METASTASIO, PIETRO. — Poet, born in Rome on 3 January 1698, died 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 deliberate art. Classical culture and Cartesian philosophy, which he studied at Scalea under the guidance of Gregorio Caloprese, did not impoverish his poetic vein; but neither did they lead him to deeper reflection; nor did his life know storms. Literary and philosophical novitiate was followed by 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 a career as a theater poet, miserable for so many others, and for him extraordinarily fortunate. Called to Vienna as imperial poet (1730), there he interpreted the “genius” of Italian opera, in its most felicitous and forgetful pliancy, from the reign of Charles VI to that of Maria Teresa: nor did he become aware of the upheavals being prepared with the third of his Viennese sovereigns, Giuseppe II, except by remaining at the chronological margin of the times. He died when Pius VI, the “Apostolic Pilgrim,” was visiting Vienna in an attempt to draw the admirer of Frederick II of Prussia away from his antiecclesiastical laws (1784): the illusion of the “Roman” poet that he was at home in the palace of the “Holy Roman Emperor” had fallen; not, however, dramatically.
M. brings back into literature a form, opera, which had arisen 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 power of suggestion. The experiences of opera theater are summarized by this finest of Arcadian poets: the drama is conceived as a search for an effusive and melodious world that creates an atmosphere of feeling in which the conflicts of fortune, passions, and doubtful desires are reconciled in a melodious effusion of affections. The occasion is arranged from outside: by an opportunity for 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 Roman identity, as in Attilio Regolo (1740); by the political marriage that pacified two rival dynasties, as in Romolo ed Ersilia (1765). He is happiest above all when 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, following the model dear to pastoral drama, leads the pathetic adventure of the destined characters toward its prepared happy ending: thus in the Olimpiade (1735). The poet also takes pleasure in operatic translations of sacred drama: for at times the court gathers, as for a festival, for the spectacular celebration of Christian triumphs: thus in S. Elena al Calvario (1731), in Gioas re di Giuda (1735), and in Inacco figura del Redentore (1735). Triumphant theatricality does not exclude religious meditation from its sphere; and this is conducted with great sincerity of feeling, 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, Metastasian ease of accommodation seemed little short of insincere: hence the resistance, beginning with Alfieri. And yet the old writer who, invited by the Encyclopedists to collaborate, had clearly understood how much spiritual distance separated him from them and perhaps sensed that the compromise to which they invited a representative of the old Renaissance world would conclude with its attempted and accomplished destruction, was admired, even in the new age, by all who recognized in him the mastery of the artist, always capable of impeccable work within the accepted limits of a particular style and conception. Very many admired him, from Leopardi to Carducci; nor should it be forgotten that much of pre-Romanticism, proceeding from the image of a happy world where the eloquence of feeling reconciles every difference and opens an easy passage toward an understanding between man and nature and its creatures, rests upon a Metastasian intuition. In this respect he was the last poet of the Renaissance; and in the lucid, irreproachable grace of the “ariette” he sealed in perfect form the acceptance of a limit: the literary outlook of the new age required the extensive dominion of poetry to mature into the depth of an absolute conception.