Adelaide or l'Adelaide is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by Antonio Sartorio

Antonio Sartorio

Antonio Sartorio was an Italian composer active mainly in Italy and in Hamburg, Germany. He was a leading composer of operas in his native Venice in the 1660s and 1670s and was also known for composing in other genres of vocal music...

 to an Italian libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Pietro Dolfin. It was premiered in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 at the Teatro San Salvatore in 1672. An exact date is not known, although the libretto is dedicated February 19, 1672.

The genre of the opera is dramma per musica

Dramma per musica

Dramma per musica is a term which was used by dramatists in Italy and elsewhere between the late-17th and mid-19th centuries...

. The libretto follows the same historical events as Handel's later Lotario

Lotario

Lotario is an opera seria in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Antonio Salvi's Adelaide.-Performance history:...

.

Roles

• Adelaide, soprano
  Soprano
  A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...
  
  
• Adalberto, soprano
• Ottone, soprano
• Gissilla, soprano
• Annone, contralto
  Contralto
  Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...
  
  
• Delma, tenor
  Tenor
  The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
  
  
• Amedeo, tenor
• Lindo, tenor
• Berengario, bass
  Bass (voice type)
  A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
  
  
• Armondo, bass

Synopsis

The story takes place in 951 AD, when, after the death of her husband Lothair II of Italy

Lothair II of Italy

Lothair II , often Lothair of Arles, was the King of Italy from 948 to his death. He was of the noble Frankish lineage of the Bosonids, descended from Boso the Elder...

, Adelaide of Italy

Adelaide of Italy

Saint Adelaide of Italy , also called Adelaide of Burgundy, was the second wife of Otto the Great, Holy Roman Emperor...

 is forced to marry Adalbert of Italy

Adalbert of Italy

Adalbert was the king of Italy from 950 to 963. He was the son of the Margrave Berengar of Ivrea and Willa.On 15 December 950, both he and his father were crowned kings of Italy after the death of Lothair II. His father tried to force Adelaide, widow of Lothair, to marry Adalbert and cement their...

 by his father, Berengar II of Italy

Berengar II of Italy

Berengar of Ivrea , sometimes also referred to as Berengar II of Italy, was Margrave of Ivrea and usurper King of Italy from 950 until his deposition in 961, the last before Italy's incorporation into the Holy Roman Empire...

.