“…The composer’s librettist, Andrea Leone Tottola, bases his dramatisation on a French translation of the poem, simplifies and rewrites the text, as is often customary when adapting literature for the stage, thus modifying characters and highlighting the poem’s
love interest. If the libretto is unfaithful to the letter of the source, the music pays homage to its spirit and conveys the heroic and legendary aspect of the drama with an extended, inventive and attentive orchestration, thus indicating a decisive step in the “Rossinian Revolution” with the development of a pastoral style, one of the bases of Romantic opera.…”
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