«Un dramma per la musica … alla moda di Venezia»: L’Argia (1655) di Apolloni e Cesti tra Cicognini e il teatro spagnolo

To celebrate the solemn conversion to Catholicism of Queen Christina of Sweden, in 1655 Giovanni Filippo Apolloni and Antonio Cesti composed L'Argia, a dramma per musica which had good fortune in Italy until the 1680s. The plot of the opera seems to follow the compositional models offered in the Venetian librettos by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini, of whom Apolloni was considered one of the best followers in introducing musical dramas onto the stage. Recent studies have linked the subject of L’Argia to Le gelosie fortunate del principe Rodrigo, a comedy by Cicognini dating back to 1654 that has often been related to Spanish theatre of the siglo de oro, although the sources of this work have not yet been definitively identified. These relationships are the subject of this paper.