Teatro La Fenice is continuing its rediscovery of Vivaldi’s operas with Ottone in Villa, which marked the debut of the thirty-five-year-old Red Priest in this genre, and will be staged at the Malibran Theatre. Conceived on a reduced scale for a small provincial theatre (Teatro delle Grazie in Vicenza, where it was ‘created’ on 17 May 1713), the libretto is by Domenico Lalli. The latter had no qualms in reducing the late seventeenth-century work of Messalina by Francesco Maria Piccioli it is based on to the minimum, and it requires only five singers and a small orchestra, without a choir or particular stage effects. What we have before us is a refined repêchage of the styles of Venetian musical comedy of the 1680s, representing in predominantly farcical tones a sort of apotheosis of vice. The story unfolds through twenty-eight splendid arias, each preceded by a recitative: the Roman emperor Otto loves Cleonilla, who – without scruples – does not hesitate to flirt with two young men, Caius and Ostilius; the latter is actually Tullia disguised and in love with Caius; the intrigues, misunderstandings, and not exactly uplifting feelings that result from this muddle find an unlikely catharsis at the end of the work with the marriage of Tullia and Caius, and the reconciliation between Otto and Cleonilla.