Already knee-deep in the process of foreshadowing his future operas (Idomeneo, re di creta, and especially La clemenza di Tito), Mozart set Metastasio's libretto to music, having discovered it earlier at a performance of the Giardini version. He workshopped the text by fabricating acts out of one, among other changes. Even though he was staging the classic conflict between love and duty prevalent in tragedies, Mozart gave his protagonists a happy ending by swapping out the original serious libretto and infusing it with merriment by way of light arias and mellifluous musical passages.
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John Dew (stage director), Josef Wallnig (condu...
