Apostolo Zeno's Reform of the Libretto

Author(s): Robert Freeman

Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society , Autumn, 1968, Vol. 21, No. 3
(Autumn, 1968), pp. 321-341
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological
Society

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 Apostolo Zeno's Reform of the Libretto*
By ROBERT FREEMAN

O PERATIC HISTORY ABOUNDS with references to a reform of t

undertaken by Apostolo Zeno, an Italian scholar and po
as librettist in Venice at the turn of the i8th century and at th
Court in Vienna between 1718 and 1729. The historiographical
of Zeno as reformer, which goes well back into the I8th cent
was crystallized by Max Fehr's often-cited Apostolo Zeno
Reform des Operntextes (1912). This tradition, treated by som
writers with tacit caution, is still strong enough to have p
misleading a reference to Zeno's activity as librettist as that wh
in the opera article of MGG (vol. X, col. 9), where one read
transformation of the operatic genre carried out in connection
textual reform begun by Zeno and carried to victory by M
Here I shall try to re-examine Zeno's role as reformer, through
all the known testimony from Zeno's contemporaries and in th
libretti from the period.
Criticism directed at the bizarre libretti of such late 17th-
Venetians as Aurelio Aureli, Nicolo Minato, and Matteo Noris
at least twenty years before Zeno wrote his first libretto in
parently originating among French Aristotelians who flaunted
alleged as the superiority of French to Italian culture, these atta
explicity on Italian opera only with the publication in 1685 of
mond's essay "Sur les opera";' but the publication in Venice in
essay written by Francesco Fulvio Frugoni to accompany his o
melodrammatica," Epulone,2 indicates that a clearly articulate
critical opinion against the habits of Italian librettists existed
the appearance of St.-Evremond's essay. Frugoni takes what h
ers a moderate position somewhere between the conservative Ar
who allow music only a circumscribed role in a drama construc
most rigid schemes, and the Venetian librettists, who hold the stag
with works permitting every license. The art of producing dram
Frugoni, has become nothing but the art of ruining human so
* This paper was read at a meeting of the Greater New York Cha
American Musicological Society on March 18, 1967.
1 For more information on these attacks, see the first chapter of my Pri
sertation (1967), "Opera without Drama; Currents of Change in Italian
to 1725, and the Roles Played Therein by Zeno, Caldara, and Others."
2Francesco Fulvio Frugoni, L'Epulone, opera melodrammatica espo
prose morali-critiche dal P. Francesco Fulvio Frugoni (Venice, 1675).
I62, 171ff., I86ff.

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322 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

