Margherita d'Anjou

Margherita d'Anjou is an opera semiseria in two acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The Italian libretto was by Felice Romani after a text based on legends around the English Wars of the Roses by René Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt. The title role is the Queen Margaret of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays, who also appears in Richard III. Margherita d'Anjou is the first opera by Meyerbeer to mix historical events and personages with fictional characters and situations, as his French grand operas Les Huguenots, Le prophète and L'Africaine were later to do. It is the fourth of Meyerbeer's Italian operas and was his first international success.

Margherita d'Anjou was first given at La Scala,Milan, on 14 November 1820. It was successful and was subsequently performed throughout Europe in Italian, French and German. The French version, premiered at the Théâtre Odéon in Paris on 3 November 1826 is a major revision with added music from other works by the composer. It was given in New Orleans on 17 April 1854. There was a concert performance at the Royal Festival Hall, London, in November 2002. A new critical edition of the score was published by Ricordi Berlin in 2015.

Scene:The highlands of Scotland, c. 1462

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