Opera in 3 acts
Libretto by Ortensio Mauro after Virgil
First performed 1709, Hof(royal court)Oper, Düsseldorf
Sung in Italian with German & English surtitles
Introductory talks (in German) in the Holzfoyer 30 minutes before curtain up, available here shortly after opening night and everywhere where podcasts are to be found.
Agostino Steffani, en route to Italy, died in Frankfurt in 1728, and you can pay your respects at his final resting place in Frankfurt’s Dom (cathedral).
Nearly 300 years later this diplomat and high-ranking ecclesiastical dignitary’s music can be heard for the first time at Oper Frankfurt. Amor vien dal destino, and 7 other operas, were written in the 1690s for a new theatre in the Hanoverian Leinerschloss, where Steffani was in service to Kurfürst Ernst August as a Kapellmeister. It was performed for the first time in 1709, in Düsseldorf.
Steffani and his librettist chose an episode from the Aeneid, in which Aeneas and Turnus squabble over beautiful Lavinia. She could save her father Latinus’ life if she promises to marry Turnus, but Cupid planted an image of Aeneas in her heart long ago ... After all kinds of trials and tribulations, which the composer embellishes sometimes lyrically, sometimes amusingly, Lavinia and Aeneas are finally united. There is, after all no cure for Cupid's arrows.
Contemporaries admired his duets most of all; Telemann and Handel were influenced by his music; he enjoyed lively correspondence with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz and Queen Sophie Charlotte of Prussia. Steffani even mediated in a tiff between Kaiser Joseph I and Pope Clemens XI, which resulted in his being appointed an Envoy of the Holy See. Whodunnit author Donna Leon dedicated a novel to his extraordinary life in 2012, around the same time Cecilia Bartoli shared his music with the world on CD.
