La Serva-Padrona

Opera by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Libretto by Gennaro Antonio Federico

Written in 1733, this stage version will be presented in Perm for the first time in 2026.

Performed in Italian with Russian surtitles.

The comic intermezzo of the 2025/26 season brings back to the Perm Opera’s playbill a work that played one of the key roles in the history of musical theatre. Composed by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi as an interlude to the opera seria The Proud Prisoner, La serva padrona triumphed at its premiere, becoming a symbol of a new genre — opera buffa — and a model for the Italian musical stage from Paisiello and Cimarosa to Donizetti and Rossini. Its success helped establish comic opera across Europe, and its Paris premiere sparked the famous “War of the Buffoons” — a dispute between supporters of Italian and French musical styles that soon grew into a broader debate about old and new art.

At the Perm Opera, the story of the cunning maid Serpina, who skillfully outwits her master Uberto, will be brought to the stage by director Maria Rubina and conductor Petr Belyakin — their production will mark the first return of a Russian theatre to Pergolesi’s masterpiece in many years.