Antonio Cesti, La Dori (1657)

I'd heard about Cesti: he was extremely popular in his day, and he's notable for being a prolific composer most of whose operas survive, which is pretty unusual for the era.  But I'd never had a chane to actually sample his work until this disc, which was released late last year.

The plot's kind of baggy--as is many another opera from this area--but basically, you have Dori, an Egyptian princess.  She and Oronte, the heir to the Persian throne (and son of our ol' friend Artaserse, who is also a character), are in love, but unfortunately, through picaresque circumstances, she ends up disguising herself as a man, Alì; she's kidnapped by pirates and sold to slavers and ends up being the slave of Princess Arsione of Nicaea and becomes friends with her, which creates a conflict of interest, as Arsione is in love with Oronte (who likewise remains in love with Dori but thinks her dead) and the two of them are meant to be married.  Also, Asione's maid, Celinda, is actually a disguised Egyptian prince (and Dori's brother) Tolomeo; he is secretly in love with her (how he got into this position is not even hinted at by the libretto).  There's also a dude, Erasto, who's in love with Celinda, but that's a minor thing that could be cut out without affecting anything.  What am I forgetting?  Right, there's also Dirce, the obligatory horny old skirt-role nurse (this was the funniest goddamn concept imaginable to people in the seventeenth century).  In the end, there's some last-minute mistaken identity stuff--it turns out that Dori is actually Arsinoe's sister rather than Tolomeo's; why this is included, since it doesn't seem to change anything, is unclear.  But be that as it may, everyone is now happy.

The wikipedia goes on and on about how complicated the plot is, but honestly, I found it pretty straightforward.  Maybe I'm getting used to decoding complex stories, maybe not, but I definitely feel like I've seen worse.  That weird twist at the end did confuse me, though: what does it matter whether Dori is Arsinoe's sister or Tolomeo's?  She's a princess either way, and it's not like there was some potential incest that gets skirted by the change.  But thinking about it, I realized that it's probably because if she's Arsinoe's, Oronte can marry her and it's basically the same thing, thus not screwing up whatever strategic alliance this marriage was meant to cement.  I mean, the libretto doesn't even vaguely hint at this kind of realpolitik, but what else could it be?

In any event, the fact is, the music here fucking bangs.  Really great stuff.  You never know with these early operas, but we have here a bunch of early arias and duets along with the arioso, drama, comedy, you name it--a real garden of earthly delights, here.  On the strength of this, I'd say that Cesti's work deserves to be revived all over the place.