Eliogabalo (Heliogabalus) is an opera by the Italian composer Francesco Cavalli based on the reign and assassination of the debauched teenage Roman emperor Heliogabalus. The author of the original libretto remained anonymous, but it was probably reworked by Aurelio Aureli. The opera was composed in 1667 and was intended to be premiered during the Venetian Carnival season of 1668. In fact, it was not staged in Cavalli's lifetime and was replaced with a revised text by Aureli, in which Eliogabalo repents and lives, and with music by the much younger composer Giovanni Antonio Boretti, perhaps because Cavalli's style was considered too old-fashioned or because the Jesuits, who were regaining power in Venice at the time, were thought likely to oppose putting a story about a regicide on stage.
==Performance history== thumb|left|, site of the opera's 1999 premiere Eliogabalo received its world premiere on 27 November 1999, for the inauguration of the in Crema, Italy, the city in which Cavalli was born. Roberto Solci conducted the instrumental ensemble I Concertanti with countertenor Antonio Giovannini as Eliogabalo and soprano Paola Cigna as Flavia Gemmira. It was the very young Giovannini's debut role.
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