Arvire et Évélina is a French-language opera by Antonio Sacchini, premiered posthumously at the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opéra) on 29 April 1788.

The opera is loosely based on an historical event: the resistance of the ancient British king Caractacus to the Roman invasion of Britain in the first century AD.

Guillard adapted Arvire et Évélina from Caractacus, a dramatic poem by the English writer William Mason first published in 1759.

[1] Mason took the name of his Chief Druid, Modred, from his friend Thomas Gray's famous poem The Bard.

In 1776, Mason modified the work for a stage performance at the Royal Opera House with incidental music by Thomas Arne.

Failure to guarantee future performances of Œdipe was partly blamed for the composer's early death on 7 October 1786 at the age of 56.

[5] The circumstances surrounding Sacchini's death aroused public sympathy and ensured Œdipe was an enormous success when it was performed in Paris in January 1787.

[7] Marie Antoinette was eager to hear the opera and wanted Niccolò Piccinni, Sacchini's fellow Italian composer and former rival, to be given the task of finishing the music.

In the event, neither Piccinni nor Vogel were chosen for the job; that honour went to Jean-Baptiste Rey, the batteur de mesure (conductor) of the Académie Royale.

Although this document was not legally valid, Rey appealed to the Queen and to the xenophobia of some members of the Opéra management, who did not want the task to go to a foreign composer.

[11] The opera was translated into blank verse by Lorenzo Da Ponte as Evelina, or the Triumph of the English (sic) over the Romans and staged at the King's Theatre, London on 10 January 1797.

[15] According to Spire Pitou, "three or four passages in Arvire et Évélina became quite popular with the public, for example, "Le voila, ce héro qui combattait pour nous," but it was the aria "O jour affreux" that moved spectators most deeply.

"[16] In Giorgio Pestelli's view, Sacchini's music did not attempt to match the early Romanticism of the libretto: "Guillard had very promptly presented Sacchini with a libretto full of early romantic sensibility, embracing the ideas of nature and night ('J'aime la sombre horreur de ce séjour sauvage', the barbarian Arvire sings), the attraction of terror, Ossian, and the Breton forests.

Only in the choruses of the bards are more interesting protractions noticeable, as in the 'Symphonie douce et majestueuse' in E flat major in Act II, which is tinged with the priestly and masonic solemnity that was to re-echo in Mozart's Die Zauberflőte two years later.

Scene: moonlight, a grove of oak trees through which a troubled sea can be seen in the distance; rocks on either side The Roman general Messala and his troops have come to track down the British king Arvire and bring him captive to the Emperor Claudius in Rome.

Princes Irvin and Vellinus enter and tell the Romans their search is in vain: in his hiding place on Mona, Arvire can never be caught.

Évélina rushes in; she suspects that her father is in danger and she distrusts the two princes after she sees Irvin sighing frequently and looking troubled.