Arvire et Évélina

Arvire et Évélina is a French-language opera by Antonio Sacchini, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra) on 29 April 1788. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in three acts. The libretto, by Nicolas-François Guillard, is based on the dramatic poem Caractacus (1759) by William Mason. It was Sacchini's last opera and the score was left incomplete at the time of the composer's sudden death in October 1786. The missing music was written by Jean-Baptiste Rey.

Arvire et Évélina was Sacchini's fifth French opera and his fourth collaboration with Guillard, his favourite French librettist. The opera is loosely based on an historical event: the resistance of the ancient British king Caractacus to the Roman invasion of Britain in the first century AD. Guillard adapted Arvire et Évélina from Caractacus, a dramatic poem by the English writer William Mason first published in 1759. Caractacus was a bestseller as it exploited the late 18th-century fashion for Celtic history and myth, especially such figures as the Druids. Mason took the name of his Chief Druid, Modred, from his friend Thomas Gray's famous poem The Bard. In 1776, Mason modified the work for a stage performance at Covent Garden with incidental music by Thomas Arne.

Guillard freely adapted Mason, changing the story line and many of the names. For example, he had the villain Vellinus repent because he thought French audiences needed a happy ending. He also felt that some of the names would sound harsh to French ears, arguing that the lack of historical accuracy this would entail would not matter so much as the characters were not part of French national history. Thus, Caractacus became "Arvire", Elidurus "Irvin" and Aulus Didius "Messala".

Sacchini had completed some of the score of Arvire by 1786, when he played excerpts to his patron Marie Antoinette, Queen of France. He then became embroiled in intrigues surrounding his attempt to have his previous opera, Œdipe à Colone, restaged. Failure to guarantee future performances of Œdipe was partly blamed for the composer's early death on 7 October 1786 at the age of 56.

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