Prometeo (
Prometheus) is a 150-minute
opera by
Luigi Nono, written between 1981 and 1984 and revised in 1985. Here the word "opera" carries the generic Italian meaning of "work," as in work of art, and not its usual meaning. Indeed, Nono scornfully labels
Prometeo a "tragedia dell'ascolto", a tragedy of listening. Objectively it can be considered a sequence of nine cantatas, the longest lasting 23 minutes. The Italian libretto, by
Massimo Cacciari, selects from texts by such varied authors as
Aeschylus,
Walter Benjamin and
Rainer Maria Rilke and presents the different versions of the
myth of
Prometheus without telling any version literally.