METASTASIO, PIETRO. - Poet, b. in Rome on 3 January 1698, d. in Vienna on 12 April 1784. His surname Trapassi was Hellenized into M. by his tutor Gian Vincenzo Gravina, the famous scholar, who wished to educate his precocious talent for improvisation in learning and in meditated art. The classical culture and the Cartesian philosophy that he studied at Scalea under the guidance of Gregorio Caloprese did not impoverish his vein; but neither did they lead him to any deeper reflection; nor did his life know any storms. To his literary and philosophical novitiate there succeeded a theatrical novitiate when he moved to Naples (1720), alternating the practice of law with the composition of librettos for epithalamia and cantatas. The success of the Didone abbandonata (1724), due also to the art of Marianna Benti Bulgarelli, the "Romanina," decided him upon the career of poet of the theater, wretched for so many others, and for him most fortunate. Summoned to Vienna as imperial poet (1730), he there interpreted the "genius" of Italian opera, in its happiest and most forgetful complaisance, from the reign of Charles VI to that of Maria Theresa: nor did he become aware of the upheavals that were being prepared with the third of his Viennese sovereigns, Joseph II, except by remaining within the chronicler's margin of the times. He died when Pius VI, the "Apostolic Pilgrim," was visiting Vienna to try to dissuade the admirer of Frederick II of Prussia from the anti-ecclesiastical laws (1784): the illusion of the "Roman" poet at finding himself at home in the palace of the "Holy Roman Emperor" had fallen: not dramatically, however.
M. restores to literature a form, the melodrama, that had been born in the sixteenth century from literature, from the study of how the word might open itself to music, and music descend upon the word to reveal its intimate suggestion. The experiences of opera theater are summed up by this finest among the Arcadian poets: the drama is conceived as the search for an effusive and songful world that creates an atmosphere of feeling in which the conflicts of fortune, of passions and of doubtful desires are reconciled in a melodious effusion of affections. The occasion is arranged from without: by an opportunity of scenic movement and theatrical technique, as in the Didone, with a courtly celebration that arranges for the Emperor's birthday a spectacular triumphal arch, where eloquent characters solemnize a proud image of Romanity, as in the Attilio Regolo (1740); by the political marriages that pacified two rival dynasties, as in the Romolo ed Ersilia (1765). He is happy above all when the poetic animation is prompted by the image of a world congenial to his Arcadian taste, by a happy landscape and by a scenic situation that, on the model dear to the pastoral drama, leads back to the predisposed happy ending the pathetic adventure of the destined characters: thus in the Olimpiade (1735). The poet also takes pleasure in operatic translations of the sacred drama: for sometimes the court gathers, as at a feast, for the spectacular celebration of Christian glories: thus in S. Elena al Calvario (1731), in Gioas re di Giuda (1735), in Inacco figura del Redentore (1735). Triumphant theatricality does not exclude from its circle religious meditation; and this is conducted with great sincerity of affections, touching, through the theme of sacred love, those sentimental fibers that had been stirred by the theme of profane love. To a more austere and energetic conception of life the easy Metastasian complaisance seemed little short of insincere: hence the resistances, beginning with Alfieri. And yet the old writer who, invited by the Encyclopedists to collaborate, had well understood how much spiritual space separated him from them and perhaps had foreseen that the compromise to which those invited a representative of the old Renaissance world would have concluded with the attempted and effected destruction of that world, was admired, even in the new times, by all who recognized in him the mastery of the artist always capable of impeccable work, within the accepted limits of a style and a particular conception. Very many admired him, from Leopardi to Carducci; nor should it be forgotten that much Pre-Romanticism, starting from the image of a happy world, where the eloquence of sentiments reconciles every divergence and opens an easy passage to the understanding of man with nature and with creatures, is founded upon a Metastasian intuition. He was the last poet of the Renaissance, in this regard; and in the limpid, irreproachable grace of the "ariette" he sealed in perfect form the acceptance of a limit: the literary custom of the new times willed that the extensive dominion of poetry should mature in the depth of an absolute conception.
Bibliography11 works
Mario Apollonio