“Le Villi” by Giacomo Puccini ♡

Notes on the Libretto

Ferdinando Fontana’s libretto belongs to a work whose textual history is unusually complex for so brief an opera. Puccini first composed it as Le Willis, a “legend in one act,” performed at Milan’s Teatro Dal Verme on 31 May 1884. Its success prompted an expansion into the two-act Le Villi, and further revisions followed. Thus the familiar form of the opera represents not its original state, but the result of several stages of revision.

One point requiring particular care in the English translation is Fontana’s Villi. These are not simply “witches,” as the term is sometimes rendered, but the supernatural maidens of the legend: women who have died after being betrayed in love and return to dance faithless men to death. The translation therefore uses Wilis when referring to the spirits themselves, preserving the specific identity of the legendary beings.

Anna’s “Non son più l’amor. / Son la vendetta!” presents another small but significant choice. Rather than the literal but less natural “I am Revenge,” it is rendered “I am no longer Love. / I am Vengeance!” The personification is essential to the force of the line: Anna does not merely return to take revenge upon Roberto; in the supernatural world of the final act, she has become its embodiment.