Filmmakers and TV producers have always been drawn to the exotic glories of the ancient Roman Empire. The resulting entertainments have ranged from educational to lurid -- including some that encompass the full range of that spectrum. Movies with ties to the empire include early spectacles like the 1925 version of Ben Hur, with a cast of 125,000(!), and more "modern" extravagances like 1999's Xena: Warrior Princess. And that's just scratching the surface of a catalogue that also includes, Gladiator, Spartacus, Cleopatra and Caligula. And on TV? Well, there's been everything from the cerebral, 1970's miniseries I, Claudius, to HBO's sensational Rome, which is launching its second season right about now.

Not surpisingly, opera composers and librettists latched onto stories of ancient Rome long before movies and television came around. Handel contributed Julius Caesar and Agrippina. The featured conflict in Bellini's tuneful Norma is "Rome vs. the Druids." In fact, Roman operas go all the way back to Claudio Monteverdi, opera's first, great composer, whose sultry drama, The Coronation of Poppea, is still one of the most sensuous operas ever composed. And the lengthy list of Rome-related operas also includes the one we'll hear this week.

Mozart jumped on the Roman bandwagon early on, writing Mitridate, re di Ponto when he was just 14. That one is the story of a military leader -- Mithridates -- who battled Rome in the first century B.C. He met his match in Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a ruthelss general who gained a reputation as one of the most bloodthirsty rulers in Roman history. So, appropriately, when Mozart was all of 16, he also wrote an opera about Sulla -- Lucio Silla. That's the drama we'll hear on this week's World of Opera, in a production from the 2006 Salzburg Festival. It was performed at Salzburg's Felsenreitschule, a unique theater that was first a stone quarry, and then became a riding academy, way back in 1690.

The production was one of nearly two dozen Mozart operas staged at the festival in 2006, and drawing performers from all over the world. This one features the orchestra and chorus of Venice's famed, historical opera house, La Fenice. The stars are tenor Roberto Saccà, and sopranos Annick Massis and Monica Bacelli.