L'Argia

L'Argia
Opera by Antonio Cesti
Stage set for Act 1, Scene 1 of the premiere performance
Librettist	Giovanni Filippo Apolloni
Premiere	4 November 1655 (1655-11-04) Hoftheater, Innsbruck

L'Argia is an opera in a prologue and three acts composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. It was first performed in the court theatre at Innsbruck on 4 November 1655 to celebrate the visit of Queen Christina of Sweden who was on her way to exile in Rome. Over the next 20 years it had multiple performances in Italian cities including Venice and Siena where it inaugurated Siena's new opera house in 1669. Its first performance in modern times took place at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in 1996. Set on the Island of Cyprus in ancient times the opera's convoluted plot, full of disguises and mistaken identities, revolves around the amorous misadventures of Selino who has been pursued to Salamis by his deserted wife Princess Argia.

At the time of the opera's first performance both the composer Antonio Cesti and its librettist Giovanni Filippo Apolloni were in the service of Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria at his court in Innsbruck—Cesti from 1652 and Apolloni from 1653. L'Argia was their first operatic collaboration there. It was part of a week of festivities in November 1655 celebrating the visit of Queen Christina of Sweden who had abdicated the throne and was on her way to exile in Rome. On 3 November she formally converted to Catholicism in the Hofkirche at Innbruck. The following evening L'Argia was performed at the Archduke's new theatre which had been inaugurated the previous year and stood on the site of today's Tiroler Landestheater. The English cleric and traveller John Bargrave was in Innsbruck at the time and attended the performance. He later wrote:

That night she [Queen Christina] was entertayned with a most excellent opera, all in musick, and in Italian, the actors of that play being all of that nation, and, as some of themselves told me, they were seven castrati or eunuchs; the rest were whoores, monks, fryers, and priests. I am sure it lasted about 6 or 7 hours, with most strangely excellent scenes and ravishing musick.