Musicology Annotation << Back French rescue opera as a source of plots of italian opera semiseria Anastasia F. Pospelova The main problem of this article is the genesis of opera semiseria, the italian genre of opera popular in the early and middle 19th century. It is known that one of the genre’s origins is french rescue opera, but we know a little about their intersections. A special objective is to examine the influence of rescue opera on forming of opera semiseria by the example of works by french and italian composers (L. Cherubini, N. Dalayrac, F. Paër, J.S. Mayr and others). We found that the earlier examples of opera semiseria are the italian adaptations of french rescue operas. Opera semiseria with original italian librettos repeated plots, motives and situations typical for rescue operas. Hence, the main origin of opera semiseria’s libretto were french rescue operas. Keywords: rescue opera, opera semiseria, F. Paër, J.S. Mayr, G. Carpani. Contacts: E-mail: inaferando@mail.ru Pp. 51-58.