About the work
Dramma per musica in three acts by Tommaso Traetta after a libretto by Mattia Verazi, based on an earlier text by the Zanetti brothers, first performed on 5 November 1762 at the electoral court theatre in Mannheim. After its success and a revival the following season, the opera disappeared from the stage for more than 200 years, until surviving score copies were reconstructed for a revival in 2006.
Plot
The Carthaginian princess Sofonisba is married to the Numidian king Siface but loves his younger rival Massinissa. After Roman and Massylian troops conquer her city of Cirta, she faces being carried off to Rome as a war trophy. To escape that fate she asks Massinissa to grant her death and, like Cleopatra before her, ultimately takes her own life with a poisonous snake.
Cultural significance
Unlike most opera seria of its time, Sofonisba does not end in reconciliation but in an actual death on stage — an unusual break with the genre's convention of the lieto fine. A contemporary praised the title aria as having 'nothing routine about it, everything new'; the intricately written wind parts for the Mannheim court orchestra are often cited as evidence of Traetta's position between late opera seria and Gluck's reform opera.