Occupying a position of importance in Italian opera before the rise to fame of Puccini, Alfredo Catalani is now chiefly remembered for one opera: La Wally.

Operas

Catalani’s opera La Wally, first staged at La Scala, Milan in 1892, is set in Switzerland; although it suffers from a lack of dramatic interest in the plot, its atmospheric orchestral writing is especially successful in drawing together a work liberated from the traditional structure of self-contained numbers.