About the work
Armida abbandonata is an opera seria (originally styled a "dramma per musica") in three acts, with music by Niccolò Jommelli and a libretto by Francesco Saverio De Rogati based on cantos 16 and 18 of Torquato Tasso's epic Jerusalem Delivered. Jommelli composed it shortly after returning from Stuttgart, where he had served sixteen years as court Kapellmeister, taking on the commission in place of the ailing Antonio Sacchini. It premiered on 30 May 1770 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.
Plot
During the First Crusade, the knight Rambaldo has abandoned the Crusaders' cause for love of the sorceress Armida, and the knight Tancredi, who tracks him to her enchanted castle, is taken prisoner. Armida herself loves only the knight Rinaldo, whom she holds under her spell, while the knights Dano and Ubaldo seek to free him with the help of a magic shield. When the Crusader knights finally manage to escape, the abandoned Armida destroys her own enchanted realm and flies off on a dragon-drawn chariot, vowing revenge.
Cultural significance
The young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was in the audience at the premiere and described the opera as 'beautiful but too serious and old-fashioned for the theatre'; Neapolitan audiences, too, initially responded coolly to Jommelli's by-then chromatically and rhythmically complex style. Even so, more manuscript copies of the opera survive than of any other work by Jommelli, and it was restaged widely across Italy in the following years.