Rita is a delicious farce in the best traditions of Italian Opera Buffa. It was written at the end of Gaetano Donizetti’s life, while he was living in Paris. Donizetti’s music and Gustave Vaëz’s French libretto result is an Italian take on French opéra-comique with a story so familiar that it could be set anywhere — even Hong Kong!

Rita is a innkeeper: she owns a small restaurant and she happens to have two husbands too! She believes the first husband died in an accident, instead he had run away to Canada. During their relationship, he hadn’t treated her very well, something which – with her new freedom – she now takes out on her timid second husband.

As far as Husband#1 knows, Rita is dead too. He’s coming back to get her death certificate and be free to marry again.

Husband#2 witnesses the reappearance of his predecessor, clearly very much alive and married, and sees it as a chance to escape his marriage to the tyrannical Rita.

The two men meet and agree to play a special game: the winner will keep Rita as his wife forever. It goes without saying that both will try hard to lose!