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.

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.