The five-act tragedy Tieste, started in 1795, was staged for the first time on January 4 1797 at Venice's Sant’Angelo theatre and was repeated nine consecutive times thanks to the great success it enjoyed; it was then printed in April of the same year in Volume X of Teatro Moderno Applaudito. The sources of the tragedy are Seneca's Thyestes, which had also inspired Crébillon and Voltaire, although the young tragedy-writer was most in debt to the Alfieri model, given the tragedy's political content, some thematic points and its structural and stylistic solutions. The number of characters is reduced to four, in accordance with the specific indication of Alfieri's concision theory; the plot follows a single thread and develops very quickly, the language is essential, although there is no lack of more sentimental tones that are the fruit of the lessons of Melchiorre Cesarotti, the translator of Ossian and Metastasio, who enjoyed great public success. The tragedy's subject is the mortal fight between the tyrant Atreus, the king of Argos, and his brother Thyestes, the lover of Aerope, who had previously given him a son and then married Atreus. Thyestes returns from exile to Argos to gain revenge on his brother, but he is discovered and imprisoned: Atreus, pretending to heed his mother Hippodamia's calls for the brothers to restore harmony, proposes a toast of peace and offers him a drink, which is the blood of his son. Thyestes commits suicide by throwing himself on his sword when he realizes he has been deceived.

The tragedy was staged at a crucial time for the destiny of Venice, when Bonaparte had conquered part of northern Italy; the political foundation is based, above all, in the figure Atreus, an Alfieri-style tyrant who is dominated by the anxiety and solitude that power generates; but there is also a more subtle allusion to the political situation of the time in the confrontation between Thyestes, the promoter of an attempt at moderately democratic reform, and the exercise of absolute power personified by Atreus.