Palmira, regina di Persia is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri

Antonio Salieri was a Venetian classical composer, conductor and teacher born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, but who spent his adult life and career as a faithful subject of the Habsburg monarchy....

: more specifically, it is a dramma eroicomico. The opera is in two acts and is set to a 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 Giovanni de Gamerra

Giovanni de Gamerra

Giovanni de Gamerra was a cleric, a playwright, and a poet. He is best known as a prolific librettist....

.

Salieri mingled elements of comic opera and heroic opera to produce a work that was a popular success at the time of its first performance, also partly due to the grandiose staging that is called for.

Performance history

The opera was first performed at the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

 on 14 October 1795, and staged 39 times in the Austrian capital between then and 1798. It was also given in Germany in translation.

Roles

Cast	Voice type	Premiere, October 14, 1795 (Conductor: - )
High Priest	bass
Palmira, a princess	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
Alderano, King of Egypt	bass
Oronte, King of Scythia	bass
Alcidoro, King of India	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Darius, King of Persia	bass

Synopsis

Set in ancient Persia, three Kings, arriving variously on a camel, an elephant and a horse, vie for the honour of killing a monster and winning the hand of the Persian princess Palmira.