Catone in Utica

Opera libretto by Metastasio

Catone in Utica (Italian pronunciation: [kaˈtoːne in ˈuːtika]; transl. Cato at Utica) is an opera libretto by Metastasio, that was originally written for Leonardo Vinci's 1727 opera. Following Vinci's success, Metastasio's text was used by numerous composers of the baroque and classical eras for their own operas, including Pietro Torri (1736), Antonio Vivaldi (1737), Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (1753) and J. C. Bach (1761).

History

Before Metastasio's Catone in Utica libretto, Cato the Younger had already been the subject of following operas:^[1]

Catone il giovane, by Bartolomeo Monari, libretto by Giovanni Battista Neri [scores] (Bologna 1688)^[1]^[2]
Catone Uticensi, by Carlo Francesco Pollarolo (Venice 1701)^[1]
Cato, German opera by Reinhard Keiser, text after Matteo Noris (Hamburg 1715)^[1]^[3]

Metastasio wrote Catone in Utica in Italian, as a libretto for an opera in three acts. He changed the name of Cornelia to Emilia and that of Juba to Arbace, as better suited for music. Leonardo Vinci set the libretto to music for the first time. Vinci's opera was premiered at the Teatro delle Dame, Rome, during the carnival of 1727.^[1]

Content

The subject of the libretto is the death of Cato the Younger, set in Utica. Following characters are represented:^[1]

Catone (Cato the Younger)
Cesare (Julius Caesar)
Marzia, daughter of Catone, secretly in love with Cesare
Arbace, Prince of Numidia, friend of Catone and lover of Marzia
Emilia, widow of Pompeo (Pompey)
Fulvio, legate of the Roman Senate and lover of Emilia.

Operas

Metastasio's libretto was also set by:^[1]

Geminiano Giacomelli, Vienna, 1727
Leonardo Leo, Venice, 1729 ^[4]
Johann Adolph Hasse, Turin, 1732
George Frederick Handel, London, 1732, a pasticcio adapted mainly from Leo's 1729 setting, but transposing, editing or even entirely replacing its various arias to suit the skills of the singers he had at his disposal; some of the interpolated arias included pre-existing compositions by Porpora, Antonio Vivaldi, Hasse, and Leonardo Vinci. ^[1]^[5]
Pietro Torri, Munich, 1736
Antonio Vivaldi, Venice and Verona, 1737
Egidio Duni, Italy, about 1738
Giovanni Verocai [it], Brunswick, 1743
Carl Heinrich Graun, Berlin, 1744
Niccolò Jommelli, Vienna, 1749
Giovanni Battista Ferrandini, Munich, 1758
Vincenzo Legrenzo Ciampi, Venice, 1750
Florian Leopold Gassmann, Vienna, about 1760
Johann Christian Bach, Naples, 1761^[6]^[7]
Gian Francesco de Majo, Naples, 1763
Niccolò Piccinni, Naples, 1770
Bernardo Ottani [it], Naples, 1777
Gaetano Andreozzi [it], Milan, 1782
Giovanni Paisiello, Naples, 1788
Peter Winter, Venice, 1791.

References

^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Champlin 1888–90, I:284.
^ Domenico Pietropaolo, Mary Ann Parker (2011). The Baroque Libretto: Italian Operas and Oratorios in the Thomas Fisher Library at the University of Toronto. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-4163-1, p. 109
^ Cato, Die Liebe gegen das Vaterland, oder Der sterbende Cato at Stanford University website.
^ Shearon, Stephen (2002). "Catone in Utica (i)". Grove Music Online. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O901023. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.
^ "Cut-and-shut Baroque: Handel's Catone in Utica". bachtrack.com.
^ Catone in Utica, W.G 2 (Bach, Johann Christian): Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
^ Warburton, Ernest (2001). "Catone in Utica ('Cato in Utica')(ii)". Grove Music Online (8th ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.O004257. ISBN 978-1-56159-263-0.