Betulia liberata, La

Oratorio in two acts by Mozart to a text by Pietro Metastasio, based on the story of Judith and Holofernes. The work was commissioned by a Paduan nobleman, Giuseppe Ximenes, Prince of Aragon, and composed in 1771 in Italy and Salzburg but not performed in Mozart's lifetime. The first British performance was given in London on 6 November 1968, by Opera Viva. Metastasio's text was first set by Reutter (performed in Vienna, Austria, on 8 April 1734). There are later settings by Niccolò Jommelli (Venice, 1734), Ignaz Holzbauer (Mannheim, 1760), Florian Gassmann (Vienna, 1772), and Schuster (Dresden, 1796).