Medea (opera)

Médée is a French language opéra-comique by Luigi Cherubini. The libretto by François-Benoît Hoffmann (Nicolas Étienne Framéry) was based on Euripides' tragedy of Medea and Pierre Corneille's play Médée.

The opera was premiered on 13 March 1797 at the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris. It met with a lukewarm reception and was not immediately revived. During the nineteenth- and most of the twentieth-century, it was usually performed in Italian translation as Medea, with the spoken dialogue replaced by recitatives not authorised by the composer. More recently, opera companies have returned to Cherubini's original version.

The long-lost final aria, which Cherubini appears to have blanked out in his original manuscript, was discovered by researchers from the University of Manchester and Stanford University by employing x-ray techniques to uncover the blackened out areas of Cherubini's manuscript.

Several versions of the opera were produced and staged in Italian and German:

The role of Médée is famed for its difficulty. Other famous interpreters of the role in the 20th century included Anna Caterina Antonacci, Dame Josephine Barstow, Montserrat Caballé, Eileen Farrell, Marisa Galvany, Leyla Gencer, Dame Gwyneth Jones, Nadja Michael, Maralin Niska, Magda Olivero, Leonie Rysanek, Sylvia Sass, Anja Silja, Dunja Vejzovic, and Shirley Verrett.

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