Octavia (opera)

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The Roman Unrest, or The Noble-Minded Octavia (German:DIE RÖMISCHE UNRUHE oder DIE EDELMÜTIGE OCTAVIA), commonly called Octavia. Three part tragic opera by Reinhard Keiser, libretto by Barthold.

Response to Handel's now-lost Nero, using the same period, material and plot but with Barthold substantially improving the libretto. It unites the insidious machinations of the mad emperor Nero, including the assassination plots against his stepsister and wife Octavia, the Pisonian conspiracy and its suppression, with a multicoloured sub-plot of the philosophical instructions of the wise Seneca versus the amusing observations of a clown named Davus. The action is held together by the interweaving of all these plots.

It has an abundance of slippery allusions, grotesque elements like a ballet of the dead, which seems to have been taken from a Shakespearean comedy, but above all shows its librettist's opposition to happy endings beloved of his Hamburg audiences.

5 August 1705: Premiered in Hamburg, Germany. First ever use of French horns

[edit] Cast

• Claudia Octavia
• Nero
• Fabius
• Piso
• Lepidus
• Seneca the Younger
• Davus, clown
• King Tiridates
• Ormoena
• Livia
• Clelia

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