O luce di quest'anima (Linda di Chamounix)

Donizetti composed Linda di Chamounix for Vienna, where he was about to be appointed court composer to the Habsburg emperor. Gaetano Rossi's libretto, after a French melodrama, keeps the piece semiseria: a village girl goes to Paris, is believed dishonoured, loses her reason and recovers it. The premiere at the Kärntnertortheater on 19 May 1842 succeeded, and for the Paris production later that year Donizetti added Linda's first-act aria, O luce di quest'anima, now the best-known number in the score. The mad scene resolves not in death but in recognition — the convention of the genre, observed to the letter.