Il segreto di Susanna – La notte di un nevrastenico

The cigarette: a “seductive lover” or the telltale trace of a secret affair? This is the central question around which Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s Intermezzo in un atto revolves. Finely orchestrated and first performed in December 1909 at the Court Theatre in Munich, the plot of this farce is quickly told: a man smells tobacco in his home and immediately suspects the presence of an “intruding smoker” and rival in love. Only at the end does his wife confess that she herself has been secretly smoking. Thus, the supposed drama of jealousy quite literally vanishes “into smoke.” “I smoke cigars and I don’t believe in God,” admitted the “emancipated” German writer and feminist Louise Aston in the mid-19th century. Hard to say which of the two was more scandalous, even in the Belle Époque. A neurasthenic man declares war on noise. In Nino Rota’s short opera, a “nervous weakling” in search of silence books a hotel room, and the two adjoining ones, in order to sleep undisturbed, only to find no peace at all. In this 1959 farce, the composer, by then widely acclaimed for his film scores for Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti, gave a fresh new guise to Italian opera buffa. Once again, much ado about nothing, but plenty of amusement.