L'Olimpiade (Mysliveček)

L'Olimpiade is an 18th-century Italian opera in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was composed to a libretto by the Italian poet Metastasio that was first performed in 1733. For a performance in the 1770s, it would only be expected that a libretto of such age would be abbreviated and altered to suit contemporary operatic taste; some of the original aria texts would be omitted or substituted, and the remaining aria texts would be set more expansively. In this case, only 14 of the original 18 aria texts of Metastasio were newly set to music. The cuts and changes in the text made for the 1778 performance of Mysliveček's opera are not attributable.

The opera was first performed at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples on 4 November 1778, the nameday of king Charles III of Spain, the former ruler of the Kingdom of Naples whose birthday and nameday were still celebrated with operatic productions under the rule of his son Ferdinand. It is unquestionably one of the finest setting of this Metastasian libretto ever produced. Contemporary music criticism praised in particular the composer's setting of the aria "Se cerca, se dice" as sung by Luigi Marchesi, a close friend and professional collaborator of the composer. Mysliveček's L'Olimpiade was revived in 2005 at the Narodní Divadlo Moravskoslezské in Ostrava, then revived again as a new production at the Estates Theatre in Prague, the Grand Théâtre in Dijon, the Théâtre de Caen, and the Grand Théâtre in Luxembourg in April and May 2013. A version of the latter production was also repeated in concert format at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna in March 2014.

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