About the work
Il trionfo di Clelia is an opera seria after the libretto by Pietro Metastasio and Niccolò Jommelli's last completed opera. He composed it in early 1774 in Naples with the help of Giuseppe Sigismondo, who assisted the already ailing composer in his final months; for the premiere on 6 June 1774 at the Palazzo da Ajuda in Lisbon, marking the birthday of King José I of Portugal, João Cordeiro da Silva revised the score. The libretto had first been set by Johann Adolph Hasse in Vienna in 1762 and, with around ten settings, is one of Metastasio's less frequently used texts.
Plot
King Tarquinio, banished from Rome for his tyranny, has allied himself with the Etruscan king Porsenna to reclaim power, an alliance sealed by his betrothal to Porsenna's daughter Larissa. The Roman Clelia, held hostage in besieged Rome, guarantees a truce; her fiancé Orazio negotiates with Porsenna as Roman envoy. Although Tarquinio offers Clelia the throne despite his betrothal, she firmly refuses him, while further romantic entanglements involving Larissa and Mannio complicate the plot in the background.
Cultural significance
As Jommelli's final stage work, Il trionfo di Clelia marks the close of his operatic output; since the autograph score is lost, the critical edition published by Simone Caputo in 2019 draws on Sigismondo's copy and the Lisbon performance version revised by Cordeiro da Silva. More recently the opera was revived in 2014 at the Jommelli/Cimarosa Festival in Aversa and given in a concert excerpt in Naples in 2024.