Meyerbeer had already won renown in Italy before conquering Paris with a sequence of much-acclaimed grand operas. In a musical climate dominated by Rossini, Meyerbeer’s first Italian opera, Romilda e Costanza, earned the still-unknown 26-year-old composer the sobriquet of ‘the genius of the Spree’. The work is a rescue opera overlaid with a love triangle, which was written for specific performers, and the passionate intensity of feeling—from lyricism to unfettered virtuosity—reflects the semiseria nature of the opera. It is performed here in the original version heard at the 1817 premiere.