This article aims at examining some of the rewritings of Samuel Richardson’s famous novel Pamela; Or, Virtue Rewarded (1740). It uses as a starting-point Goldoni’s theatrical adaptation for the Venetian stage, the play Pamela fanciulla/Pamela nubile (1750), a work that radically departs from the English novel in its consideration of various contextual elements. Surprisingly, the playwright’s own operatic adaptation, the libretto to the comic opera La Cecchina; ossia, la buona figliuola, shows more affiliation with Richardson’s work, partly in its exploitation of the sentimental vein. The third part of this paper is devoted to the English adaptations of Piccinni’s opera, which all show, to some degree or other, a thematic return to the English novel, mainly in the simultaneous presence of “pro-” and “anti-Pamelist” elements. For all its changes in generic status, the intercultural journey of Richardson’s masterpiece eventually ends up preserving what can be termed the English specificity of the original hypotext.
