About the work
Didone abbandonata is an opera seria in three acts by Leonardo Vinci to Pietro Metastasio's very first opera libretto. It premiered on 14 January 1726 at the Teatro delle Dame in Rome to open the carnival season; the title role was sung by the castrato Farfallino, a specialist in female roles.
Plot
Queen Dido of Carthage loves the shipwrecked Trojan Aeneas but, on the gods' command, must let him sail on to Italy. The Numidian king Iarbas, wooing Dido under the guise of the ambassador Arbace, and Dido's sister Selene, who secretly loves Iarbas, deepen the conflict. After Aeneas departs, the despairing Dido sets her palace ablaze and throws herself into the flames.
Cultural significance
Metastasio's text went on to be set to music well over fifty times; Vinci's original setting was especially admired for Dido's aria of rejection to Iarbas, 'Son regina'. George Frideric Handel already owned the score by 1736 and reused musical ideas from it in his own operas.