La fille du tambour-major

La fille du tambour-major (The Drum-Major's Daughter) is an opéra comique, or operetta, in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Alfred Duru and Henri Charles Chivot (who often wrote libretti for Charles Lecocq).

The title is an allusion to Gaetano Donizetti's La fille du régiment.

It was first staged at the Théâtre des Folies-Dramatiques in Paris on 13 December 1879. This late Offenbach piece followed Madame Favart (1878) and would soon be followed by Offenbach's masterpiece, Tales of Hoffman. This was the last of his operas that Offenbach lived to see produced. The piece was very successful, running for over 240 performances in its initial production and enjoying many foreign productions into the 1880s, although it did not retain the popularity outside France of some Offenbach pieces.

Offenbach's score is more adventurous and grander in scope than his previous works and adopts an unusually complex style for some of the melody lines. A few of the vocal numbers are also more challenging for the singers than earlier Offenbach works.

The patriotic plot, set during the Austrian occupation of Italy as Napoleon invades Lombardy in 1806, is similar in its military flavour to that of Donizetti's La fille du régiment.

The convent of Biella in Northern Italy

A company of French soldiers, led by Lieutenant Robert, crosses the Alps to join the army of the first consul who commands the Italian troops. The French invade the convent - the nuns have fled, and the only remaining occupant is a young student at the convent school who was in penitence, Stella, daughter of the Duke della Volta.

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