Dramma musicale in three acts
Music by Antonio Cesti
Libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini
In Italian and German with German and English surtitles

Premiere: December 2, 2025

Lautten Compagney Berlin
Musical direction: Wolfgang Katschner
Staging: Tomo Sugao

Queen Orontea wants nothing to do with love and defends her independence as a woman. But then the shipwrecked painter Alidoro is washed ashore, and the courtiers are soon horrified to see that the Queen has fallen head over heels in love with him – while Alidoro brazenly flirts with Silandra, a lady-in-waiting who is, however, promised to Corindo. Soon there is no one left who hasn’t been struck by Cupid’s arrow. Antonio Cesti’s opera L’Orontea, first performed in 1656, presents a social panorama of masters and servants on the stage in part serious, part comic scenes of love, jealousy and deceit in the style typical of the Baroque centre of opera that was 17th-century Venice. Just as they are amid the Venetian carnival crowds, the boundaries between the classes and sexes are blurred in L’Orontea. Along with Francesco Cavalli, Antonio Cesti belongs to the generation of composers that followed Claudio Monteverdi and he combines the latter’s precise declamation with melodies of previously unheard sensuality. Behind all the romantic entanglements in L’Orontea lies the philosophical question: In life, should we follow the temptations of love or sober reason? Or do we agree with the servant Gelone, who prefers to be intoxicated by good wine rather than love? Director Tomo Sugao and conductor Wolfgang Katschner – both making their debut at the MusikTheater an der Wien – explore this question.