La Salustia

La Salustia
Opera seria by G. B. Pergolesi
Title page of the libretto
Language	Italian
Based on	Alessandro Severo by Apostolo Zeno
Premiere	1732 (1732) Teatro San Bartolomeo, Naples

La Salustia is a 1732 opera in three acts by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi to a revised text, possibly by Sebastiano Morelli, after Apostolo Zeno's famous 1716 libretto Alessandro Severo, which was also later adapted by Handel. The production was marred when the leading man Nicolo Grimaldi "Nicolini" fell fatally ill before the performance and an inexperienced substitute Gioacchino Conti "Gizziello" had to be called in at the last minute. La Salustia was Pergolesi's first opera seria. The story is based on the life of the Roman emperor Alexander Severus and his wife Sallustia Orbiana.

In 1731 Pergolesi's long years of study at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo in Naples were reaching their end. He had already begun to make a name for himself and was able to pay off his expenses by working as a performer in religious institutions and noble salons, first as a singer then as a violinist. In 1729–30 he had been "capoparanza" (first violin) in a group of instrumentalists and, according to a later witness, it was the Oratorian Fathers who made most regular use of his artistic services as well as those of other "mastricelli" (little maestros) from the Conservatorio. The first important commission Pergolesi received on leaving the school was linked to this religious order and on 19 March 1731 his oratorio La fenice sul rogo, o vero La morte di San Giuseppe () ["The Phoenix on the Pyre, or The Death of Saint Joseph"] was performed in the atrium of the church today known as the Chiesa dei Girolamini, the home of the Congregazione di San Giuseppe. This two-part oratorio, with a text by Antonino Maria Paolucci, was the first important work by the composer from Jesi. "The following summer Pergolesi was asked to set to music, as the final exercise of his studies, a dramma sacro in three acts by Ignazio Mancini, Li prodigi della divina grazia nella conversione e morte di san Guglielmo duca d’Aquitania ["The Miracles of Divine Grace in the Conversion and Death of Saint William, Duke of Aquitaine"]. The performance took place in the cloisters of the monastery of Sant'Agnello Maggiore, the home of the Canons Regular of the Most Holy Savior."