Eliogabalo
Music by Francesco Cavalli · premiered 1999
Eliogabalo (Heliogabalus) is an opera by the Italian composer Francesco Cavalli based on the reign and assassination of the debauched teenage Roman emperor Heliogabalus. The author of the original libretto remained anonymous, but it was probably reworked by Aurelio Aureli. The opera was composed in 1667 and was intended to be premiered during the Venetian Carnival season of 1668. In fact, it was not staged in Cavalli's lifetime and was replaced with a revised text by Aureli, in which Eliogabalo repents and lives, and with music by the much younger composer Giovanni Antonio Boretti, perhaps because Cavalli's style was considered too old-fashioned or because the Jesuits, who were regaining power in Venice at the time, were thought likely to oppose putting a story about a regicide on stage.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Eliogabalo", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Francesco Cavalli (born Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni; 14 February 1602 – 14 January 1676) was a Venetian composer, organist and singer of the early Baroque period. He succeeded his teacher Claudio Monteverdi as the dominant and leading opera composer of the mid 17th-century. A central figure of Venetian musical life, Cavalli wrote more than thirty operas, almost all of which premiered in the city's theaters. His best known works include Ormindo (1644), Giasone (1649) and La Calisto (1651).
Text from the Wikipedia article "Francesco Cavalli", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.