Il Campanello (The Night Bell)

Opera buffa in one act by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848). Libretto by the composer based on a French vaudeville La Sonnette de Nuit. First performance, Naples June 1836.

Setting: Foria, a suburb of Naples, about 1835.

Cast:

Don Annibale Pistacchio (bass);
Serafino (soprano);
Madama Rosa (mezzo-soprano);
Enrico (bass-baritone); and
Spiridione (tenor).

Synopsis:

The story is set in Naples in the house of Don Annibale Pistacchio, an elderly chemist. A party is in progress to celebrate his wedding to the young and beautiful Serafina, but before he can claim her dowry, he must consumate the marriage before dawn. He is also required to go to Rome first thing the next morning, a fact Enrico, one of Serafina's former suitors takes advantage of to exact revenge. So although Don Annibale is anxious to enjoy his wedding night with his new bride, bringing the party to an early end to achieve this end, Enrico ensures that Don Annibale never gets to go to bed with Serafina at all. Enrico achieves this outcome by exploiting a Neapolitan statute of the time which forbad chemists from refusing to answer emergency calls, on pain of imprisonment. And so throughout the night and during the early hours of the morning, Enrico adopts a series of disguises, ringing the chemist's night bell at innoportune moments. First he pretends to be a Frenchman, demanding wine; next, a singer who has lost his voice and demands lozenges and finally, a doddering old man, who lists his wife's illnesses ad infinitum. The opera ends as dawn breaks and the bell is rung for the last time to announce the coach and horses which will take Don Annibale to Rome, where his presence is needed to settle a will. His wedding night has been ruined, he has lost his claim to Serafina's dowry and there is nothing he can do about it at all.