La stellidaura vendicante at Theater an der Wien

Francesco Provenzale (~ 1624-1704) was the first known composer, musician and music teacher from Naples. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school and as the forerunner of Nicola Porpora, Leonardo da Vinci and Johann Adolph Hasse.
His only surviving stage works are the three-act melodrama Lo schiavo di sua moglie (1672 The slave of his wife) and also the three-act opera La Stellidaura vendicante (1674). The latter was in 2012 presented to a wide audience by Alessandro De Marchi at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music and recorded for harmonia mundi. The opera, in its action both comic and tragic elements. Prince Orismondo and Armidoro, Hofritter and friend of the prince are in love with the beautiful Stellidaura she says love Armidoros. The first encounter as rivals ends for Armidoro with an injury to the arm and is also the beginning of the comic and clumsy confusion, for the singing in dialect altkalabrischem servant Orismondos, Giampetro, is responsible. Ultimately Stellidaura to be poisoned because of an assassination attempt on Orismondo, but it is again Giampetro, the given her by mistake (?) Only a sleeping pill. At the end of the opera, after a surprising kinship has opened, the couple Armidoro and Stellidaura is still together.