Emma di Resburgo

Emma di Resburgo (Emma of Roxburgh) is a melodramma eroico (a heroic, serious opera) in two acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer. It was the composer's sixth opera and the third that he wrote for an Italian theatre. The libretto in Italian by Gaetano Rossi is set in Scotland and has the same storyline as previous operas by Étienne Méhul (Héléna, Paris, 1803, to a French text) and Simon Mayr (Elena, Naples, 1814, with an Italian text). Meyerbeer's opera had its premiere at the Teatro San Benedetto Venice on 26 June 1819.

Born in Berlin to a wealthy family, as a young man Giacomo Meyerbeer had musical ambitions and studied and traveled in Italy. Much impressed and influenced by the leading Italian composer of operas of the day, Rossini, Meyerbeer composed an opera in the style of that composer, Romilda e Costanza, which was produced in Padua in 1817. Through the support of a star singer of the day, Carolina Bassi, Meyerbeer had the opportunity to compose an opera for Turin, which became his second opera for Italy, Semiramide riconosciuta. Both of these operas being successful with Italian audiences, Meyerbeer presented a third Italian opera in Venice. Although the previous operas which had used the same storyline had been set in Provence, the librettist Rossi and Meyerbeer moved the setting to Scotland, where the novels of Walter Scott, popular in continental Europe as well as Britain, had been set, thus producing one of the first Italian Romantic operas to feature a Scottish setting, followed by Rossini's La Donna del Lago, which had its premiere only three months after Emma di Resburgo. Meyerbeer had modeled his Italian operas after those of Rossini, and he became acquainted with Rossini through the success of Emma di Resburgo. The two composers became close friends, a relationship that continued later when they were both enjoying great success in Paris.

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