Italian composer of opera seria in Germany, England, and Italy even. He had set to music all Metastasio's operatic libretti, with a single exception—some of them three or four times, and all at least twice; and although one could not possibly say that Metastasio worked slowly,[1] Hasse did not find that he wrote quickly enough; and to pass the time he composed the music for various operas by Apostolo Zeno. The number of his works was so great that he confessed that "he might very well fail to recognise them if they were shown to him;" he derived more pleasure, he said, in creating than in preserving what he had written; and he compared himself with "those fertile animals whose offspring are destroyed in the act of birth or left to the mercy of chance. "[2]
- ↑ Metastasio used to boast of having written his best drama, Hypermnestre, in nine days. Achilles in Scyros was written, set to music, staged and performed within eighteen days.
- ↑ Burney gives us an excellent portrait of this great composer, whose fame, in the eighteenth century, was far greater than that of Bach. He was everywhere regarded as the composer who, "in respect of vocal music, was closest to nature, most graceful and most judicious, and also as the most fertile of living authors." "He was tall and strongly built. His face must have been handsome and finely chiselled. He seemed older than Faustina, who was small, dark, witty and animated, although he was ten years the younger. He was very quiet and kindly in manner. He was talkative and full of commonsense; equally devoid of pride and prejudice; he spoke ill of no one; on the contrary, he did justice to the talents of several of his rivals. He had an infinite respect for Phillip Emmanuel Bach, and spoke of Händel only with reverence, but he declared that he had been unduly ambitious to parade his talents, to work out his parts and subjects, and that he was over-fond of noise. Faustina added that his voice parts were often uncouth. Above all he admired the old Keiser, "one of the greatest musicians the world has ever possessed," and Alessandro Scarlatti, "the greatest harmonist of Italy, that is, of the whole world." On the other hand, he found Durante "harsh and grotesque, coarse and barbarous." When Burney saw Hasse all his books, manuscripts and personal belongings had been burned in 1760, during the bombardment of Dresden by the King of Prussia, at the moment when the composer was about to have the complete edition of his works engraved at the cost of the King of Poland. But this disaster had not affected his serenity. "He is so pleasant, so easy in his welcome, that I felt as much at my ease with him,
