Rosmira

If the prophet will not come to the mountain, then the mountain must go to the prophet: the Neapolitan queen Partenope is being courted by several men, including Prince Arsace. The prince has spared neither time nor money in his efforts to win her hand, even abandoning his fiancée Rosmira. But Rosmira takes her fate into her own hands: Disguised as an Armenian prince, Eurimene, she travels to Naples where she presents herself as another suitor of Partenope and fights for Arsace’s love. Antonio Vivaldi’s work, first performed in 1738 at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice, is a pasticcio: some of the music is written by Vivaldi himself but he also added arias by other composers, such as Handel (who had written his opera Partenope to the same libretto by Stampiglia eight years earlier), Hasse, Pergolesi, Vinci and several others. Vivaldi himself was responsible for setting the recitatives. By adopting this method, the composer created a work of almost unparalleled variety with which he aptly illustrates the plot’s numerous and occasionally hilarious escapades.

Concert performance in Italian with German surtitles

Introduction to the work 30 minutes before curtain-up

(Source: www.theater-wien.at)