About the work
Nitteti is a three-act opera seria by Tommaso Traetta, set to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. Metastasio had written the text in 1756 at the request of the castrato Farinelli for the royal court in Madrid, where Nicola Conforto composed the first setting; because Metastasio also served as imperial court poet in Vienna, Empress Maria Theresa had to approve the commission. Traetta's own setting, dedicated to Duke Francesco III of Modena, premiered on 29 April 1757 at the Teatro Pubblico in Reggio Emilia during the town's theatre fair and was revived in Lucca in 1759.
Plot
The story is set around 570 BC in Egyptian Canopus: Pharaoh Amasis wants his son Sammete to marry the supposed princess Nitteti, fulfilling a deathbed promise to her father, the deposed king Apries. Sammete, however, secretly loves the shepherdess Beroe, and the conflict this causes leads his father to have him imprisoned. In the end the mix-up is resolved: Beroe turns out to be the true Nitteti, while the woman believed to be Nitteti is revealed as Amasis's own long-lost daughter Amestris — the opera closes with a double wedding.
Cultural significance
The libretto is among the most frequently set texts by Metastasio: more than thirty composers, including Niccolò Jommelli, Johann Adolf Hasse and Niccolò Piccinni, set the story to music over the course of the eighteenth century. Traetta's version was written for the 1757 theatre fair in Reggio Emilia and was revived in Lucca just two years later.