La straniera is an opera in two acts with music by Vincenzo Bellini to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on the novel L'Étrangère by Charles-Victor Prévot, vicomte d'Arlincourt, although writer Herbert Weinstock also adds that it is "more likely [based on] a dramatization of [that novel] in Italian by Giovan Carlo, barone di Cosenza" since he then quotes a letter from Bellini to his friend Francesco Florimo in which he says that Romani "certainly will not follow the play" [suggesting then that they were aware of its existence.]
Henriette Meric-Lalande as Alaide in the original 1829 production
Bellini in 1830 by Natale Schiavoni
Librettist Felice Romani
Domenico Barbaja, Naples in the 1820s
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini was an Italian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'."
Vincenzo Bellini, portrait by Pietro Lucchini
Bellini's birthplace, the Palazzo Gravina-Cruyllas, Catania, circa 1800
Composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli
Adelson e Salvini: autograph of the score