About the work
Dramma per musica in three acts by Antonio Caldara to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, first performed on 30 August 1733 at the Teatro della Favorita in Vienna for the birthday of Empress Elisabeth Christine. Caldara's setting was the first of what eventually became more than seventy stage versions of the text, including ones by Antonio Vivaldi and Johann Adolph Hasse; the ballet music was written by Nicola Matteis the Younger.
Plot
The Cretan prince Licida asks his friend Megacle to compete at the Olympic Games under Megacle's own name, unaware that the victor is promised marriage to Licida's own beloved, Aristea. The mix-up sparks jealousy and a conflict of loyalty, until it emerges that Licida is in fact the long-lost son of King Clistene, believed dead. Two weddings and an act of clemency resolve the tangled plot.
Cultural significance
Behind its sporting subject, Metastasio's libretto explores questions of friendship, rule and self-sacrifice that eighteenth-century audiences read against contemporary theories of government, and with more than seventy known settings it ranks among the most frequently composed opera texts of its century. Caldara's version stands at the beginning of that long performance history.