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The opera is set on the island of Ithaca, the home of Odysseus, and depicts in thirteen scenes the well-known events from the 13th to the 23rd song of Homer's Odyssey relating the delayed return of the hero Odysseus ten years after the Trojan War. These scenes follow the structure as told by Homer. The plot spans the events from the lament of Penelope and her attempts to postpone the foreseen marriage with one of the many suitors who are exerting pressur on her, the Telemachus episodes in which Telemachus and Odysseus recognise each other once more as father and son, the Eumaeus scens in which the shepherd provides substantial help for Odysseus, and culminate in the final episode in the palace of Odysseus in which the hero, initially taken in as a beggar, is able to kill the suitors and ultimately be reunited with his wife Penelope. "My feeling for Greece, my image of Greece is probably determined more by Hölderlin and Monteverdi than by Homer and Badoaro. I think that this music contains much of Italy, much of the country in which Greek philosophy and art have, beyond the Renaissance and up to the present, retained their vitality and effectiveness, and influenced people's lives more than they may be aware of. That's why I couldn't entertain any idea of working historically on the reconstruction of the Ulissses score, probing carefully and holding myself back: the Viennese and the Venetian manuscripts (both not even in Monteverdi's handwriting) contain, as is known, only the vocal parts and the basses. Entire pieces are missing; the music for several scenes has been lost, (for example the Dance of the Moors, the death procession of the fishermen, the music for Neptun's first scene). For myself, I felt it was only right to imagine and try and imprint on my mind some of Monteverdi's music and, by using my imagination to report on the sound of the orchestra, the voices and the atmosphere, the cultural climate on the evening of the première in the autumn of 1641 in the San Cassiano Theatre in Venice, as though I had been there myself and to transpose what I heard and experienced to our spatial and instrumental conditions (and also to our present day listening habits) and make the piece rise resplendent in its former originality and vitality. In doing so I always refer to Monteverdi's writing and to the melodic, rhythmic and harmonic forms and ideas to be found in the Ulisse fragment, which are therefore predetermined for me."
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