Francesco Cavalli, La virtù dei strali d'Amore (1642)

Here's another Cavalli opera. What more do you want me to say? Well, I'll say this: the more of Cavalli I see, the more I like him. I hope that more of his operas will be performed and recorded in the near future.

The plot of this one is, let us say, choppy. Not the most coherent. There are, in the recorded production of this that exists, eleven singers, and most of them play two or three characters. If I tried to summarize the plot in detail, I would fail. But basically: we're on some sort of island. Pallante, a Thracian prince, is there in pursuit of Cleria, with whom he is in love. Also after Cleria is Meonte, from whom she's fleeing. Meonte's servant Eumete is also there. Oh, there's also some king who's been trapped in a tree by a which, but as far as that goes, I can't EVEN. So those are the main mortal characters. There are also a bunch of divine characters, the most important of whom--as you might have guessed from the title--is Amore or Eros or Cupid or WHATEVER. He's kind of miffed that his mother Venus is messing around with Mars, so even though they ask him to make Cleria love Pallante back, he doesn't wanna. Instead, he runs off to the island (to his wife Psyche's distress), but before he can do anything else, he falls asleep. His arrows make various people fall in love with various other people, but eventually things work out: it is revealed that Eumete is actually Erabena, who was Meonte's lover until he left her in pursuit of Cleria. But ultimately, all the correct couples end up together and it's all good. There, I THINK I got that about right.

Confusing it may be, but it's a lot of fun. And if you like seventeenth-century opera, I think you will agree. A lot of good early arias or aria-like pieces. The eryopses of arias? Maybe! The production is a contemporary sort of thing, with characters waving around guns in lieu of swords, which is perhaps a little silly (hell, the libretto is a little silly; stop complaining), but it's fine. Ignore the amazon reviewer who doesn't like it because the libretto is not up to their standards. That person is a curmudgeon.