Niccolò Piccinni

Ouverture dall'opera "Diane et Endymion"

Diane et Endymion is a tragédie lyrique in three acts about the mythological love story of the goddess Diana for the shepherd Endymion. The libretto written by the almost unknown Jean-François Espic chevalier de Liroux. The opera was first performed in Paris, at the Acádemie Royale de Musique, on 7 September 1784, fitting perfectly into the existential and artistic life of Piccinni, the important Italian composer of the Neapolitan school who, with his operas such as the extremely popular Cecchina o La Buona figliola of 1760 (libretto by Goldoni), very well summarised the 18th- century opera-form "larmoyante" (tearful comedy) before the advent of Gluck and melodrama steeped in pre-Romanticism.