The 1754 Revisions
The prologue was completely cut; it was no longer politically relevant and the fashion for operas having prologues had died out. The opera no longer begins with Castor's funeral; a wholly new Act One was created explaining the background to the story: Telaira is in love with Castor but she is betrothed to Pollux, who is prepared to give her up to his brother when he finds out. Unfortunately the wedding celebrations are violently interrupted by Lynceus and a battle breaks out in which Castor is killed. Acts Three and Four were merged and the work as a whole shortened by cutting a great deal of recitative.
Read more about this topic: Castor Et Pollux
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“The lore of our fathers is a fabric of sentences. In our hands it develops and changes, through more or less arbitrary and deliberate revisions and additions of our own, more or less directly occasioned by the continuing stimulation of our sense organs. It is a pale gray lore, black with fact and white with convention. But I have found no substantial reasons for concluding that there are any quite black threads in it, or any white ones.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)