About the work
Ezio is an opera seria by Johann Adolph Hasse on Pietro Metastasio’s libretto about the Roman general Flavius Aëtius. Hasse set the subject twice: first in Naples in 1730, then in a text revised by Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca, premiered on 20 January 1755 at the Dresden court theatre. The Dresden production was among the most lavish staged by the Saxon court and was reported on in several contemporary newspapers.
Plot
After defeating Attila’s Huns, Ezio returns to Rome, where the patrician Massimo implicates him in a plot against Emperor Valentiniano III and directs suspicion onto him — not least because both men are courting Fulvia. Only when Ezio saves the emperor during a popular uprising is the conspiracy uncovered, allowing him to marry Fulvia.
Cultural significance
That Hasse returned to the same subject 25 years after his Neapolitan premiere shows how long Metastasio’s Ezio remained in the repertoire; Migliavacca’s revised text for Dresden also illustrates how flexibly opera seria librettos were adapted for new occasions.