Appunti sui libretti per musica di Gioacchino Pizzi

Abstract

In recent years historians of the literature, culture and sociality of the academies have shown a renewed interest in Gioacchino Pizzi (Nivildo Amarinzio), who was the Custode of Arcadia from 1772 to 1790. On the other hand, there have been no specific studies of his relations with the world of music. The first part of the article offers a first inventory of Nivildo’s printed libretti, belonging to the genres of encomiastic cantata, sacred composition and dramma per musica. The second part illustrates the ideas on Italian and French theatre expounded by Pizzi in his "Ragionamento sulla tragica e comica poesia" (1772). It also reconstructs his relationship with Pietro Metastasio, and explores the contacts he maintained with some of the leading exponents of the art of music, including the theorist Giambattista Martini and the opera composer Niccolò Jommelli.