 1884 in Milan. The libretto was written by Ferdinando Fontana on the story Les Willis (1856 ) by Alphonse Karr.

Action

In the house of the forester Wulf to celebrate the engagement of Guglielmo's daughter Anna and Roberto. Roberto must soon after an inheritance to travel due to Mainz. There he lives with a courtesan. Anna feels betrayed by him and dies of grief. Your soul unites with the Willis, with the souls of dead women who suffered a similar fate. Guglielmo evokes the spirit of his daughter, to take revenge. Roberto versa ruefully back, is implicated by Willis in a frenzied dance and collapses and dies.

Performances

The first performances of the opera in Italy reaped behaving to dismissive reviews. Puccini revised the opera several times until it was performed in 1892 in Hamburg under Gustav Mahler as a conductor with some success again. The work nevertheless spread only slowly. In the United States about the opera was first performed in 1908 under Arturo Toscanini and has remained relatively unknown.