stead of imitating nature for the ethical betterment of mankind, literature

painting, and the theater have become monstrous fantasies which corru
The musical theater in particular has elevated the means of expression t
position above that of the dramatic goals they are supposed to ser
scenery and stage machinery attract too much attention; and the singe
who are unjustly paid more than their intellectual superiors, the librettists,
take no interest in the dramatic character of their roles. Indeed, the ch
acteristic weakness in contemporary Italian drama of all kinds, continu
Frugoni, stems from the poet's inability to stand up for any reasonab
dramatic ideals.3 Too many unconnected episodes too often obscure th
principal dramatic idea, if indeed the poet has even considered the poss
bility of building his work around a single idea. Frugoni recognizes th
foolishness of uncritical obedience to regulations laid down by rec
commentators on Aristotle's Poetics, but he is equally critical of those w
fail even to consider the applicability of Aristotelian principles. He se
nothing sacred about Aristotle's famous unities of time and place, but
abhors the frequency with which his contemporaries change setting a
the liberties they take in prolonging the temporal limits of a drama
include the passage of 50 years or more. Serious and comic charact
should not be indiscriminately mixed in a work of art, nor should seri
characters be permitted to behave like buffoons. Frugoni does not conte
that sung or spoken tragedy is the only worthwhile form of dramati
endeavor, but he distinguishes carefully between the kind of dialogue
one can enjoy reading and the kind of slapstick humor which delights
the stage but which seems senseless in print.
Additional evidence that many of the ideas later attributed to Zen
were already in the air when his career as librettist began is provided
Poetica toscana all'uso, a book of instructions on writing several kinds
contemporary Italian poetry, published in I69i by the Neapolitan libr
tist Giuseppe Gaetano Salvadori.4 According to Salvadori, contemporar
librettists should pay more attention to the wishes of the public than
the writings of those whose standards of judgement he calls outmoded a
impractical, critics whom he identifies as "members of the Crusca5 an
other silly chatterers." In Salvadori's view, too much emphasis on moral
is boring. Brevity is the password of dramatic success. Exaggerations,
hyperbole, the falsification of history, unintegrated episodes, and th
use of improbable incidents are all justified if the audience approv
a For a summary of criticism blaming the ills of Italian tragedy during the 17th an
I8th centuries on the cancerous popularity of Italian opera, see Emilio Bertana,
teatro tragico italiano del secolo xviii prima dell'Alfieri," Giornale storico della l
teratura italiana, supplementary series IV (Turin, 190O), pp. I43ff.
*A copy of Salvadori's treatise is to be found among the holdings of the Bibliote
Nazionale Vittorio Emanuele III, Naples. For the passages discussed here see p
5off., 6o-61, 80-88. All English translations in this article are my own.
5 For a short history of the Accademia della Crusca, see Michele Maylende
Storia delle accademie d'Italia II (Bologna, 1926), pp. i22-146.

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 323

Salvadori's only restriction on the use of the marvelous is the avoid

of spectacular effects that do not surprise. As he sees it, there is not
improper about dramatic solutions through gods in machines, but it
senseless to use them too often:

I will give (poets) the license not only to transform ships into shepherdess
as did Virgil, but also for an ant to overturn the world, and for the s
transforming themselves into oxen, to descend and plough the earth (p. 52

There is no point, continues Salvadori, in arguing about sad and hap

endings, for although his contemporaries prefer happy endings, eit
variety is acceptable. There is no point, similarly, in insisting that ev
king be a serious figure and every peasant a buffoon, for the dramatic rep
resentation of comic kings and dignified peasants presents a welcome
casion for variety. It is senseless for librettists to try to develop plots
are verisimilar, for the public will believe what it chooses to believe.
invention of new dramatic ideas is entertaining, but a librettist pressed fo
time should not hesitate to purloin the ideas of others wherever he f
them.

Salvadori concludes his essay with a series of warnings for librettis

unfamiliar with music. Modern composers are men of power wh
textual changes it is useless to resist. A prudent librettist familiarizes h
self with the talents of the singers who will perform his work, and
collaborates wherever possible with the composer. Since arias are wh
the public most desires, it is senseless to emulate those who try to inc
in their works as many as three or four scenes devoid of arias. Arias
sometimes used at the beginnings of scenes, but experience shows th
recitative is more effective in that position. No individual singer sh
have more than three or four arias in succession, as happens in the libr
of some unthinking poets. It is unwise to write libretti that involve fe
than four or more than seven characters. Lengthy scenes should
avoided, as should aria texts whose accented syllables involve vow
other than "a" and "o".
Zeno, then, did not invent such ideas as the needs for more serious,
more rational, and more readable libretti.6 Nor was he the only librettist

B That libretti of literary pretentions were being written in Italy before the
inception of Zeno's career as librettist is evident from a variety of protests released
during the closing years of the x7th century by several Italian librettists of the
then more normal species. One of the more amusing of these protests appears in
the preface to La serva favorita, a libretto published during 1689 in Florence: "If the
censors of belles lettres severely punished any person of mature age found reading
Italian poetry, as Boccalini tells us, what would they have done had they found some-
one reading the libretto for an opera? This genre is designed to be heard in a dif-
ferent context, and poetry is required to clothe its various defects in order to
make them appear, in their proper context, like so many virtues, precisely in the
manner of those painters who design in one plane what they wish to have appear
as a three-dimensional image. It is for this reason that the more famous poets, in
those of their works which are intended for musical setting, make a note of their

