HASSE, Johann Adolf 1699-1783

The Favourite Songs in the Opera Call'd Artaxerxes. [Score]

London: Printed for and Sold by I. Walsh, Musick Printer, & Instrument maker to his Majesty, at the Harp and Hoboy in Catherine Street in the Strand, [1735].

Folio. Disbound. 1f. (recto passe-partout title, verso blank), [i] (blank), 2-16 pp. Engraved throughout.

With "Note. Where these are sold may be had Apollo's Feast in Four Volumes, containing the Favourite Songs out of all of Mr. Handel's Opera" above imprint.

Upper wrapper with "Artaxerxes" in contemporary manuscript.

Upper wrapper worn, browned, and frayed at edges, with "Adriano C" to cancelled in blue pencil, lower wrapper lacking. Slightly worn, browned, and soiled; leaves separated; small binding holes to blank inner margins; vertical ink stain above "Favourite" in title; irregular pagination, but complete.

First Edition. Smith and Humphries p. 172, 769 ("Words by Apostolo Zeno. According to Burney some of the songs in this work are composed by Riccardo Broschi"). BUC p. 451. RISM H2243.

These arias were written for Farinelli (1705-1782), an Italian soprano castrato, "the most admired of all the castrato singers." Ellen T. Harris in Grove Music Online

Hasse, a German composer, "was the most widely admired composer of opera seria in Italy and German-speaking lands. ... [His] first documented visit to Venice was during Carnival 1730 when his Artaserse was given at the S Giovanni Grisostomo theatre. The libretto was nominally by Metastasio; this may be regarded as Hasse’s earliest encounter with a Metastasian text, though it had been altered by Giovanni Boldini. Only in 1760 did Hasse set Metastasio’s original libretto. Farinelli, who performed in several of Hasse’s operas, was particularly pleased with the Artaserse arias; he sang them in London on October 27, 1734 in a pasticcio, Artaxerxes (Burney mistakenly claimed that Hasse directed it). Two arias from Act 2, ‘Per questo dolce amplesso’ and ‘Pallido il sole’, to Boldini texts, were sung every evening for Philip V during the decade Farinelli served him (1737–46), and survive in countless copies; they may have been Hasse’s most widely circulated arias. ...

Handel’s respect for Hasse is shown by the 49 arias from 15 different Hasse operas he used in seven of his London pasticcios of 1730–34, and the Opera of the Nobility presented many of his arias in Artaserse and Siroe during 1734–5. Hasse must have known about these performances. He may have met Handel in Naples after the carnival season of 1729, when Handel acquired copies of his early operas. He could also have heard about the performance of Siroe, about which Burney remarked: ‘This is the first time that I ever perceived the composer of an opera named in the advertisements and bills of the day’." Sven Hansell in Grove Music Online.

Item #40739

Price: $675.00  other currencies