La rondine (The Swallow) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, first performed in 1917 at the Monte Carlo Opera. Magda, mistress of a Parisian banker, leaves her comfortable life for Ruggero, a young man from the provinces, then gives him up when marriage becomes possible: like a swallow, she returns to her point of departure. Halfway between opera and lyric comedy, it is Puccini's lightest and most melancholy score.
Act I. In her Parisian salon, Magda entertains the guests of her protector, the banker Rambaldo. The poet Prunier begins the song of Doretta and Magda completes it: this is the celebrated "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta". She then recalls a youthful love at the Bullier dance hall. When Ruggero, the son of a friend of Rambaldo, arrives, everyone advises him to spend his first Parisian evening at Bullier. Magda decides to go too, plainly dressed so as not to be recognised.
Act II. At Bullier, Magda, calling herself Paulette, shares Ruggero's table. They dance, kiss and fall in love. Rambaldo appears and Magda tells him she is leaving him. The act ends with the couple resolved to begin a life together.
Act III. On the Côte d'Azur, Magda and Ruggero live an idyll on borrowed money. Ruggero has written to his mother to ask permission to marry; the reply arrives full of blessings for a bride presumed pure. Magda cannot sustain the deception: she confesses her past and, despite Ruggero's pleas, leaves him and returns to her old life.
La rondine began as a Viennese commission for an operetta that the war of 1914 made impossible to stage in Austria. Puccini turned the project into an opera threaded with waltz rhythms and gave its first performance on 27 March 1917 in Monte Carlo, on neutral territory. Never entirely satisfied, he revised the score several times. For decades it was the most neglected of his mature operas, before regaining its place on the stage.
The waltz runs through the whole score, from the salons of the first act to the party at Bullier. "Chi il bel sogno di Doretta" is its best-known number, often sung in concert. The second act builds a great ensemble with chorus around the two lovers, and the third lowers the light towards a farewell spoken almost under the breath, without tragic gestures.
La rondine offers a different Puccini: no violent deaths, an elegant sadness and refined orchestral writing. Its subject, the gap between the dream and the life that is possible, gains with the listener's own maturity. It is a fine way to complete the composer's portrait beyond his famous titles.
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