Motezuma

Motezuma
Opera by Antonio Vivaldi
18th-century depiction of the Aztec ruler Montezuma, the opera's protagonist
Librettist	Alvise Giusti
Premiere	14 November 1733 (1733-11-14) Teatro Sant'Angelo, Venice

Motezuma is an opera in three acts by Antonio Vivaldi with an Italian libretto by Alvise Giusti. The libretto is very loosely based on the life of the Aztec ruler Montezuma who died in 1520. The first performance was given in the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice on 14 November 1733. (In earlier reference books the opera is referred to as Montezuma, but since the reappearance of the original manuscript this has been corrected to Motezuma.) The music was thought to have been lost, but was discovered in 2002 in the archive of the music library of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Its first fully staged performance in modern times took place in Düsseldorf, Germany, on 21 September 2005.

Vivaldi's librettist was the Venetian lawyer Girolamo Giusti. His libretto was a highly fictionalised account of an episode in the life of the Aztec ruler Montezuma. The opera has a happy ending, unlike the real Montezuma who was killed during the initial stages of the Spanish conquest of Mexico. The opera, which premiered on 14 November 1733 at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice, was one of the earliest to be based on a subject from the Americas. According to Michael Talbot in The Vivaldi Compendium, for its time Giusti's libretto "evinces a rare degree of sympathy for the Mexican emperor and his queen Mirena." At the premiere the role of Mirena was sung by Anna Girò, who was a protégée of Vivaldi and whom he considered his "indispensable" prima donna. The title role was sung by the German bass Massimiliano Miler. Unusually for Vivaldi who preferred castrato singers with contralto voices, he wrote two roles for soprano castrati—Fernando (Cortés) and Asperano, the Mexican general. The choreographer at the premiere was Giovanni Gallo. The sets were designed by Antonio Mauro.