The libretto was published in 1651 by Giuliani and Batti. The story combines two myths: Jupiter's seduction of Calisto, and Diana's adventure with Endymion. The plot is somewhat formulaic: Jane Glover has commented on how the librettist had to invent complications to meet audience expectations in the context of Venetian opera.
Performance history
Faustini, who was an impresario as well as a librettist, rented the Sant 'Apollinare Theatre in 1650. He and Cavalli put on three operas there before his death in December 1651 during the run of La Calisto. The theatre was equipped with complex stage machinery intended to impress the opera audiences with spectacle. However, the eleven performances of La Calisto from 28 November to 31 December 1651 attracted only about 1,200 patrons to a theatre that housed 400. The original Venetian production suffered from many incidents, including the death of the primo uomo Bonifazio Ceretti shortly after the premiere. This forced major changes in the original cast: the role of Endimione was changed from alto to soprano and probably asigned to one of the Caresana brothers; the two soprano Furie were replaced by a single bass Furia and a new character was added, a drunken peasant called Bifolco, probably performed by a new singer, Lorenzo Ferri, whose part has not survived in the score. The manuscript score was preserved in the Biblioteca Marciana, Venice, allowing La Calisto to be revived in modern times. The first person to publish the score was the British conductor Raymond Leppard in 1975. Leppard had arranged the opera for performance at Glyndebourne Festival Opera in 1970. This production included a number of then-prominent singers including Janet Baker as Diana. It was significant for creating new audiences for baroque opera and the recorded version is still listened to. However, the way that Leppard had "realised" the opera was removed from the original work. The United States premiere of the opera was presented in April 1972 for the dedication of the Patricia Corbett Pavilion at the University of Cincinnati – College-Conservatory of Music. The cast included Barbara Daniels as Diana and Tom Fox as Jove. The opera continues to be performed in new venues. For example, it received its premiere at Madrid's Teatro Real in 2019, while in the season 19-20 it will be performed in Nürnberg and Achen.
Publication
Leppard
Raymond Leppard´s edition of 1975 was the first publication of the score. It includes translations of the libretto.
Brown
In 2008, Jennifer Williams Brown's edition of the score won the American Musicological Society's Claude V. Palisca award.
