Vivaldi’s 1734 Olympic tragicomedy gets a new staging almost 300 years after its composition, conducted by Peter Whelan, directed by Daisy Evans, and co-produced between Irish National Opera, the Royal Opera, and Nouvel Opéra Fribourg, where it transfers after its London run. In many ways, it’s a lovely evening, though the work itself is slow to reveal its secrets.
The subject was popular in the 18th century, though Pietro Metastasio’s libretto now feels unduly complex. Its starting point is King Clistene’s decision to offer the hand of his daughter Aristea to the Olympiad’s overall victor. Licida, who loves her but is rubbish at sport, asks his athletic friend Megacle, whose life he once saved, to assume his identity and compete in his place, catastrophically unaware that Aristea and Megacle are secretly lovers. From here, the plot fans out to embrace multiple deceptions, skeletons in royal closets, abandoned children, incest, obsessive exes, and so on, as twists pile up in exhausting profusion.
