Edgar (opera)

Edgar is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini. It is the second opera composed by the maestro from Lucca. Premiered on April 21, 1889 at the Teatro La Scala in Milan. Performances continued at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara (1892), at the Teatro Real in Madrid (1892) and at the Teatro de la Ópera in Buenos Aires (1905).

After the success of his first opera, Le Villi, Ricordi commissioned Puccini to create this opera. The libretto was written by Ferdinando Fontana (the same poet who had provided the text for the first work), who was based on La coupe et les lèvres, a work by Alfred de Musset. The first version, of four acts, had a cordial but not warm reception. A year after the premiere, in January 1890, a second version was published with another ending for the second act. Puccini revised the work again in the autumn of 1891, removing the last act, and once more in 1905. The final form of the opera was much less successful than the first.

The funeral march of the third act of Edgar was performed during Puccini's funeral, under the direction of Arturo Toscanini.

The story is very similar to that of Carmen by Georges Bizet. Both operas present a confused man, who must choose between the chaste love of a young woman from his town and the overflowing passion of an exotic gypsy.

Puccini used some of the music he cut from the play Tosca, turning it into the duet Amaro sol per te m'era il morire! from the third act of Edgar.

This opera is rarely performed today; in Operabase statistics it appears with only 6 representations in the period 2005-2010.