The Rose of Castille

The Rose of Castille (or Castile) is an opera in three acts, with music by Michael William Balfe to an English-language libretto by Augustus Glossop Harris and Edmund Falconer, after the libretto by Adolphe d'Ennery and Clairville (alias of Louis-François Nicolaïe (1811–1879)) for Adolphe Adam's Le muletier de Tolède (1854). It was premiered on 29 October 1857, at the Lyceum Theatre, London.

After the closure in 1852 of Her Majesty's Theatre, Balfe, who had conducted the Italian Opera there since the departure of Michael Costa in 1846, embarked on extensive tours of European theatres, visiting Berlin, Vienna, Saint Petersburg and Trieste. In 1857, he returned to London and composed six new English operas for the Pyne-Harrison Opera Company, founded by the soprano Louisa Pyne and the tenor William Harrison, which after touring Britain for four years had sailed for New York in 1854. The Rose of Castille was the first and most successful of these operas, and the only one to premiere at the Lyceum before the company moved (via Drury Lane) to the rebuilt Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, where the remaining five premiered between 1858 and 1863.

The Rose of Castille was composed in less than six weeks (between 19 September and 11 October 1857).

Balfe's reputation as a composer had declined after the success of The Bohemian Girl in 1843, but The Times in 1857 was in no doubt that The Rose of Castille marked a return to form: "The ancient glories of The Bohemian Girl were revived at this theatre tonight when a new opera by Mr Balfe ... was produced with as great a success as was ever achieved by the composer of the first-named work ... there were numerous encores and tumultuous applause ... the opera terminated at an unusually late hour..."

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