About the work
Opera seria in three acts by Niccolò Piccinni to Pietro Metastasio's libretto 'Didone abbandonata' — Metastasio's very first opera text (1724) — first performed on 8 January 1770 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.
Plot
Queen Dido of Carthage and the Trojan refugee Aeneas love each other, but Aeneas must depart on divine command to found Rome. As the Moorish king Iarba seizes the moment to attack Carthage, the despairing Dido finally throws herself into the flames of her burning city.
Cultural significance
Unlike the usual convention of opera seria, the work ends tragically rather than with reconciliation — a break with the genre's customary lieto fine that helped make Metastasio's debut libretto one of the most frequently set opera texts into the nineteenth century, with more than sixty settings.