Nordic Soundscapes and Italian Fantasies: Riccardo Zandonai and Arturo Rossato Rewrite Selma Lagerlöf

The Italian translations of Selma Lagerlöf’s novels date back to the 1910s, after Lagerlöf had been awarded the Nobel Prize. Critics and scholars praised her work but focused almost exclusively on the atmosphere they evoked. Indeed, for a long time Lagerlöf’s opus was described by Italian scholars according to critical paradigms resembling the Orientalism later theorised by Edward Said. In contrast, the social aspects of Lagerlöf’s works were often underestimated by Italian critics. This article sets off from the translation and reception of Lagerlöf’s works in Italy in the 1920s and 1930s and focuses on Riccardo Zandonai and Arturo Rossato’s I cavalieri di Ekebù, a rewriting loosely based on Gösta Berling’s Saga. Staged for the first time in 1925, I cavalieri di Ekebù met with great success among audiences in Milan and Rome. This article focuses on Nordic exoticism as an essential trait in Zandonai’s rewriting process. Although the plot is set in the 1820s, the atmosphere evoked in the opera is reminiscent of a mythicised and romanticised medieval Nordic past. The music is also noteworthy thanks to Zandonai’s use of Nordic folk songs. This article demonstrates that Zandonai’s opera features a process of cultural adaptation while resorting to stereotypes usually found in Swedish and Scandinavian culture. It also investigates why Northern Europe was still romanticised at the time the opera was composed.