Leseprobe_Metastasio_Briefe

PIETRO METASTASIO
(1698–1782)
BIOGRAPHY
Andrea Lanzola
1698: Pietro Metastasio was born in Rome on January 3 to Felice Trapassi and
Francesca Galastri. He had an elder brother, Leopoldo, and two sisters,
Endimira and Barbara, born from his father’s second marriage to Angela
Lucarelli.
1710: after a happy and carefree childhood under the aegis of Cardinal Ottoboni,
who arranged for his and his brother’s initial education, he met
Gian Vincenzo Gravina, who, favourably impressed by Pietro’s aptitude
for poetic improvisation, became his patron, instilling a sophisticated
and thorough classical education in his young protégé.
1712–16: Pietro composed Il Giustino, a tragedy inspired by Gian Giorgio Trissino’s
L’Italia liberata dai Goti, a work much admired by Gravina who, that
same year, accompanied Pietro to Calabria to continue his studies with
Gravina’s cousin, the Cartesian philosopher Gregorio Caloprese, to provide
him with a solid schooling in philosophy. Metastasio then returned
to Rome, where he took minor orders, later travelling to Calabria together
with Gravina to visit the dying Caloprese in the spring of 1715.
Stopping in Naples on their return to the capital, the Maestro renamed
his pupil “Metastasio”, a Hellenized version of his surname, during a
visit to the lawyer Cattaneo where Pietro improvised on the theme “La
magnificenza dei prìncipi e le sue lodi”; the philosopher Giovanni Battista
Vico was also present on that occasion.
1717: his first volume of Poesie was released by the publisher Muzio in Naples,
with a dedication to Aurelia Gambacorta d’Este. In addition to Giustino,
the collection included the compositions Il convito degli Dei, Il ratto d’Europa,
La morte di Catone, L’origine delle leggi, and the ode Sopra il Santissimo Natale.
1718: on January 6, Gravina died in Rome, leaving his pupil, who had attended
him at his deathbed, heir to 15,000 scudi as well as to his entire library.
Three months later the poet was admitted to the Arcadia as Artino Corasio.
For this occasion he composed a short tercet, La strada della gloria,
inspired by his deceased patron’s poetic passions, as well as a «canzonetta»
entitled La primavera. Still, the same hostility within the cultural and literary
climate of Crescimbeni’s Arcadia that had alienated Gravina drove
him back to Naples, where he entered the firm of the lawyer Castagnola.
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