Eduardo e Cristina

Eduardo e Cristina (Italian pronunciation: [eduˈardo e kriˈstiːna]) is an operatic 'dramma' in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto originally written by Giovanni Schmidt for Odoardo e Cristina (1810), an opera by Stefano Pavesi, and adapted for Rossini by Andrea Leone Tottola and Gherardo Bevilacqua-Aldobrandini.

This pastiche work was composed in a great hurry for a first performance arranged less than a month after the premiere of Ermione. Rossini borrowed "19 of the 26 musical numbers" from his other works, including Adelaide di Borgogna, Ricciardo e Zoraide, as well as Ermione itself.

The opera was first performed at the Teatro San Benedetto, Venice, on 24 April 1819 and given 24 performances that season before being revived the following year at the more prestigious La Fenice. Ironically, while Ermione was not particularly well received, "Eduardo e Christina was a huge success". Apparently, the first performance was so well received that it took six hours, given the large number of repetitions.

Osborne notes that there were productions elsewhere in Europe up to 1840, but after that they seem to have been very rare. It was given on 25 November 1834 in New York, but at the time of the publication of Osbourne's The Bel Canto Operas (1994), it had not been performed in Britain. Unlike most Neapolitan operas by Rossini, this one was "heavily altered from revival to revival"

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