About the work
Le cinesi is a one-act componimento drammatico by Antonio Caldara on a text by Pietro Metastasio, written specifically for the Viennese court. It premiered during the carnival season of 1735 in the private apartments of the imperial summer residence Favorita, as a musical introduction to a Chinese-themed ballet by Georg Reutter. The singers were not professionals but the young archduchesses Maria Theresa and Maria Anna, together with a lady-in-waiting.
Plot
Three young Chinese women while away an afternoon over tea when Lisinga's brother Silango unexpectedly returns from Europe and breaches custom by entering the women's quarters. To cover the awkwardness, the group performs a sequence of short plays: a tragedy, a pastoral, and a comedy.
Cultural significance
The role of Lisinga was tailored to the future Empress Maria Theresa, and her friend Tangia is counted among Metastasio's most accomplished characters. The libretto was reset many times over the following decades, most famously by Christoph Willibald Gluck in 1754.