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324 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

credited during his operatic career-between 1695 and i729-with having

written operatic texts that took account of such needs. Salvadori's col-
league, for example, the Sicilian actor and librettist, Andrea Perrucci, in
1699 published an informative treatise on theatrical production,7 contain
ing a chapter on contemporary opera that does not mention Zeno. But
just after listing more than a dozen recent librettists whose familiarit
with Aristotle he guarantees, Perrucci has special praise for the Marche
G. G. Orsi of Bologna, a poet "... whose libretti and theatrical wor
combine the rigidity of the antique style with the ease and grace of t
modern." Later in Perrucci's treatise (pp. 148-i50), again without refer
ence to Zeno, he alludes to the increasing recourse by Italian librettists
the turn of the I8th century to the technique of retaining, during an
stage set, at least one character on stage between scenes-a techniqu
known among French tragedians as liaison des scenes. Too often, write
Perrucci, actors enter in scenes where they do not belong or, even wors
collide while entering with actors who are exiting-leaving the stag
empty, the worst sin of all. Perrucci takes pride in his manner of avoidin
such problems: a cue sheet posted backstage, and an invariable regulation
that exits take place from the front of the stage but that entrances b
made from the rear.

Nor is Zeno included by Giovanni Maria Crescimbeni in the secon

chapter of his compilatory history of Italian poetry where fifty li
ing poets are credited as leaders in the revival of Italian poetry. A
least eight of the fifty described are poets who had already written ope
libretti, and the libretti of five of the eight are specifically included
by Crescimbeni among works worthy of mention: Abate Alessand
Guidi is praised for his L'Endimione (a dramma pastorale in five acts for
which Queen Christina herself is said to have contributed verses), Giro
lamo Gigli and Count Giulio Bussi for their "various dramas," Paolo de'
Conti di Campello for his "dramatic works," and Silvio Stampiglia for th
"several dramatic works he has published."8

intention, in order that the reader may know how the text is supposed to reac
the ears of the public. Would it not be absurd if Aristarchus were to try to judge
distant painting through a microscope? The artifices of one variety of poetry a
errors in another. A person who wished to use the lyric style in writing an epi
or epic style in writing a text for music, would surely commit a serious mistak
There are, that is to say, many muses, and they do not all play the same instrumen
Alan Curtis, who reminds me of the relevance in this respect of the title for
Ivanovich's catalogue, Minerva al tavolina (Venice, 1681 and 1688), feels that t
tradition of the libretto per stampa may go back without interruption as far a
Busenello.
SAndrea Perrucci, Dell'arte rappresentativa premeditata ed all'improviso (Naples,
1699), p. 63. A new edition of Perrucci's treatise, by A. G. Bragaglia, appeared in
i96i (Florence: Sanson).
8 G. M. Crescimbeni, L'istorii della volgar poesia (Rome, 1698), pp. I69-I74.
Poets whose libretti are not specifically mentioned are C. M. Maggi, Francesco
de Lemene, and the Marchese Orsi. In Crescimbeni's index the term "drama" appears

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 325
The second occasion on which Crescimbeni treats what he considers
the recent improvement in form and content of the libretto occurs just
before the end of the sixth section of his La bellezza della volgar poesia,
a slim volume of Arcadian dialogues first printed in Rome in 1700. In a
long speech put into the mouth of Paolo di Campello's nephew, Francesco
Maria, Crescimbeni divides the blame for the miseries of Italian theater
during the seicento between Rinuccini and Cicognini. But, in Crescim-
beni's view, the situation has begun to improve. The quotation cited below
is taken from a passage which, often quoted out of context, especially
during the I8th century, helped materially to build Zeno's reputation as
reformer.

