Francesco Cavalli’s incandescent opera, where tragedy rubs shoulders with comedy, and burlesque alternates with deep emotion. Max Emanuel Cenčić directs a lively production, drawing on the codes of the commedia dell’arte. This game of love and chance combines passion, betrayal, and power struggles. The countertenor takes on the title role, while Leonardo García Alarcón conducts the Cappella Mediterranea.

Returning victorious to Rome after his third campaign, General Pompey (Cneius Pompeius Magnus in Latin) is welcomed as a hero by the patricians and even by Caesar. But there is no question of resting on his laurels, because behind the thick walls of the Roman palaces, another war is raging, between passion, thirst for power, betrayal, and jealousy. Sextus, Pompey’s son, covets the prisoner of war Issicratea.
But he does not know that she is none other than the wife of Mithridates, Pompey’s adversary, whom everyone believes to be dead. However, Mithridates is very much alive and staying incognito in Rome, where he is testing the fidelity of his wife and the loyalty of his son, Pharnaces.
As for Pompey, he is in love with Julia, Caesar’s daughter, who herself is enamored with Servilius… In this maze of feelings and faced with the torments of love, will the formidable conqueror Pompey the Great be able to navigate his way through as a strategist?