About the work
L’isola disabitata is a one-act cantata seria (azione teatrale) by Giovanni Paisiello, setting the libretto Pietro Metastasio had written in 1753 for the name day of the Spanish king Ferdinand VI at the court of Aranjuez. Paisiello's setting premiered on 3 July 1799 at the Teatro de São Carlos in Lisbon.
Plot
The nobleman Gernando is shipwrecked on a deserted island together with his wife Costanza and her sister Silvia while sailing for America. Pirates abduct Gernando while the sisters hide, and the crew, believing all three captured, abandons the island. After thirteen years of slavery, Gernando escapes with his companion Enrico and finds Costanza and Silvia still there; a closing quartet celebrates the constancy of their love.
Cultural significance
Metastasio's text is among the most frequently set librettos of the eighteenth century: more than thirty composers wrote their own versions, including Giuseppe Bonno (the 1753 premiere), Niccolò Jommelli, and, most famously, Joseph Haydn (1779). Paisiello's 1799 Lisbon setting is one of the last musical treatments of the subject at the close of the Metastasian opera seria tradition.