About the work
Siroe, re di Persia is a three-act opera seria by Johann Adolph Hasse to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. It premiered on 2 May 1733 at the Teatro Malvezzi in Bologna; in 1763 Hasse presented a revised version at the Dresden Zwinger opera house.
Plot
The Persian king Cosroe names his younger son Medarse as heir, passing over the firstborn Siroe and sparking rebellion. Emira, daughter of a defeated enemy king, disguised as a courtier, secretly loves Siroe while intrigue wrongly implicates him; in the end his innocence is proven and the rightful succession prevails.
Cultural significance
The libretto is among the most frequently set of the 18th century, including by Vinci, Vivaldi and Handel; Hasse returned to the subject with his own new version for Dresden thirty years after the Bologna premiere.