After the period of court mourning for the late King and many other delays, the sumptuous production (costing the company over £4000 to mount) had its premiere on Sunday, 3 June,[1] that same year at Dorset Garden Theatre, London.

In terms of production, the opera was a restoration spectacular, visuals included much mere mythological display to take advantage of the "machines" at the Dorset Garden Theatre, such as "The clouds divide, and Juno appears in a machine drawn by peacocks: while a symphony is playing, it moves gently forward, and as it descends, it opens and discovers the tail of the peacock, which is so large that it almost fills the opening of the stage between scene and scene" (act 1).

More pointedly, political allegorizing of the Tory message includes a figure representing Shaftesbury "with Fiend's Wings, and snakes twisted round his body; he is encompassed by several fanatical rebellious heads, who suck poison from him, which runs out of a tap in his side".

Pointing out that the persons were supernatural or heroic, Dryden linked his work with the genre we would call Romance: "The subject, therefore, being extended beyond the limits of human nature, admits of that sort of marvellous and surprising conduct, which is rejected in other plays... it would follow of necessity, that the expressions should be lofty, figurative, and majestical."

In the 17th-century, Italian operas that Dryden admitted were his general models – and the French ones that he did not mention – the recitative drove the action, and the arias – "which for want of a proper English word, I must call the songish part" – were meant to please the ear rather than gratify the understanding.