About the work
Ciro in Babilonia is an "azione sacra" (sacred drama) in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Francesco Aventi, first performed on 14 March 1812 at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara. The premiere fell during Lent, when Italian opera houses traditionally staged only biblical subjects; Rossini drew on the fifth chapter of the Book of Daniel.
Plot
King Baldassare of Babylon besieges Persia and takes Ciro's wife Amira and their son captive. When Baldassare presses his attentions on Amira, his own general Arbace secretly turns against him. Disguised as a messenger, Ciro infiltrates the palace but is captured. At Baldassare's blasphemous banquet a mysterious hand writes a prophecy of doom on the wall; Babylon falls, and Ciro frees his family.
Cultural significance
The autograph score is considered lost. As a Lenten opera on a biblical subject, Ciro in Babilonia represents a once-common but now rarely staged strand of serious nineteenth-century musical theatre; it is revived chiefly at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro.