About the work
Niobe, regina di Tebe is an opera in three acts by Agostino Steffani, with a libretto by Luigi Orlandi dramatising an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses. It premiered on 5 January 1688 at the Salvatortheater of the Munich electoral court and was Steffani's last and most musically ambitious opera for Munich before he moved to Hanover as court Kapellmeister.
Plot
King Amphion of Thebes hands rule of the city to his wife Niobe during a siege. Intoxicated by her success and pride, Niobe ignores the gods' warning against arrogance. As punishment, her children are killed, she herself turns to stone, and Amphion takes his own life, while several princes and the priestess Manto pursue their own love intrigues alongside the main plot.
Cultural significance
After decades of neglect, the opera was rediscovered from the 1970s onward, with widely noted new productions at the Schwetzingen Festival in 2008 and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 2010. It is now regarded as one of the finest examples of how Steffani fused Italian and French operatic styles.