About the work
Dramma per musica in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Cavalli, to a libretto begun by Giovanni Faustini and completed, after his death in 1651, by Nicolò Minato. According to its dedication, it premiered on 26 December 1659 at the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice.
Plot
To win the favour of the beautiful Elena, Menelao disguises himself as a female Amazon wrestler and secretly becomes her training partner, while Teseo and his brothers Castore and Polluce also court or abduct her. The resulting tangle of mistaken gender and jealousy is resolved only once Menelao's disguise is uncovered, uniting the couple.
Cultural significance
With its cross-dressing mix-ups around gender roles, Elena is regarded as one of the earliest and clearest examples of comic opera in Venice. After a 1661 revival in Palermo the work fell into obscurity for roughly 350 years and was not staged again until 2013, at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence under Leonardo García Alarcón.