Le pont des soupirs

Le pont des soupirs ("The Bridge of Sighs") is an opéra bouffe (or operetta) set in Venice, by Jacques Offenbach, first performed in Paris in 1861.

[1] Plays, including melodramas, set in Venice were quite common in Paris in the early 19th century; the libretto, by the successful team from Orphée aux enfers, also nods towards the operas La reine de Chypre (1841) and Haydée (1847).

From June 1861 Offenbach had taken his production of the opera to the Theater am Franz-Josefs-Kai in Wien, Treumann-Theater in Berlin, the National Theatre in Pesth and finally the Théâtre des Galeries-Saint-Hubert in Brussels.

[7] Offenbach biographer Alexander Faris notes similarities between Le pont des soupirs and Sullivan's The Gondoliers of 1889; he comments "in both works there are choruses à la barcarolle for gondoliers and contadini [in] thirds and sixths; Offenbach has a Venetian admiral telling of his cowardice in battle; Gilbert and Sullivan have their Duke of Plaza-Toro who led his regiment from behind", both also over-work the cachucha rhythm".

[8] Cornarino Cornarini, the Doge of Venice and admiral of the Venetian fleet, has deserted the navy in fear of defeat in a sea battle, and so is under a cloud of disgrace.

He and his squire Baptiste return in disguise to his palace to find his wife, Catarina, being serenaded, first by the page Amoroso, then by his villainous and ambitious cousin, Fabiano Fabiani Malatromba.

When the women retire to the boudoir, Cornarini and Baptiste now enter, still in disguise, and a dagger quartet for the four men ends with the doge and his companion prevailing over the two Council spies, taking their uniforms and hiding the two bodies in a clock and a barometer.

Fights break out in the hiding places; the four men emerge and in the confusion the room fills with soldiers, spies, squires and Catarina's female servants.