METASTASIO (1698–T782). Pietro Trapassi, Italian poet, better known by his assumed name of Metastasio, was born in Rome on Jan. 13, 1698. His father, Felice Trapassi, a native of Assisi, who had served in the Corsican regiment of the papal forces, kept a grocer's shop in the Via dei Cappellari.
In 1709, Gian Vincenzo Gravina and Lorenzini, a critic of some note, heard the boy improvising verse to a crowd in the street. Gravina adopted him, hellenized his name into Metastasio ; and gave him a good education. Metastasio soon found himself com peting with the most celebrated improvvisatori of his time in Italy, and almost wrecked his health. Gravina had the good sense to place the boy in a quiet seaside place in Calabria.
At the age of twelve Metastasio translated the Iliad into octave stanzas ; and two years later he composed a tragedy in the manner of Seneca upon a subject chosen from Trissino's Italia liberata Gravina's favourite epic. In 1718 Gravina died leaving his pro tege a fortune. Metastasio was now twenty and an abbe. In two years, having spent his money, he apprenticed himself to a lawyer in Naples. He composed an epithalamium, and his first musical serenade, Endimione, on the occasion (1721) of the marriage of his patroness the Princess Pinelli di Sangro to the Marchese Bel monte Pignatelli. In 1722 the viceroy asked Metastasio to corn pose a serenata for the empress's birthday. He produced Gli orti esperidi. It was set to music by Porpora, and the great Roman prima donna. Marianna Bulgarelli, called La Romanina from her birthplace, played the part of Venus. La. Romanina forthwith took possession of Metastasio, and in her house he became acquainted with the greatest composers of the day—with Porpora, from whom he took lessons in music ; with Hasse, Pergolese, Scarlatti, Vinci, Leo, Durante, Marcello, all of whom were destined in the future to set his plays to melody. Here too he studied the art of singing, and won the friendship of the great singer Carlo Broschi (see FARI NELLI). His plays, while beautiful in themselves, judged merely as works of literary art, became masterpieces as soon as their words were set to music which justified the conventionality of his plots, the absurdities of his situations, the violence he does to history in the persons of some leading characters and his "damna ble iteration" of the theme of love in all its phases.
Metastasio resided with La Romanina and her husband in Rome. The generous woman took the whole Trapassi family— father, mother, brother, sisters—into her own house. She fostered the poet's genius and pampered his caprices. Under her influence he wrote from 1721 onwards in rapid succession the Didone ab bandonata Catone in Utica, Ezio, Alessandro nell' Indie, Semira mide riconosciuta, Siroe and Artaserse. But she was growing older ; she had ceased to sing in public ; and the poet felt himself more and more dependent in an irksome sense upon her kindness.
He gained 30o scudi (about 16o) for each opera; this pay, though good, was precarious, and in Sept. 1729 he accepted the offer of the post of court poet to the theatre at Vienna, with a stipend of 300o florins. La Romanina took charge of his family in Rome, and in the summer of 173o Metastasio settled at Vienna in the house of a Spanish Neapolitan, Niccolo Martinez, where he resided until his death. Between the years 173o and 174o his finest dramas, Adriano, Demetrio, Issipile, Demofoonte, Olimpi ade, Clernenza di Tito, Achille in Sciro, Temistocle and Attilio Regolo, which he himself considered his masterpiece, were pro duced for the imperial theatre. Poet, composer, musical copy ist and singer did their work together in frantic haste. Metas tasio understood the technique of his peculiar art in its minutest details. Metastasio's liaison with the Countess Althann, sister-in law of his old patroness the Princess Belmonte Pignatelli, became so close that it was even believed they had been privately married. In 1734 La Romanina asked Metastasio to get her an engagement at the court theatre, but he did not want her in Vienna. The tone of his letters alarmed and irritated her. It is probable that she set out from Rome, but died suddenly upon the road. She left him her fortune after her husband's life interest in it had expired, but Metastasio renounced the legacy.
Metastasio's later cantatas and the canzonet Ecco quel Piero istante, which he sent to his friend Farinelli, rank among his popular productions. In 1755 the Countess Althann died, and Metastasio was more than ever reduced to the society which gath ered round him in the bourgeois house of the Martinez. He died on April 12, 1782. During the long period of 4o years in which Metastasio outlived his originality and creative powers his fame went on increasing. In his library he counted as many as 4o editions of his own works. They had been translated into French, English, German, Spanish, even into modern Greek. But with the changes effected by Gluck and Mozart, with the development of orchestration and the rapid growth of the German manner, a new type of libretto came into request. Metastasio's plays fell into un deserved neglect. Farinelli, whom he styled "twin-brother," was the true exponent of his poetry; and, with the disappearance of the school to which Farinelli belonged, Metastasio's libretti suffered eclipse. Collected editions of Metastasio's works published at Genoa (1802) and Padua (18ir) will probably be found most use ful by the general student. An edition of the letters, by Carducci, was published at Bologna in 1883. Metastasio's life was written by Aluigi (Assisi, 1783) ; by Charles Burney (1796) ; and by others; but the most vivid sketch is in Vernon Lee's Studies of the 18th Century in Italy (188o).