Dall’opera al teatro comico: Gli avventurieri e Tutti ladri di Antonio Ghislanzoni*

This paper examines Ghislanzoni’s comic theatre between music and words. The key to approaching this subject is the reworking – announced in a letter to Giulio Ricordi on December 10, 1874 – of the libretto Gli avventurieri, written in 1867 for the composer Gaetano Braga, into the three-act comedy Tutti ladri (1875). The linguistic and formal themes that this same grotesque story takes on within different theatrical conventions and practices are also measured against Ghislanzoni’s criticism of operatic-libretto conventions, expressed in various parts of his journalistic and humorous writings, including metatheatrical texts and librettos.