About the work
Dramma per musica to Pietro Metastasio's libretto 'Demofoonte', composed in 1773 by Maksym Berezovsky on commission from the Russian fleet commander Count Alexei Orlov and first performed in February of that year at the Teatro San Sebastiano in Livorno, where Orlov's squadron was wintering. Only a sinfonia and four arias survive from the score.
Plot
According to an oracle, King Demofoonte of Thrace must sacrifice a maiden every year; his son Timante is secretly married to Dircea, which drives the lottery for the sacrifice toward catastrophe. Letters that come to light reveal that Dircea is in fact Demofoonte's own daughter and Timante the son of the nobleman Matusio, so that the marriage and the sacrificial duty both prove harmless and every conflict is resolved.
Cultural significance
As the first opera by a Russian, and by a Ukrainian, composer, Demofont holds a special place in music history; the contemporary press in Livorno praised Berezovsky's music explicitly. Sergei Diaghilev later planned a revival of the work, which never came about, and the largely lost score has made a stage rediscovery difficult ever since.