About the work
"L'ultimo giorno di Pompei" is a dramma per musica in two acts by Giovanni Pacini to a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, conceived by stage designer Antonio Niccolini around the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Commissioned for the name day of Queen Maria Isabella of the Two Sicilies, it premiered on 19 November 1825 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.
Plot
Sallustio, newly elected chief magistrate of Pompeii, must put his wife Ottavia on trial after the spurned tribune Appio Diomede falsely accuses her of infidelity. As the trial unfolds, Vesuvius erupts; Sallustio reads the eruption as a divine sign against the impending injustice, halts the execution, while the real conspirators are punished and the city descends into chaos.
Cultural significance
The premiere was famous for its lavish stagecraft: the eruption of Vesuvius was staged with real explosives, a simulated earthquake, and nine painted gauze curtains raised one after another. After great success on European stages in the 1820s and 1830s the work fell into obscurity and was rediscovered only in 1996 at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca.