The Dance, Wq. 19

The opera was written to celebrate the eighth birthday of Empress Maria Theresa's son Leopold and first performed at Laxenburg on 5 May 1755. La danza was used as the prologue to Le grand Ballet des bergers (The Great Ballet of the Shepherds), a ballet with music by Josef Starzer. Pietro Metastasio had originally written the opera's Italian-language libretto for the composer Giuseppe Bonno in 1744. He revised the text for Gluck, including two new arias. The opera may have been reprised on 30 May 1755 at Laxenburg. There is no record of any further performance until 1987, when it appeared at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna.