It has been 40 years since the Opéra de Lausanne last programmed Mozart's Mitridate, the opera of his youth and the first success of a 14-year-old who was drunk with opera and Italy. But it was also the crowning achievement of a first trip to the land of opera, after only 10 months of study. It premiered at the prestigious Teatro Regio Ducale (the forerunner of La Scala), under the direction of the maestrino (harpsichord), on December 26, 1770, on the occasion of the carnival that inaugurated the Milanese season; the opera seria revealed a highly accomplished score with virtuoso and expressive writing, certainly respecting the aesthetic conventions of this noble genre but already containing the seeds of the dazzling beginnings of the masterpieces to come.

Mozart was commissioned by Count Karl Joseph von Firmian. The representative of Empress Maria Theresa offered the Salzburg genius the complete works of Metastasius, the obligatory librettist of the time, but the choice of libretto fell on Mitridate adapted by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi from a translation of Jean Racine's play of the same name, which favors sentimental intrigue over the horrors of war.

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