The Venetian poet Antonio Conti received from Marcello the commission for a dramatic text that allows a quick succession of events, rather than the usual succession of recitative and arias.
Cassandra plunges us into Homer’s Trojan War, with its namesake prophetess who has the gift of predicting the future, but whom no one believes. The many [25] extant copies of this cantata, here given its world première recording, testify to the impact it had in its own time.