Pietro Metastasio

Pietro Metastasio (3 January 1698 – 12 April 1782) was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti. As a boy, his poetic and oratorial talent was soon discovered by Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, then director of the Pontifical Academy of Arcadia, who adopted him and offered him a formal education and exposure to the highest intellectual circles of Rome and Naples. Pietro’s education, the obligatory studies of law aside, included a comprehensive training in Latin and Greek and the ability to translate the classical works into poetic modern Italian – a skill which laid the foundation for Metastasio’s entire professional future.

Metastasio’s heritage consists of 28 opera librettos, 8 librettos for oratorios, 36 for serenades and 37 for cantatas and is completed by a large number of songs, compliments, or works not intended for music like 32 sonnets, translations from Greek, spiritual poems or odes for weddings, as well as his over 2600 published letters. If these numbers are impressive in themselves, the wealth of musical production Metastasio’s poetry inspired in the composers of his century is simply staggering and made of him the by far most influential librettist not only of his but very likely of all times: these 28 opera librettos were set to music as unthinkable 1050 operas (that we know of today, there might still be many more stacked in some attic or in the chronically understaffed Italian libraries!). In other words: a Metastasio libretto was on average made into almost 40 individual operas, the most successful one being Artaserse which inspired 90 composers to set this libretto to music.

Article by Sebastian F. Schwarz
February 2023