It seems at present as if Italy is beginning to open her eyes, and to recognize

the uselessness which comes from having abandoned her old traditions. Al-
though she still has not reclaimed true comedy, nonetheless, choosing the
lesser of two evils, she has corrected many manifestations of that monstrous
mixing of character types practiced till now, managing at least to establish
entirely serious libretti like those used today in the theaters of Venice, which
do not use comic characters and which, by diminishing the excessive number
of arias, allow some opportunity in the recitatives for the affetti. In this
enterprise our fellow Arcadians the late Domenico David and the most learned
Apostolo Zeno have been prime movers; and, therefore, the honor of the
achievement is principally theirs. In Rome we have seen the return of tragedy
which, as everyone knows, although without music and full of sadness, has
been much honored and applauded by all Rome, especially since Stilicone
and other tragedies translated from the French by our good friend P. D.
Felippo Merelli appeared at the Theater of the Collegio Clementino. But,
more than to any other person, the honor of having brought back good taste
to Italy is owed to our much-acclaimed friend, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni,
author of a fine pastorale, Amore eroico tra i pastori, which was the first to
concern itself once more with the old rules, introducing choruses and other
qualities pertaining to good comedy.

When told that he condemns all operatic libretti, Francesco Maria di

Campello objects, continuing as follows:
For my part I not only have not condemned any, but confess with freedom
that I take no little pleasure in listening to them, especially those by our
fellow Arcadians Silvio Stampiglia, Count Giulio Bussi, Giovanni Andrea
Moniglia, Giacomo Sinibaldi, Pietro Antonio Bernardoni, Carlo Sigismondo
Capece, and Girolamo Gigli, which seem to me rather better than all the
others I have heard. I admit, however, that the person who invented opera
would have done better not to have invented it and to have left the world
as he found it.9

only in connection with poetry intended for musical setting, as was customary at
the time.
9 Crescimbeni, La bellezza della volgar poesia, pp. Io6-Io8. Francesco Maria's
apparent implication that even the best libretti are worthwhile only in performance
is yet another early instance of the distinction (repeated often during the i8th
century) between texts that are better heard in the theater and texts that can be read
with pleasure.

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326 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Of importance for our understanding of Zeno's place in the history of the

Italian libretto are both Crescimbeni's praise for fellow Arcadians'o and
his apparent attribution to David and Zeno of two specific changes in
libretto construction: the elimination of comic characters and the de-
creased number of arias. Crescimbeni's comments probably stem, at least
in the case of Zeno's libretti, from personal familiarity with the libretti
themselves, for the published correspondence of Zeno shows that,
between May and August 1698 and apparently at Crescimbeni's request,
Zeno sent the operatic libretti he had completed by that time to Cres-
cimbeni in Rome." Since Zeno made no critical comments on his libretti
in any of his extant letters to Crescimbeni, and is not known to have men-
tioned on any other occasion either of the points included in La bellezza
della volgar poesia, one presumes that Crescimbeni's remarks about the
dropping of comic figures and the diminished number of arias were the
result of his own observations or of remarks made to Crescimbeni by per-
sons whose familiarity with Venetian opera he trusted. That they cannot
have resulted from a familiarity with contemporary Venetian opera as a
whole is evident when one compares the libretti written by Zeno and
David during the I690's with those of their Venetian contemporaries.
Comic servants appear in two of the four historical libretti of Zeno which
were produced in Venice before the summer of 1698, and in all three of the
David libretti produced there before that time.12 And there were poets
other than Zeno and David who wrote libretti for Venice during the
I69o's-works which, although they contain no comic characters, are not
mentioned by Crescimbeni.'3 There are, moreover, two places in the
published correspondence of Zeno where his feelings about comic char-
acters in the libretto are recorded; and in neither does he take what could
be called a stand against comic figures. In a letter to Antonfrancesco
Marmi, dated February 24, 1703, Zeno comments on the addition to his
Griselda (for performance in Florence later in 1703) of raucously comic
scenes for an octogenarian nurse who is madly in love with a male ser-
vant less than half her age:

I have read Griselda, and am extraordinarily well pleased by the comic scenes
which Signor Gigli has made for you with so much skill. The changes you

