About the work
Ipermestra is an opera seria by Christoph Willibald Gluck on Pietro Metastasio's libretto. It premiered on 21 November 1744 during the carnival season at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice, only months after Johann Adolph Hasse had first set the same text in Vienna.
Plot
An oracle foretells that King Danaus of Argos will die at the hand of his son-in-law Linceo, so he orders his daughter Ipermestra to kill her new husband on their wedding night. Out of love she refuses and helps Linceo escape. When the people rise up against Danaus, Ipermestra shields her father from Linceo's revenge, leading him to recognise his error and make her ruler.
Cultural significance
Metastasio's libretto achieved only moderate circulation, with about thirty settings up to the nineteenth century. Gluck's Ipermestra dates from his productive Venetian period of the early 1740s, when he set several Metastasio librettos in quick succession.