About the work
Opera seria in three acts by Niccolò Piccinni after Pietro Metastasio's libretto of the same name, premiered in May 1761 in Reggio nell'Emilia. Metastasio's 1733 text is among the most frequently set librettos of the eighteenth century: more than seventy composers, including Caldara, Gluck and Jommelli, wrote their own versions, with Piccinni's setting one among them.
Plot
King Demofoonte of Thrace has exempted his own daughter from the kingdom's yearly sacrifice of a maiden to Apollo, prompting the nobleman Matusio to demand the same exemption for his supposed daughter Dircea. Unknown to the court, Dircea is secretly married to the crown prince Timante and has already borne him a son, a union punishable by death. Letters discovered late in the story reveal the true parentage: Timante is Matusio's son, and Dircea is Demofoonte's own daughter, resolving every conflict.
Cultural significance
Metastasio was praised for treating the sacrifice motif with comparative mildness, steering the plot toward a happy ending, and the libretto stayed in the repertoire of composers into the early nineteenth century. A partial autograph of Piccinni's own setting survives, documenting the fast pace of production on north Italian stages of the 1760s.