Il Turco in Italia was commissioned by the famed La Scala in Milan for the autumn season of 1814. Although only 22 at the time of composition, Gioacchino Rossini was already esteemed as an operatic composer (having scored hits with several opere buffe as well as grander, more serious works such as Tancredi), and the success of his L'italiana in Algeri the year before spurred him to write a companion piece. Although the two cannot be considered sequels in the literal sense, the similarities are obvious: In L'italiana, amorous intrigues surround an Italian woman stranded in Algiers, while in Il Turco, a Turk arrives in Italy only to add himself to an existing love triangle (making a love quadrangle, perhaps?). Unfortunately for Rossini, the Milanese public was all too aware of these similarities and, although Rossini's score was every bit as fresh and inventive and his characterizations as well-drawn as those for L'italiana, they heartily disapproved. However, the quality of the score would eventually carry the day and, as Stendhal wrote in his biography of Rossini, the opera was revived just four years later to wild enthusiasm. Today Il Turco in Italia is considered a masterpiece of the buffo genre; it stands alongside L'italiana in Algeri and Il Barbiere di Siviglia as three of the composer's greatest.

The librettist for Il Turco in Italia was Felice Romani. A noteworthy feature of his book was the use of the fictitious poet, Prosdocimo—perhaps a whimsical blend of "prosa" (prose), "docente" (teacher), and "proscenio" (proscenium)—as both narrator and putative author of the story. Essentially a theatrical conceit personified, he is both detached from, and involved in, the story, and puts an amiable face on plot machinations that might otherwise seem weary. The inclusion of an exotic foreigner, on the other hand—in this case a caricature of a Turk—was a fairly stock device in opera buffa, allowing composers to add international spice to their scores. The combination of these things reveals the essence of what made Romani such a successful librettist: his writing provided an excellent foundation for the extremely formal and stylized musical concerns of early nineteenth century opera, while still maintaining its poetic integrity and dramatic interest.

The character of Fiorilla, whose affections form the center of the plot, is characterized superbly through witty, sparkling music; she shines forth more strongly than any of Rossini's buffa characters, including Rosina in The Barber of Seville. For the Turk himself, Rossini wrote some truly sensational virtuoso music; the part was initially sung by Filippo Galli, one of the finest bass voices in the history of opera, whose premiere performance is said to have brought down the house. The Act Two duet, in which the Turk tells Fiorilla's husband that he wishes to purchase her, if only to take her off the husband's hands, is also memorable.

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