Antonio Cesti

[1] In 1637 he joined the Order of Friars Minor, or Franciscans, a Roman Catholic religious group founded by Francis of Assisi, and took the name Antonio.

By 1650 Cesti's calling as a Franciscan friar and his success as a singer and composer for operas were coming into conflict, and he was officially reprimanded.

Il pomo d'oro (The Golden Apple) was written for the wedding in Vienna of Emperor Leopold I in 1666, and first performed in 1668, in a famously lavish production.

It was far more elaborate than contemporary Venetian operas, including a large orchestra, numerous choruses, and various mechanical devices used to stage things like gods descending from heaven (deus ex machina), naval battles, and storms.

Orontea was revived seventeen times in the next thirty years, making it one of the most frequently performed operas on the continent in the mid-17th century.

Cesti composed several of his operas for the new court theatre Neues Komödienhaus at Innsbruck which was commissioned by Archduke Ferdinand Charles based on plans of local architect Christoph Gumpp the Younger.