L'Arianna is the lost second opera by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. One of the earliest operas in general, it was composed in 1607–1608 and first performed on 28 May 1608, as part of the musical festivities for a royal wedding at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua. All the music is lost apart from the extended recitative known as "Lamento d'Arianna". The libretto, which survives complete, was written in eight scenes by Ottavio Rinuccini, who used Ovid's Heroides and other classical sources to relate the story of Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus on the island of Naxos and her subsequent elevation as bride to the god Bacchus.
Titian's depiction, painted 1520–23, of Bacchus's arrival on Naxos. This scene forms the climax of the opera.
The Palazzo del Te, Mantua, seat of the Gonzaga dynasty which Monteverdi served as a court musician from 1590 to 1612
Claudio Monteverdi, c. 1630
First two pages of the first edition of the "Lamento", published by Gardano in Venice in 1623
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history.
Cremona Cathedral, where Monteverdi's teacher Ingegneri was maestro di capella
Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga in his coronation robes (1587, by Jeannin Bahuet [it])
The only certain portrait of Claudio Monteverdi, from the title page of Fiori poetici, a 1644 book of commemorative poems for his funeral
Duke Francesco IV Gonzaga, by the studio of Frans Pourbus the Younger
![Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga in his coronation robes (1587, by Jeannin Bahuet [it])](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6b/Vincenzo_I_Gonzaga_nel_giorno_dell%E2%80%99incoronazione.jpg/354px-Vincenzo_I_Gonzaga_nel_giorno_dell%E2%80%99incoronazione.jpg)
