Vivaldi's Griselda premiered during Ascensiontide of 1735 at the San Samuele Theater of Venice. The libretto was an adaptation made by the Italian playwright Carlo Goldoni of a standard opera seria text by Apostolo Zeno. The story of patient Griselda initially appeared in Boccaccio's Decameron, but was retold in many genres and languages throughout the centuries following.

In Boccaccio's story, Gualtiero, the cruel husband who torments Griselda, is the central character, while Griselda is a passive image of idealized virtue. Petrarch's rendition gave Griselda center stage, and tried to make Gualtiero more human. Chaucer considered poor Griselda a fool, and scorned her stoic acquiescence. Zeno's dramatic version of the tale is derived from a work by Carlo Maria Maggi. It contains secondary characters, counterplots and love intrigues, and a central villain. Gualtiero is given reasons for his actions, and Griselda is the epitome of wifely patience and restraint, fidelity and virtue. Zeno's libretto was extremely popular throughout the eighteenth century. However, the pivotal problem remained from the original story; how to create a viable drama in which the two central characters are completely unrealistic and unreasonable.

When Vivaldi was asked to make a setting of the story for Venice, the proprietor of the San Samuele Theater hired Carlo Goldoni to adapt the libretto. Goldoni was a young man, and Vivaldi was a seasoned old veteran, irascible and tightfisted. Their initial encounter was by all accounts comic, for Vivaldi wanted proof that Goldoni was qualified. Goldoni immediately produced verses for an aria, so quickly that the amazed old prelate instantly trusted him with the commission. Between the two of them, librettist and composer, they made several changes to Zeno's text. They tightened the dramatic action, lessened the number of set pieces, gave a greater proportion of the music to the secondary pair of lovers, and altered the character of Griselda completely. She is given some of the most beautiful and expressive music in the opera. The lead singer was Anna Girò, a protégée of Vivaldi's known for her acting and her declamatory vocal technique. The type of set pieces which he gave her are dramatic and strong, for she disliked songs of a pathetic nature. Griselda has fewer numbers, but they are more psychologically revealing, and show her internal struggle, and her rebellion against her husband's cruelty.

One of Griselda's highlights is her opening aria "Ho il cor già lacero." The piece begins in a melancholic, tragic mood. The highly expressive imagery of Goldoni's text is complemented by music which highlights Griselda's violent emotion shifts, as her mind moves from one desperate thought to another. Changing rhythmic momentum, jagged phrases, frequent rests, and large intervals in the melodic line, follow her disjunct mental turnings. Vivaldi matches each poetic image that Goldoni has given him with a powerful musical image or movement. The close of the aria is dreadfully quiet as Griselda, her energy spent, sings softly to a steadily pulsing pianissimo accompaniment.

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