• Gaetano Donizetti. Opéra comique in two acts. 1840.
• Revised for an Italian version also in 1840.
• Libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges and Jean-François-Alfred Bayard.
• First performance by the Opéra-Comique at the Salle de la Bourse, Paris, on 11th February 1840.

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CHARACTERS

Marie, the so-called Daughter of the Regiment	soprano
Sulpice, French grenadier sergeant	bass
Tonio, a Tyrolean peasant	tenor
La Marquise de Berkenfeld	mezzo-soprano
Hortensius, her steward	bass
Corporal	bass
La Duchesse de Crackentorp	speaking part
Peasant	tenor
Notary	speaking part
Valet	speaking part

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Brought up by the regiment, after being found on a battlefield as a baby, Marie tells Sergeant Sulpice of a young man who has saved her life. This is Tonio, who is found by the soldiers and now joins the regiment. The Marquise de Berkenfeld, stranded by the war, seeks a safe-conduct, and it is realised that papers found on Marie show her to be the niece of the Marquise. The discovery cannot help her budding romance with Tonio, now qualified, by earlier rules, to marry her, since he has joined the regiment. In the second act Marie, now in the castle of the Marquise, is to marry a nobleman, but still hankers after Tonio, promoted captain. Her match with him is eventually sanctioned by the Marquise, who is in fact her mother, after Marie has scandalised society by an account of her life with the regiment.

Excerpts from the opera heard in the concert hall must include the overture, not least in arrangements for brass band, the vigorous regimental song Chacun le sait (Each one knows it), Tonio’s Ah, mes amis (Ah, my friends) after joining the regiment and Marie’s farewell to the soldiery, Il faut partir (I must go). The work, once neglected, is now an established part of international repertoire.