Metastasio wrote quickly and his plays were enhanced by being set to music and sung by the greatest singers of the day.

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.

Jommelli wrote cantatas, oratorios and other sacred works, but by far the most important part of his output were his operas, particularly his opere serie of which he composed around sixty examples, several with libretti by Metastasio.

He wrote two operas there, Il re pastore ( 1766 ) and Ifigenia in Tauride ( 1768 ), and two cantatas, La virtù liberata ( 1765 ) and La pace tra la virtù e la belezza, the latter to words by Metastasio.

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.

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

He also appears in Handel's 1731 opera Ezio, based on a libretto by Metastasio.

Set to a libretto by Metastasio, the opera opened the Milanese Carnival of 1742.

( However, Mozart did use an old Metastasio libretto for his renowned opera La clemenza di Tito.

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.

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.

* Ezio ( Bologna, 1741 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Semiramide riconosciuta ( Turin, 1741 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Demofoonte ( Padua, 1743 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Alessandro nell ' Indie ( Ferrara, 1744 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Ciro riconosciuto ( Bologna, 1744 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Antigono ( Lucca, 1746 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Didone abbandonata ( Rome, 1847 ) – libretto by Metastasio

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

* Artaserse ( Rome, 1749 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Ciro riconosciuto ( Venice, 1749 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Demetrio ( Parma, 1749 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Ipermestra ( Spoleto, 1751 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* La clemenza di Tito ( Stuttgart, 1753 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Catone in Utica ( Stuttgart, 1754 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Temistocle ( Naples, 1757 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Nitteti ( Stuttgart, 1759 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* L ' Olimpiade ( Stuttgart, 1761 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* L ' isola disabitata ( Ludwigsburg, 1761 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Il trionfo di Clelia ( Naples, 1774 ) – libretto by Metastasio

* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – La clemenza di Tito first performed in Prague ( Estates Theatre ) ( libretto by Metastasio )

She learned Italian, from Metastasio, on top of the necessary French and German, as well as Austrian history and French history, though from an Austrian perspective.

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 ").

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 ).

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

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 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.

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.

For the librettos, Metastasio and his imitators customarily drew on dramas featuring classical characters from antiquity bestowed with princely values and morality, struggling with conflicts between love, honour and duty, in elegant and ornate language that could be performed equally well as both opera and non-musical drama.

* La morte di Oloferne ( tragedia sacra, based on La Betulia liberata by Pietro Metastasio, 1791, Rome )

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

Artaxerce, modelled on Metastasio, and Guillaume Tell were produced in 1766 ; other successful tragedies were La Veuve de Malabar ( 1770 ) and Barnavelt ( 1784 ).

Metastasio's libretto had already been set by nearly 40 composers ; the story is based on the life of Roman Emperor Titus, from some brief hints in The Lives of the Caesars by the Roman writer Suetonius, and was elaborated by Metastasio in 1734 for the Italian composer Antonio Caldara.

This new theater was inaugurated on 4 November 1737, the king's name day, with the performanc of the opera Domenico Sarro's Achille in Sciro, which was based on the play by the dramatist Metastasio.

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 ).

* La morte di Didone ( revised as Tod der Dido ) ( singspiel, based on a libretto by Metastasio, 1779, Mannheim )

* Dido, Queen of Carthage ( libretto by Prince Hoare based on Metastasio, opera seria, 1792, London )