The two divergent tales of Antigone (Sophocles/Hyginus) present in 18th century opera

Abstract

The mythical story of Antigone is well known. She returns to Thebes after the death of Oedipus at Colonus at the time of the confrontation between her two brothers. After Eteocles and Polyneices have killed each other, she disobeys the law decreed by the sovereign Creon and performs funeral honors on the corpse of her brother Polyneices. After this infraction, the mythical story has two versions: in the first -whose main source is Sophocles- Antigone is locked up alive and kills herself, causing the subsequent suicide of her fiancé Haemon and her mother. In a second version, found as a complete source in Hyginus, it is said that Antigone did not die, but rather fled from Thebes and had a son. This article demonstrates how these two versions of the classical world will also appear represented in opera librettos as examples of Classical Reception. Two operas performed in the second half of the 18th century are taken as an example, both titled Antigona: the first, performed in Rome in 1751, with text by the librettist Gaetano Roccaforte and music by the composer Baldassare Galuppi, in which a woman is shown on stage, Antigone mother; and the second, performed in Saint Petersburg in 1772, which follows the Sophoclean version, with text by Marco Coltellini and music by Tommaso Traetta.