Montezuma is an opera seria

Opera seria

Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to c. 1770...

 in three acts by the German composer Carl Heinrich Graun

Carl Heinrich Graun

Carl Heinrich Graun was a German composer and tenor singer. Along with Johann Adolf Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time.-Biography:...

. The scenario was written in French by Graun's patron, Frederick the Great, the King of Prussia, and turned into an Italian libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Giampetro Tagliazucchi.

The work's plot concerns Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés

Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...

's conquest of Mexico

Spanish conquest of Mexico

The Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire was one of the most important campaigns in the Spanish colonization of the Americas. The invasion began in February 1519 and was acclaimed victorious on August 13, 1521, by a coalition army of Spanish conquistadors and Tlaxcalan warriors led by Hernán Cortés...

 and the defeat of the Aztec

Aztec

The Aztec people were certain ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica in the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, a period referred to as the late post-classic period in Mesoamerican chronology.Aztec is the...

 emperor Montezuma

Moctezuma II

Moctezuma , also known by a number of variant spellings including Montezuma, Moteuczoma, Motecuhzoma and referred to in full by early Nahuatl texts as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin, was the ninth tlatoani or ruler of Tenochtitlan, reigning from 1502 to 1520...

. The title role was originally performed by a castrato

Castrato

A castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...

, but today is performed by either a male countertenor

Countertenor

A countertenor is a male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of a contralto, mezzo-soprano, or a soprano, usually through use of falsetto, or far more rarely than normal, modal voice. A pre-pubescent male who has this ability is called a treble...

 or female mezzo-soprano

Mezzo-soprano

A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...

.

Other premieres

The U.S. premiere was given on 14 February 1973 by the Associate Artists Opera Company at the Cyclorama Boston Center for the Arts.

The premiere recording of the complete opera was released in 2008, conducted by Johannes Goritzki. Highlights had earlier been recorded by Lauris Elms

Lauris Elms

Lauris Margaret Elms AM OBE is an Australian contralto, renowned in opera and lieder.She was born in Springvale, Victoria, the daughter of Harry Britton and Jean Elms and trained with Katherine Wielaert in Melbourne. She first sang with the National Theatre Opera Company in 1952 in The Consul. ...

 (title role), Joan Sutherland

Joan Sutherland

Dame Joan Alston Sutherland, OM, AC, DBE was an Australian dramatic coloratura soprano noted for her contribution to the renaissance of the bel canto repertoire from the late 1950s through to the 1980s....

, Elizabeth Harwood

Elizabeth Harwood

Elizabeth Harwood was an English lyric soprano. After a music school, she enjoyed an operatic career lasting for over two decades and worked with such conductors as Colin Davis and Herbert von Karajan...

 and Joseph Ward

Joseph Ward

Sir Joseph George Ward, 1st Baronet, GCMG was the 17th Prime Minister of New Zealand on two occasions in the early 20th century.-Early life:...

, conducted by Richard Bonynge

Richard Bonynge

Richard Alan Bonynge, AO, CBE is an Australian conductor and pianist.Bonynge was born in Sydney and educated at Sydney Boys High School before studying piano at the Royal College of Music in London. He gave up his music scholarship, continuing his private piano studies, and became a coach for...

.