Bertram; or The Castle of St. Aldobrand is an 1816 Gothic tragedy by the Irish writer Charles Maturin, his first and most successful play. It premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London on 9 May 1816. The original cast included Edmund Kean as Bertram, Alexander Pope as St Aldobrand, Charles Holland as Prior of St Anselm, John Powell as Monk, Thomas Cooke as Robber, Margaret Somerville as Imogine and Susan Boyce as Clotilda. The prologue was written by John Hobhouse. The 1827 opera Il pirata composed by Vincenzo Bellini uses a libretto by Felice Romani inspired by Maturin's work. A contempary discussion of the play is found in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's Biographia Literaria.
___John_Hobhouse,_1st_Baron_Broughton_q.jpg)
HINT:
In this Dossier
Bertram (play) in the context of Il pirata
Il pirata (The Pirate) is an opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, which was based on a three-act mélodrame from 1826: Bertram, ou le Pirate (Bertram, or The Pirate) by Charles Nodier and Isidore Justin Séverin Taylor. This play was itself based upon a French translation of the five-act verse tragedy Bertram, or The Castle of St. Aldobrand by Charles Maturin which appeared in London in 1816.
The original play has been compared with Bellini's opera and the influence of Il pirata on Gaetano Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor has been noted. Also, Bellini's recycling of his own music in this opera has been analyzed, as well as his utilizing "a more self-consciously innovative compositional style" and participating more in work on the libretto, as compared with prior efforts where he was more deferential to the librettists chosen by the Naples opera management and the corresponding texts. In addition, 19th-century commentary refers to the musical influence of Il pirata on the early Richard Wagner opera Das Liebesverbot.
View the full Wikipedia page for Il pirata