Olimpia Vendicata is Ariadne auf Naxos in a distinctly more 17th-century Italian key. Poor Olimpia, a Princess of Holland, is abandoned on a desert island by her faithless lover, Bireno. Kidnapped by pirates, she is made a slave at the elegant, sensuous court of Hibernia, where it seems everybody is amorous of somebody else. (Remember, this is fiction.) Imagine her surprise when Bireno crops up and begins wooing the Hibernian princess Alinda! With finesse and malice, Olimpia exacts poetic justice.

The war is over, and Troy’s defender Hector has been slain by Achilles, now also dead. Hector’s widow Andromache and their young son Astyanax are captives. The burning question of the opera is what to do with the boy, who the Greeks fear may grow up to take revenge. The Greek answer, delivered by the fierce Orestes, is to execute the child — a fate that is prevented only at the last moment.

A sex farce with teeth. Clever, lecherous Messalina turns the tables several times on the gullible Emperor Claudius, who is hardly innocent himself. Meanwhile two other couples suffer their own romantic vicissitudes. Furtive assignations, frustrated trysts, kidnappings, betrayals, sudden recognitions, a heroine and a hero both in drag, and a plot as convoluted as only 17th-century Venetian opera can put together, all lead to a reconciliation that will last only as long as Messalina can keep pulling the wool over Claudius’ eyes.

The plot, which unfolds in Phoenicia, features two young lovers Ermelinda and Ormindo, a tyrannical father and two trouble makers. Ermelinda is not allowed to love Ormindo and will have to endure the stratagems and machinations fabricated by the other characters who want to split them. From mad scenes to fake deaths, every ruse and artifice will be used to make mischief. Will Ermelinda's determination and cleverness outsmart her enemies?

The Greek army, ready to battle against Troy under the command of King Agamemnon, was detained by contrary winds in the port of Aulis. The King appealed to the Oracle and the response was clear: it would not be possible to sail to Troy, without first placating the wrath of the Goddess Diana with a death. The death and sacrifice of Iphigenia, daughter of the King.

The plot of La Circe was inspired by the adventures of Circe, the goddess and magician of Greek mythology made famous in Homer’s Odyssey and Ovid's Metamorphoses. After Ulysses escapes Circe’s clutches, the outraged enchantress remains on her island with a number of unlucky captives who will fall victim to her resentment and manipulations.

Long lost in the archives of Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana, Pallavicino's opera takes place in the legendary Fortunates Isles located in the Atlantic Ocean, a winterless earthly paradise inhabited by the heroes of Greek mythology. After their defeat by the Greeks at the battle of Thermodon, the Amazons migrated to the Fortunates Isles. One day, a Moorish corsair is shipwrecked on the shore… and everything changes.

Daniele da Castrovillari’s La Cleopatra – lost in the archives of Venice’s Biblioteca Marciana since its premiere in 1662 – bears the name of the femme fatale whose legend has been recounted by everyone from Plutarch to Burton and Taylor. But those who anticipate yet another version of that famed tragedy should brace themselves for a hefty dose of the unexpected. Castrovillari and his librettist Giacomo dall’Angelo conjure up a lively salmagundi of romance, jealousy, skullduggery, sensuality, comedy, political catastrophe and attempted murder, climaxing in a surprise ending that is entirely in the spirit of Carnevale.