Un giorno di regno

Un giorno di regno
Opera by Giuseppe Verdi
King Stanislas of Poland who is impersonated by the opera's protagonist
Other title	Il finto Stanislao
Librettist	Felice Romani
Language	Italian
Based on	Alexandre-Vincent Pineux-Duval's play, Le faux Stanislas
Premiere	5 September 1840 (1840-09-05) Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Un giorno di regno, ossia Il finto Stanislao (A One-Day Reign, or The Pretend Stanislaus, but often translated into English as King for a Day) is an operatic melodramma giocoso in two acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto written in 1818 by Felice Romani. Originally written for the Bohemian composer Adalbert Gyrowetz the libretto was based on the play Le faux Stanislas written by the Frenchman Alexandre Vincent Pineu-Duval in 1808.Un giorno was given its premiere performance at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan on 5 September 1840.

After the success of his first opera, Oberto in 1839, Verdi received a commission from La Scala impresario Merelli to write three more operas. Un giorno was first of the three, but he wrote the piece during a period when first his children and then his wife died and its failure in 1840 caused the young composer to almost abandon opera. It was not until he was enticed to write the music for the existing libretto of what became Nabucco that Verdi restarted his career.

After Oberto and after Merelli returned from Vienna in early 1840, he needed a comedy to be written for the autumn season. Asked to select a libretto by Romani which already existed, Verdi notes that he did not like any of them but "because the matter was of some urgency, I chose the one which seemed to me to be the least bad".

Premiere and other 19th century performances

The first performance at La Scala on 5 September 1840 was a failure, and La Scala cancelled the remaining scheduled performances. They did not revive the work until 2001. Verdi would not attempt another operatic comedy until the end of his career with Falstaff.

At the premiere Verdi was seated in the orchestra pit, and thus heard the audience reaction directly. Along with the critics, Verdi acknowledged that the failure was partly due to his own personal circumstances, since his two children (the first in 1838, the second in 1839) and then, in June 1840, his wife Margherita Barezzi had died, all during the period leading up to and during its composition. A contributing factor was that the only singers La Scala's impresario had available were those assembled for an opera seria, Otto Nicolai's Il templario, and they had no experience with comedy: "The cast had been assembled chiefly for the performance of the season's most successful novelty, Il templario, Nicolai's version of Ivanhoe". Other factors which have been noted include the large size of La Scala itself (noted by George Martin as "too big for the piece") plus the rather old-fashioned nature of the work which was written in a style that was rapidly going out of fashion. In fact, in summary, Budden notes that "by the side of [Donizetti's] L'elisir d'amore or Don Pasquale, it cuts a clumsy figure".