10 Crescimbeni's lists of "improved" librettists include, in fact, none but members

of Arcadia. For a list of the Academy's early members, complete through March 9,
17"., see the appendix to Crescimbeni's Arcadia (Rome, 171i), pp. 329-375.
11 Apostolo Zeno, Lettere (Venice, 1785), nos. 12-15, 20, 22.
12 Zeno: Gl'inganni felici (1695), Odoardo (1698); David: L'amante eroe (1691);
La forza della virtu' (1693); Amor e Dover (I697).
xs G. C. Corradi, L'amor di Curzio per la patria (Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo,
1690); R. Pignatta, La costanza vince il destino (Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo,
1695); Frigimelica-Roberti, Rosimonda (Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, 1695);
G. C. Godi, Eraclea (Teatro San Salvatore, 1696); Burlini, La forza d'amore
(Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo, 1697).

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 327

have made are of so little consequence that they have not bothered me in
least, nor have they made the work appear different from the manner in w
I first published it.14

The eight comic scenes which Zeno finds so unimportant comprise,

should be noted, just less than 20o per cent of the length of the entire wo
Nearly fifteen years later, in a letter to Marchese Giorgio Clerici
Milan, dated January 22, 1718, Zeno outlines the tasks required of h
in the post of imperial poet he is about to undertake in Vienna.
I shall not be involved in any comic works, since I have neither talent
inclination to test myself in that direction. I beg Your Excellency to inter
in order that I may be excused from any poetic commissions beyond
theatrical labors, since these latter would distract me from my principal ch
and since I would not be able to bear the double burden.15

Hardly the words, one would think, of a reformer who had purged
Italian libretto of what he considered an excretion.
David, who had died on June 30, 1698, could not reply to Crescim-
beni's words of praise; but Zeno, who thanked Crescimbeni (Lettere,
no. 51) for his complimentary copy of La bellezza before it had reached
him, did not respond to Crescimbeni's remarks on the libretto-and went
on to write at least three more works with roles for servants.'6
What then of David's and Zeno's ostensible roles in ". . . diminishing
the excessive number of arias"? Here, too, Crescimbeni's remarks repre-
sent half-truths apparently based more on hearsay than on a thorough
knowledge of the recent Venetian repertory. Because of the dearth of
musical sources for Venetian opera during the 169o's, because some
Venetian librettists failed to distinguish as unambiguously as did their
I8th-century successors between the rhyme schemes and metrical patterns
used in recitative and aria, and since late z7th-century Venetian printers
of libretti made little apparent effort to distinguish typographically be-
tween arias and recitatives, it is impossible to make absolutely accurate
calculations about the number of arias in most Venetian operas of the
period. But an aria count based on the repertory to which Crescimbeni
alludes shows clearly that neither David nor Zeno was remarkable for
14 Zeno, Lettere, no. 75.
15 Ibid., no. 412.
16 Lucio Vero (1700); Griselda (1701); Artaserse (1705). Zeno's servants seldom
indulge in the coarse jests common in some 17th-century libretti, but they resemble
seicento servants in other respects: in the awkwardness with which they intrude
on intimate moments, in the difficulty with which they express themselves, in the
freedom with which they comment on the actions of the principals, in tendencies
to malice and mendacity, and in their function as (often unreliable) messengers.
It is true that, after the first few years of the settecento in Venice (somewhat later
in other cities), comic characters did in fact disappear from the printed libretti
of historically oriented Italian operas, surviving thereafter in set-separating intermezzi.
But while this change must have helped produce a different impression on those
who judged the libretto as a literary genre, it cannot have made much difference
for the opera-going public.

