Il Pompeo was premiered at one of Rome's private theaters, the Colonna theater, in January of 1683. It was Scarlatti's first dramma per musica on a grand and serious subject. The libretto is by Nicolo Minato, and was also set in the year 1666 by the composer Cavalli. As was typical of operas at that time, the story takes its point of departure from an actual historic moment. In the year 65 B.C., Pompeo defeated Mithridates VI and his kingdom became a province of the Roman government. Mithridates committed suicide, and Pompeo became a powerful Roman consul, eventually marrying the daughter of Julius Caesar. The plot for this opera does not follow the history of Mithridates and Pompeo; rather it takes the main characters of the story and creates a plot full of love intrigues, disguises, and a happy ending that is attained for all through the high- mindedness of the Roman general.

The plot for this opera is singular in a few respects. There are no comic scenes in Il Pompeo. Almost all serious operas of Scarlatti's day featured scenes for secondary, comic characters. Often these were the maids or servants of the principals. In this opera, there is a maid, Harpalia, but she is murdered in Act II by Mitridate. She is murdered onstage, as well, a thing never done in the French theaters.

The scenes of the operas of the seventeenth century were not constructed like those of the eighteenth and nineteenth. A scene happened whenever anyone entered or exited the stage, and the next scene could begin without a change of scenery. The majority of the scenes in Il Pompeo are made up of the recitative plus aria unit. However, Scarlatti also writes scenes composed of an aria, recitative, and aria, and he also ends scenes with dramatic recitatives. Both Act I and Act II end with dramatic declamatory solos instead of coloratura laden arias.

The recitatves are mainly what was called , or dry recitative. The majority of the arias are , as opposed to , which was the more fashionable. Strophic arias were considered passe by 1683, but perhaps the older libretto lent itself more readily to the older song form. At times Scarlatti turns his two strophe arias into a musical form by placing an instrumental ritornello in between the musically identical strophes. The non strophic arias all tend to be arias. Many of the arias begin with what would later become a standard feature of Scarlatti arias, the beginning, which here was just the initial first line of the aria sung before the beginning of the complete song. It's function is to announce the aria, and in later works, the "motto" would become very elaborate. He also often composes his arias over an bass. In Scarlatti's case this was a varying , or one that did not repeat exactly, but allowed room for modulation. This harmonic function of the bass helped create a contrapuntal texture with the solo voice, which lends his work a great deal of vitality.

The two male leads in the opera are both written for the tenor voice, which was very unusual in seventeenth century Rome. Almost all male leads were sung by , but for some reason, perhaps because of the available singers, Scarlatti chose to make Pompeo and Mitridate both tenors.

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