About the work
Five-act tragedy by Torquato Tasso, completed in Mantua between 1585 and 1587 from an earlier, unfinished fragment ("Tragedia non finita"). It was first printed in 1587 in Bergamo by Comin Ventura; according to the sparse surviving sources, the stage premiere took place in 1618 at the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, the first tragedy ever staged there after the theatre's 1585 opening with Sophocles' "Oedipus."
Plot
King Torrismondo of the Goths has promised his friend Germondo, King of Sweden, to woo the Norwegian princess Alvida on his behalf, but falls in love with her himself and marries her in secret. When Alvida turns out to be Torrismondo's own sister, long believed dead, neither sees a way out of their guilt and betrayal. In the end, Torrismondo and Alvida both take their own lives.
Cultural significance
Tasso deliberately modelled the play on Sophocles and Euripides, aiming to create a modern tragedy of classical stature. According to scholarship, little can be reconstructed about the circumstances of the 1618 premiere beyond the fact that it was, by contemporary accounts, a great success.