Opera seria

Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and 'serious' style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1720s to ca 1770. The only popular rival to opera seria was opera buffa, the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte.

Metastasio

More than anyone else's, the dramatic conventions expressed by the librettos of Metastasio crystallized the format of opera seria. In 1722 Pietro Trapassi, called Metastasio, a brilliant and personable young poet, was called upon to supply a libretto as part of the festivities for the Empress of Austria's birthday. The piece was termed a 'serenata' (literally an 'evening's entertainment') but it was less like what we would recognize as a musical serenade and more in the tradition of the court masque. It was titled Gli Orti Esperidi, 'The Gardens of the Hesperides'. Nicola Porpora, (much later to be Haydn's master), set it to music, and the success was so great that the famed Roman prima donna, Marianna Bulgarelli, 'La Romanina,' sought out Metastasio, and took him on as her protegé. In La Romanina's household. Metastasio took music lessons and met all the leading composers.

Related Topics:
Metastasio - Serenade - Masque - Hesperides - Nicola Porpora - Haydn - Marianna Bulgarelli

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Under her wing, Metastasio produced libretto after libretto, and they were rapidly set by the greatest composers in Italy and Austria, establishing the transnational tone of opera seria: Didone abbandonata, Catone in Utica, Ezio, Alessandro nell' Indie, Semiramide riconosciuta, Siroe and Artaserse. After 1730 he was settled in Vienna and turned out more librettos for the imperial theater, until the mid 1740s: Adriano, Demetrio, Issipile, Demofoonte, Olimpiade, La Clemenza di Tito, Achille in Sciro, Temistocle, Il Re Pastore and his greatest libretto, Attilio Regolo. For the librettos, Metastasio and his imitators customarily drew on dramas featuring classical characters from antiquity bestowed with princely values and morality, struggling with conflicts between love, honour and duty, in elegant and ornate language. Useful stylistic comparisons with the High Baroque operas of the 17th century may find parallels in contemporary Late Baroque architecture: academic, more disciplined, self-consciously classicizing, a contrast between the High Baroque of Bernini and the Late Baroque of Jules Hardouin Mansart.

Related Topics:
Baroque - Bernini - Jules Hardouin Mansart

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