Libretto: Giuseppe Adami
La Rondine is a three-act opera by Giacomo Puccini after the libretto by Giuseppe Adami that had its world opening night at the Grand Théâtre in Monte Carlo in March 1917. At the time when Vienna was dominated by Franz Lehár and Johann Strauss Jr., the directors of the Viennese Carltheater commissioned from Puccini an operetta. It took him two years to compose the work and the first Viennese premiere was obstructed by WWI. Puccini then offered the work to his editor Tito Ricordi who refused it because it was a bad Lehár. Lorenzo Sonzogno bought the copyrights and premiered the work in Monte Carlo. Despite the artistic values of the music score and the successful performance, La Rondine remained one of the less performed Puccini's works. There is no final version of the work because Puccini, as he often used to do, not satisfied with the result of his work, many times revised the score, leaving three versions with two entirely different endings. The opera was staged for the first time in history on the stage of the CNT in Zagreb in January 2022 with Lorenzo Passerini as conductor and Hugo de Ana as director, set and costume designer.