In Vienna the court poet Metastasio produced annually a series of oratorios for the court which were set by Caldara, Hasse and others.

On this occasion Gluck's music was completely original, but the displeasure of the court poet, Metastasio, who called the opera " archvandalian music ," probably explains why Gluck did not remain long in Vienna despite the work's enormous popular success ( it was performed 27 times to great acclaim ).

He also continued his correspondence with Metastasio, court poet at Vienna, dying a few months after him.

Bulgarelli tired of his absence, and asked Metastasio to get her an engagement at the court theatre.

* In Vienna, court poet Metastasio writes the poem Il rè pastore, later used by Mozart to compose an opera seria.

* 1698 – Metastasio, Italian poet and librettist ( d. 1782 )

In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by Venice's Arcadian Academy which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century.

* April 13 – Metastasio, Italian poet and librettist ( b. 1698 )

* January 13 – Metastasio, Italian poet ( d. 1782 )

Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, ( January 3, 1698 – April 12, 1782 ) was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.

Metastasio is known as an emotional, lyrical, and romantic poet.

Some of his mature opere serie, for which his librettists included the poet and dramatist Metastasio, were also widely popular.

* April 12 – Metastasio, poet and lyricist ( b. 1698 )

In 1720 and 1721 he wrote two serenades to librettos by a gifted young poet, Metastasio, the beginning of a long, though interrupted, collaboration.

In 1730 the chief proponent of opera seria, the Italian librettist Metastasio, took up residence as the imperial poet in Vienna.

* January 13 – Metastasio, poet and lyricist ( died 1782 )

In 1784, after the death of Metastasio ( in 1782 ), he failed to be appointed Poeta Cesario, or poet laureate of Austria, and he left Austria in 1796.

Salieri met Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi better known as Metastasio and Christoph Willibald Gluck during this period at the famous Sunday morning salons held at the home of the Martinez family.

Gravina, making a business trip to Calabria, exhibited Metastasio in the literary circles of Naples, then placed him in the care of his kinsman Gregorio Caroprese at Scaléa.

While slaving at the law, Metastasio in 1721 composed an epithalamium, and probably also his first musical serenade, Endimione, on the occasion of the marriage of his patroness Donna Anna Francesca Ravaschieri Pinelli di Sangro ( later 6th Principessa di Belmonte ) to the Marchese Don Antonio Pignatelli ( later His Serene Highness Principe di Belmonte ).

In the early summer of 1730 Metastasio settled at Vienna in an apartment in the so-called ' Michaelerhaus '.

As time advanced, the life which Metastasio led at Vienna, together with the climate, told on his health and spirits.

Galuppi did not hesitate to re-use his own ( or, according to Metastasio, other composers ') music, sometimes simply transplanting it and at other times reworking it substantially.

During his stay there he composed a sonnet chiefly borrowed from lines in Ariosto and Metastasio, the only poets he had at that time read.

Michael was given a serious musical education ( mainly voice and keyboard ) from a young age, his first teachers being the Italians, Passerini ( of Bologna ) and Nicolo Peretti, a male contralto, who sang at Covent Garden in the original productions of Thomas Arne's opera ( on a Metastasio text ) Artaxerxes ( title role ).

" In this way, at the very birth of opera in London, Dryden gives the character that opera seria retained for a century, as long as the librettos of Metastasio were being set, into the age of Mozart.

In Vienna Metastasio met with no marked social success.

Throughout the forty years of his career in Vienna, in the course of which Metastasio eventually outlived his own originality and creative powers, his fame went on increasing.

In 1764 Hasse travelled to Vienna, where the coronation of Joseph II was marked by a performance of his festa teatrale Egeria, again set to a libretto by Metastasio.

* Achille in Sciro ( Vienna, 1749 ) – libretto by Metastasio

Metastasio ( 1698 – 1782 ) ( real name Pietro Trapassi ) was one of the most highly regarded librettists in Europe.

Opera buffa was a parallel development to opera seria and arose in reaction to the so-called first reform of Zeno and Metastasio.

The text of this work was the first by the soon-to-be-famous Pietro Trapassi ( known as Metastasio ), who became a lifelong friend of the singer-Farinelli remarked that the two of them had made their debuts on the same day, and each frequently referred to the other as his (" dear twin ").

This monument, made by Lucardi, was erected in memory of the " Poet Laureate " Metastasio in 1855.

Metastasio was born in Rome, where his father, Felice Trapassi, a native of Assisi, had taken service in the Corsican regiment of the papal forces.

It was called Giustino, and was printed in 1713 ; forty-two years later, Metastasio told his publisher that he would willingly suppress this juvenilia.

Metastasio was now twenty.

In 1755 the Countess Althann died, and Metastasio was reduced to the society which gathered round him in the bourgeois house of the Martinez.

Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a great friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of opera seria and 18th-century music.

In September Hasse's Cleofide ( set to a highly adapted Metastasio text ) was given its premiere ; it seems possible that J. S. Bach attended the performance ; certainly C. P. E. Bach claimed that Hasse and his father had become good friends around this time.

At this time operatic style was undergoing significant change, and the model of opera seria that Hasse and Metastasio had settled found itself assailed by the threat of the reforms of Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de ' Calzabigi, as laid down in the music and libretto for Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice.

In the following years Hasse reset his earlier works based on Metastasio's texts, this time paying great attention to the poet's original intention, and during the 1760s, as Metastasio wrote new texts, Hasse was, as a general rules, the first composer to set them.

In addition to his decisive influence on madrigal composers, he was the single largest influence on opera librettists up until the time of Metastasio in the 18th century.

He was as warm in his regard for Galuppi as Metastasio was cold.

Nicola Porpora, ( much later to be Haydn's master ), set the work to music, and the success was so great that the famed Roman prima donna, Marianna Bulgarelli, " La Romanina ", sought out Metastasio, and took him on as her protégé.

Alessandro Scarlatti wrote an oratorio in 1693, La Giuditta, as did the Portuguese composer Francisco António de Almeida in 1726 ; Juditha triumphans was written in 1716 by Antonio Vivaldi ; Mozart composed in 1771 La Betulia Liberata ( KV 118 ), to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio.

Metastasio was one of her literary models ; on his opera of Attilio Regulo she based a drama, The Inflexible Captive.

The time was tight and Guardasoni had a get-out clause: if he failed to secure a new text, he would resort to La clemenza di Tito, a libretto written more than half a century earlier by Pietro Metastasio ( 1698 – 1782 ).