''Niobe, regina di Tebe'' is an

opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libr ...

in three acts by Agostino Steffani, premiered at Salvatortheater, the

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the third-largest city in Germany, after Berlin and Ha ...

court theatre on 5 January 1688, during the carnival season . It is a tragedy focusing on the Ancient Greek character of

Niobe In Greek mythology, Niobe (; grc-gre, Νιόβη ) was a daughter of Tantalus and of either Dione, the most frequently cited, or of Eurythemista or Euryanassa, the wife of Amphion and the sister of Pelops and Broteas. Her father was the r ...

. The libretto is by Luigi Orlandi, after

Ovid Pūblius Ovidius Nāsō (; 20 March 43 BC – 17/18 AD), known in English as Ovid ( ), was a Roman poet who lived during the reign of Augustus. He was a contemporary of the older Virgil and Horace, with whom he is often ranked as one of the th ...

's ''

Metamorphoses The ''Metamorphoses'' ( la, Metamorphōsēs, from grc, μεταμορφώσεις: "Transformations") is a Latin narrative poem from 8 CE by the Roman poet Ovid. It is considered his ''magnum opus''. The poem chronicles the history of the ...

''. The score is in the National Library in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

. Excerpts have been published in Riemann ''Ausgewählte Werke'' iii. Long neglected, the opera was revived at

Alice Tully Hall Alice Tully Hall is a concert hall at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in the Upper West Side neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The hall is named for Alice Tully, a New York performer and philanthropist whose donations assist ...

in New York City by the Clarion Music Society in 1977. More recently the work was mounted in Schwetzingen in 2008, in London in 2010, and in Boston in 2011.

Roles

Recordings

References

External links

Site of the Balthasar Neumann Ensemble's performance of Niobe at the Schwetzingen Festival 2008

Site of the 2010 Covent Garden production (archived page)

* ttp://www.bemf.org/pages/opera/pastOpera/11.htm Site of the Boston Early Music Festival production 1688 operas Italian-language operas Operas Operas by Agostino Steffani Operas based on classical mythology {{italian-opera-stub