Adriano in Siria
Music by Josef Mysliveček · libretto by Pietro Metastasio · premiered 1776 · at Teatro Niccolini
Adriano in Siria ("Hadrian in Syria") is an 18th-century Italian opera seria in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was composed to a libretto of the same name by the Italian poet Metastasio that was first performed in 1732 with music of Antonio Caldara and in more than 60 further settings until 1828. For a performance in the 1770s, it would only be expected that a libretto of such age would be abbreviated and altered to suit contemporary operatic taste. No other of the composer's settings of Metatasio's texts contains as many substitute aria texts as this one does. The cuts and changes in the text made for the 1776 performance of Mysliveček's opera are not attributable.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Adriano in Siria (Mysliveček)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Josef Mysliveček (9 March 1737 – 4 February 1781) was a Czech composer. He contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 until he betrayed their trust over the promise of an operatic commission for Wolfgang to be arranged with the management of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. His closeness to the Mozart family resulted in frequent references to him in the…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Josef Mysliveček", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.