About the work
Issipile is a three-act opera seria by Baldassare Galuppi on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. It premiered on 26 December 1737 at the Regio Teatro in Turin.
Plot
When the women of the island of Lemnos kill all the men in revenge for their infidelity, the king's daughter Issipile secretly saves her father Toante by having him presumed dead. Years later, after bearing two sons to the passing Argonaut Giasone and being abandoned by him, her old betrayal of the Lemnian women threatens to come to light as the jealous Learco schemes against her. Only when Giasone and her sons are reunited with her is Issipile's fate resolved, and her loyalty to her father rewarded.
Cultural significance
Drawn from Herodotus, Ovid and Statius, the story of the women of Lemnos is one of Metastasio's darker mythological subjects; Galuppi set it in 1737 for Turin, before he made his international name with the comic operas of his middle career.