Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe

Libretto by Giuseppe Petrosellini (?). New version with complete secco recitatives by Hans-Ulrich Kaegi and Robert Werner (1965) (G)

3S,A,2T,Bar; 2.2.0.2-4(III&IVad lib).2.0.0-timp-hpd-strings

Country estate of the podestà in the 18th century

In a frenzy of mad jealousy Count Belfiore stabs his lover, Marchesa Violante of Onesti, with a knife. Believing her to be dead, he takes flight. A year has since passed. The marchesa has recovered from her injury and searches for Belfiore to win him back. Together with her servant Nardo, she has begun to work incognito as a gardener for Anchise as she knows Belfiore is one of the podestà's friends. Anchise falls in love with the ‘gardener’, Nardo with Serpetta, the podestà’s chambermaid, who, however, only has eyes for her lord. When Violante and Belfiore meet again in the park he is dumbfounded, for he has just promised his hand to Arminda, the podestà’s niece. And now he meets Violante again, whom he believed to be dead, and with whom he is still in love. Arminda finds herself in a precarious situation, too, for no sooner has she begun to reproach Belfiore for deceiving her with the ‘gardener’, even before their marriage, than she encounters her former lover, the poet Ramiro, whom she had given the brush-off some time ago.The confusion reaches a first climax when Ramiro pulls a royal magistrate's arrest warrant against Belfiore out of his pocket, who is suspected of murdering the Marchesa Violante. Violante invalidates the accusation without revealing her identity and flees to the nearby forest in desperation, believing her lover lost to Arminda. The forest becomes the scene of a turbulent, mid-summer comedy of mistaken identity, at which (nearly) everybody finds their right partners.

Comic