About the work
Dramma per musica in three acts by Antonio Caldara to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, first performed on 28 August 1736 at the Teatro della Favorita in Vienna for the birthday of Empress Elisabeth Christine. Caldara was the first to set the text; the score calls for an unusually large brass complement of four clarini, four further trumpets and timpani.
Plot
Warned by a dream that he will be overthrown by the son of his daughter Mandane, the Median king Astyages orders his newborn grandson Cyrus to be abandoned. The courtier entrusted with the task, Harpagus, secretly spares the child instead, and a shepherd raises him under the name Alceo. Fifteen years later the parties meet again at a sacrificial festival; once Cyrus's true identity comes to light, he receives the crown and forgives his grandfather.
Cultural significance
With fewer than thirty known settings, the text found less favour than some of Metastasio's other librettos; particular esteem later went to Niccolò Jommelli's 1749 Venice version and Johann Adolph Hasse's 1751 Dresden production, which marked the famous soprano Faustina Bordoni's farewell to the stage. Caldara's 1736 premiere stood at the beginning of that history of settings.