Pénélope (Piccinni)

Niccolò Piccinni

Operas Le donne vendicate (1763) Il finto astrologo (1765) La buona figliuola (1766) L'americano (1772) Roland (1778) Atys (1780) Iphigénie en Tauride (1781) Adèle de Ponthieu (1781) Didon (1783) Diane et Endymion (1784) Pénélope (1785) See also: List of operas by Piccinni

Pénélope is a French-language opera by the composer Niccolò Piccinni, first performed at Fontainebleau on 2 November 1785 in the presence of King Louis XVI and his queen Marie-Antoinette. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in three acts. The libretto, by Jean-François Marmontel, is based on the story of Odysseus (Ulysses) and Penelope in Homer's Odyssey. The opera transferred to the Académie Royale de Musique, Paris (the Paris Opera) on 6 December 1785, but it was not a success.

Roles

Cast	Voice type	Premiere
Pénélope	soprano	Antoinette Saint-Huberty
Théone	soprano	Marie-Thérèse Davoux Maillard
Télémaque (Telemachus)	tenor	Étienne Lainez
Ulisse (Ulysses)	basse taille (bass-baritone)	Henri Larrivée
Laèrte (Laertes)	baritone	Louis-Claude-Armand Chardin ("Chardiny")
Eumée (Eumaeus)	haute-contre	J. Rousseau
Nésus	bass-baritone	Moreau
Minerve (the goddess Minerva)	soprano	Mlle Châteauvieux
Une coryphée	soprano	Mlle Buret
Chorus: Eight suitors of Penelope, people

Sources

(French) Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse Dictionnaire des Opéras, p.523
(French) Original libretto at BNF Gallica

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