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 328 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

an exceptionally low number of arias (a table based on such a count

appears in my dissertation, vol. I, pp. 27-29). In the works of both poets
there is a general decrease in the number of arias, both absolutely and in
proportion to each libretto as a whole, but neither decrease is any more
marked than in the cases of several poets not mentioned by Crescimbeni
and of no reputation as "reform" librettists. The general decrease is not
connected with settings by specific composers or with works performed
in specific theaters, but seems to have been a general trend of the pe-
riod, at least in Venice.
In the first volume of the supplement to Crescimbeni's general history,
published in 1702, the so-called Arcadian Custodian complains once more
about the evil effects wrought on Italian literature by the degeneracy of
Italian libretti during the second half of the x7th century. He repeats
the by now familiar view that conditions had finally begun to improve,
but then discusses in more detail than before his ideas on the ingredients
of that improvement. The immoderate use of arias has begun to abate, as
has the too frequent use of set changes. The ends of acts are still too often
marked by intermezzi of every kind instead of by choruses, but in recent
years, especially in Rome and Venice, poets have begun turning back more
and more to the chorus, used in the Greek manner as a commentator out-
side the frame of the dramatic action. More attention, says Crescimbeni, has
been given of late to restricting the action of each drama within reasonable
temporal limits and, although the traditional operatic three-act division is
still prevalent, some poets have turned back to the older-fashioned division
into five acts. This time Crescimbeni calls for the early arrival of a savior
for Italian dramatic poetry. He does not mention either David or Zeno,
but stresses the dramatic merits to be found in what he calls the "favola
pastorale," particularly in Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni's Adonia, ". . . com-
posed with the best antique taste and heard privately with the music
of five of Italy's best composers, each of whom set one of the five acts
into which the work is divided."17
Four years later, in 1706, Zeno's reputation with the literati had
progressed so far that, as the climax for a case against opera in an Arcadian
treatise on the reform of Italian poetry, Lodovico Antonio Muratori used
a paragraph Zeno had addressed to him in a letter written during August
1701.

To state sincerely my feelings about libretti, although I have written many of

17 Crescimbeni, Comentarii intorno alla sua istoria della volgar poesia I (Rome,
1702), pp. 234ff. The division into five acts, which so reminded Zeno's generation of
Greek tragedy, was used in some of Zeno's Venetian and in some of his Viennese
libretti, in all the libretti of Frigimelica-Roberti, in several by Piovene, and in
occasional works by other librettists active early in the i8th century. But the five-
act division was generally thought to make an opera too long, and it seems to have
died out altogether after 173o. The full-length libretti of Metastasio are all in three
acts.

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 329

them, I would be the first to condemn them. Long experience has taught me
that unless one employs many abuses, one misses the primary goal of such
compositions-that is, pleasure. The more one wishes to insist on the rules,
the more one displeases. And if the libretto is praised, the theater has little
business. A large measure of the guilt belongs to the music which, because of
the stupidity of the composers, weakens the best scenes. And the singers, who
not understanding the text have not the least idea of how to act, are also to
blame.s8

Evidently pleased by the quotation which Muratori had included in Della

perfetta poesia italiana, Zeno wrote to thank him for the honor, concluding
in a fashion characteristic of Zeno but not to be expected from a person
devoted to the carrying through of a reform.

The quotation in your book serves me as a public apology against the criti-
cisms of those who either do not understand the business of writing libretti
or who think they understand it too well.19

