METASTASIO, PIETRO - Born in Rome on 3 Jan. 1698, died in Vienna on 12 Apr. 1784. His surname Trapassi was Hellenized into M. by his tutor Gian Vincenzo Gravina, the famous scholar, who sought to cultivate his precocious talent as an improviser through learning and deliberate artistry. Classical culture and Cartesian philosophy, which he studied at Scalca under the guidance of Gregorio Caloprese, did not dry up his vein; nor did they lead him to deeper reflection; nor did his life know storms. After his literary and philosophical novitiate came his theatrical novitiate when he moved to Naples (1720), alternating the practice of law with the composition of libretti for epithalamia and cantatas. The success of *Didone abbandonata* (1724), due in part to the art of Marianna Benti Bulgarelli, the “Romanina,” decided him on the career of a theatre poet, wretched for many others but supremely fortunate for him. Summoned to Vienna as court poet (1730), he embodied the “genius” of Italian opera in its happiest and most oblivious compliance, from the reign of Charles VI to that of Maria Theresa: he was not to perceive the upheavals gathering under his third Viennese sovereign, Joseph II, save by remaining on the chronological margins of the times. He died as Pius VI, the “Apostolic Pilgrim,” was visiting Vienna in an attempt to draw the admirer of Frederick II of Prussia away from anti-clerical laws (1784): the illusion of the “Roman” poet of finding himself at home in the palace of the “Holy Roman Emperor” had vanished, though not dramatically.
M. restored to literature a form, melodrama, which had been born in the sixteenth century from literature itself, from the study of how words might open themselves to music and music descend upon words to reveal their intimate suggestiveness. The experiences of opera theatre are summed up by this excellent poet among the Arcadians: the drama is conceived as a quest for an effusive, songful world that creates an atmosphere of feeling in which the conflicts of fortune, passions, and wavering desires are reconciled in a melodious effusion of affections. The occasion is externally arranged: by a scenic movement and theatrical technique, as in *Didone*; by a court celebration that arranges for the Emperor’s birthday a triumphal arch spectacle where eloquent personages solemnize a proud image of Romanitas, as in *Attilio Regolo* (1740); by political marriages that pacified rival dynasties, as in *Romolo ed Ersilia* (1765). He is especially happy when poetic animation is stirred by an image of a world congenial to his Arcadian taste, by a happy landscape and a scenic situation that, following the Arcadian model of pastoral drama, restores the pathetic adventure of the characters to a prearranged happy ending: thus in *Olimpiade* (1735). The poet also takes pleasure in operatic translations of sacred drama: for sometimes the court gathers, as at a feast, for the celebration of a spectacle, namely the Christian glories, as in *S. Elena al Calvario* (1731), in *Gioas re di Giuda* (1735), in *Isacco figura del Redentore* (1735). Triumphant theatricality does not exclude religious meditation from his circle; and this is pursued with great sincerity of feeling, touching for the theme of sacred love those same emotional fibres that had been stirred by the theme of profane love. To a more austere and energetic conception of life, Metastasio’s easy compliance seemed little short of insincere: hence the resistance, beginning with Alfieri. And yet the old writer, invited by the Encyclopedists to collaborate, well understood how much spiritual space separated him from them and perhaps foresaw that the compromise to which they invited a representative of the old Renaissance world would end in the attempted and accomplished destruction of that world. He was admired, even in later times, by those who recognized in him the mastery of an artist always capable of impeccable work within the accepted limits of a particular style and conception. He was admired by many, from Leopardi to Carducci; nor should it be forgotten that much pre-Romanticism, arising from the image of a happy world where the eloquence of feeling reconciles every disparity and opens an easy path to man’s understanding with nature and with creatures, is founded upon a Metastasian intuition. He was the last poet of the Renaissance in this respect; and in the limpid, irreproachable grace of his “ariette” he sealed within perfect form the acceptance of a limit: the literary custom of the new times decreed that the extensive dominion of poetry should mature in the depth of an absolute conception.