List of operas based on the Andromeda myth

Myth

The myth centers on Andromeda, the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia and King Cepheus of Aethiopia. Cassiopeia has angered the Nereids sea nymphs by boasting the she is more beautiful than they. The Nereids appeal to Poseidon who threatens the safety of Aethiopia as punishment. In order to appease him, Cassiopeia and Cepheus offer up Andromeda as a human sacrifice. She is stripped naked and is chained to a rock in Jaffa with the intent that she be consumed by the sea creature Cetus sent by Poseidon. She is rescued by Perseus, who arrives by flight on winged sandals or a Pegasus, fresh from his defeat of the Gorgon Medusa.

Opera adaptations

The earliest known opera based on the Andromeda myth was performed in Venice in 1587.^[3][4] Other early operas based on the myth were composed by Girolamo Giacobbi (1610),^[5] Domenico Belli (1618),^[6] and Claudio Monteverdi (premiered 1620).^[7] Francesco Manelli and Benedetto Ferrari's Andromeda [it] was a groundbreaking moment in the history of opera when it was staged in Venice in 1637 for the inauguration of the Teatro San Cassiano.^[8] Considered the "first commercial opera",^[9] the event marked the first time in theatre history that an opera was staged in a public theatre with tickets available for purchase by the general public.^[8]

Pedro Calderón de la Barca's play with music Fortunas de Andrómeda y Perseo [es] (1653) has sometimes been designated an opera or semi-opera as it contains scenes with sung arias and sung dialogue (ie recitative).^[10] Its score of uncertain authorship is often attributed to Juan Hidalgo.^[10] The work has been referred to in some sources as "Spain’s first opera";^[11] although there are other potential candidates both earlier and later for that claim depending on how one defines what an opera is and what makes an opera Spanish in origin.^[12]

Music historian Dale E. Monson asserts that most, but not all, of the opera adaptations of the Andromeda myth have ignored the details of the wider myth and focused the various opera adaptations on the part of the story dealing with the sea monster Cetus's defeat by Perseus.^[2] Some opera librettists, such as Philippe Quinault who wrote for Lully's Persée (1682) and Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi [it] whose libretto Andromeda was first set by Gioacchino Cocchi in 1755, chose to introduce a foreign prince or other competing suitor into the story not found in the original myth in order to create a love triangle in the relationship between Andromeda and Perseus.^[2] In Johann Friedrich Reichardt and Antonio de' Filistri da Caramondani's Andromeda (1788) an invented third seductor, Fineo, tries to steal Andromeda.^[13]

In 2004 the Venice Baroque Orchestra revived the 1726 pastiche Andromeda Liberata in a reconstruction by the violinist Olivier Fourés. Fourés attributed a large portion of the score to Antonio Vivaldi; an attribution disputed by musicologist Michael Talbot who asserted that Vivaldi contributed only a small amount of music. The New York Times coverage of this work stated: "Andromeda is now a subject of a fierce dispute within the normally quiet world of music scholarship, led by two contestants who could pass for David and Goliath".^[14]

The librretto for Ibert's Persée et Andromède (1921) chose to emphasize Andromeda's endangerment not from starvation or vulnerability to the elements but from the boredom of her captivity at Jaffa.^[15] Other 20th and 21st century operas on the Andromeda myth include works composed by Pierre Maurice [de] (1924),^[16] Salvatore Sciarrino (1990),^[17] and Agustí Charles (2021).^[18]