Public apology it may have been; but despite the bitter attacks on Italian
tastes initiated in 1705 by the French journalists of Trevoux, and despite
Zeno's prominent role in defending Italy against those attacks,20 there
was no slackening in his production of opera libretti. Between the begin-
ning of Zeno's career as librettist in 1695 and the publication in 1706 of
his letter against libretti in Muratori's treatise, Zeno had written at least
15 libretti. He equalled that output during the decade which followed, if
one counts the works on which he collaborated with Pietro Pariati. Mura-
tori's treatise was intended for an audience that looked askance at the
world of opera and whose good opinion Zeno valued. But until I7Ir,
when Zeno obtained his first regular appointment in Venice at the age
of 43, he was in constant need of funds, not only for the support of his
family but also for the proper pursuit of his expensive antiquarian inter-
ests in the collection of inscriptions, coins, rare books, and manuscripts.
It was a need that, during the 1690o's, Zeno discovered he could most
easily supply through the composition of occasional libretti; but though
he struggled throughout his career as librettist to improve the literary
quality of his works, he never overcame his embarrassment at earning
his livelihood in a manner that he felt compromised his integrity as a
writer and degraded him in the eyes of many of his literary compatriots.21
18sL. A. Muratori, Della perfetta poesia italiana (Modena, 17o6), II, 55. For the
context from which the passage cited was excerpted, see Zeno, Lettere, no. 59.
19 Zeno, Lettere, no. 165.
20 For the details of this famous early x8th-century polemic, see Adolfo Boeri,
Una contesa franco italiana nel secolo xviii (Palermo, i9oo).
21 For Zeno's interests in the libretto as a commercial genre, see the Lettere, nos.
43, 168, 432, 469, 1o93. Especially during the earlier part of his career he sent copies
of his libretti to close friends among the literati (Lettere, nos. 12-15, 20, 22, 28,
35-36, 54, 74, 76, 90, 96, 178, 194, 434-35, 448, 455, 482, 638, 701, 719, 749), but his
disenchantment with the libretto increased as he grew older (Lettere, nos. 14, 62,
91-92, 165, 18o, 30o, 413, 430, 432, 495, 653, 666, 672, 691, 724, 743, 745). For Arcadian
apologia in behalf of a poet whose reputation had been stained through activity as

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 330 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

The keenness with which Zeno, one of Italy's best known scholars of
the period,22 must have felt the humiliation of his career as librettist can-
not have been lessened by a volume published in 1714 by Pier Jacopo
Martello, a Bolognese Arcadian who had himself written libretti during
his youth. In the fifth part of Della tragedia antica e moderna,23 a series
of six dialogues between Martello and an old hunchback who claims to be
Aristotle himself, preserved over the centuries through the use of a
secret elixir, Martello contributes a satiric review of the contemporary
operatic scene. Pseudo-Aristotle, whom Martello labels the "impostor,"
opens by asserting that although some writers imagine Greek drama to
have been given a complete musical setting, Saint-Evremond was correct
when he wrote, "The Greeks used to produce wonderful tragedies in
which some parts were sung; the French make wretched tragedies in
which they sing everything." The "impostor" claims that he has listened
to Italian opera in Venice, Genoa, Milan, Reggio, and Bologna, and that
what he has heard is fully as bad as Saint-Evremond found French opera.
Martello agrees, but wants to be certain that the "impostor" shares his
esteem for the libretti of several of his Italian contemporaries: ". . . the
works of severe Moniglia and those of graceful Lemene; Tolomeo,
Achille, and the two Ifigenias of Carlo Capece; Santa Cecilia, Costantino,
and Ciro of a very eminent author;24 all of the works of the most learned
Apostolo Zeno; the charming Dafni of Eustachio Manfredi; La caduta
de'decimviri of Silvio Stampiglia; Onestd negli amori of Monsignor
Bernini, and the greater part of the libretti of Monsignor di Totis, to
include praise one owes the works of those already dead." The "im-
postor" concurs in Martello's judgement, but says he is sorry to see so
a librettist, see L. A. Muratori, Vita di Carlo Maria Maggi (Milan, 1700), pp. 29-34,
91-93. To appreciate Zeno's position, one need only imagine the reception which
would be accorded in our own day to a distinguished medievalist, say, who busied
himself writing (even exceptionally good) scripts for television westerns.
22 On Zeno's career as a scholar, see Giovanni Chiuppani, Apostolo Zeno in
relazione all'erudizione del suo tempo (Bassano, 900oo); Luigi Menghi, Lo Zeno e la
critica letteraria (Camerino, 1i90).
S23Pier Jacopo Martello, L'Impostore (Paris, 1714, but printed in Italian); re-
printed in an amplified version the following year in Rome as the second volume
of Martello's Teatro italiano, this time under the title Della tragedia antica e
moderna; reprinted in 1963 under the latter title as part of an anthology of Martello's
works edited by Hannibal S. Noce, Pier Jacopo Martello, scritti critici e satirici
(Bari, 1963), Vol. CCXXV in the series Scrittori d'ltalia. I am preparing for publica-
tion an annotated translation of those parts of Della tragedia that concern opera.
24 An apparent allusion to Pietro Pariati, Zeno's Venice-based assistant for libretto
versification early in the 18th century, then court poet in Vienna (and occasional
collaborator with Zeno, after the latter's arrival there in 1718) from 1714 until his
death in 1733. For a biographical study of Pariati and a review of his works, see
Naborre Campanini, Un precursore del Metastasio (Florence, 1889), reprinted in
1904 as volume 43 of the series Biblioteca critica della letteratura italiana. It is
hard to imagine why Martello's reference to Pariati should have taken so cryptic
a form; Ciro and Costantino had been produced in Venice's Teatro San Cassiano
during 171o and 17 I respectively.

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 331

many otherwise worthy poets waste so much of their time on a g

so impermanent as the opera libretto. Martello continues with a r
that is reminiscent of Zeno's already-quoted letter of August
Muratori: Martello never more resented the time spent on hi
libretti, he says, than when the things that pleased him most were
through insipid music, or when poetry that would nauseate when
so aroused the audience that Martello was pleased in spite of h
The "impostor" replies that mediocre poetry is actually more s
than the best for musical settings, adding that one should begin
the postulate that in contemporary Italian opera, music, not poet
primary. The problem with the critics of Italian libretti, says th
postor," is that they resent the relative unimportance of poetry'
in opera; and he goes on to propose three novel solutions to the pr
I) since poetry's role in opera is so minor, perhaps one might
poetry altogether; 2) since serious poets are offended by the fact
the authors of libretti are also known as poets, perhaps one could
hard feelings by calling the latter "versifiers," "mere versifiers," or
thing even less honorific; 3) since composers know the sort of po
they can set best, why not put the composition of both poet
music into the hands of the same man, as was successfully done in
with the famous castrato, Pistocchi; his text was weak and insipid
read, to be sure, but it was perfectly suited to the music Pistocchi
for it and with which it made an impressive effect in perfor
This latter arrangement, decides the "impostor," is doubtless the
of the possibilities proposed.25
Much more enthusiastic than Martello about the quality of mo
Italian libretti was Johann Mattheson, the compiler of a list of p
worthy librettists as miscellaneous as that of either Crescimbeni o
tello. In the 1722 volume of the periodical Critica musica, Mat
reprinted and in facing columns translated into German Raguenet'
lMle des italiens et des franpais, adding occasionally lengthy footn
his own. Raguenet is enthusiastic in his praise for Italian music, b
praises the dignity of French characterizations and the dramatic
priateness of the French passions, asserting that there are few tra
or comedies better than the majority of musical texts by Quin
This is too much for Mattheson, who unburdens himself of the f
ing, characteristically outspoken lines in defense of Italian librett
The author has perhaps seen and read only the most miserable of
operas.... As we shall see from what follows in this Parallele, Raguen

25 Della tragedia antica e moderna, ed. Noce, pp. 273-274, 276-278.

26 For an English translation of Raguenet's essay and of LeCerf de la V
anti-Italian reply of 1704-05, Comparison de la musique italienne et de la
frangaise, see Oliver Strunk, Source Readings in Music History (New York
PP. 473-507.

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332 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

in Rome during 1698. Whether at that time he met only rhapsodic libretti
of the type he describes is uncertain. We, at any rate, have quite different
information and examples not only of recent Italian works, particularly of the
outstanding Viennese operas by the incomparable Apostolo Zeno, but also
of quite old libretti in which both the intrigues and dramatic expression are
beyond criticism. Croeusus, a work translated from Italian more than 30 or 40
years ago, can serve as an example of the first. This is a piece in which there
are dramatic denouements of a kind that I doubt has ever been shown in a
French work. Whoever has the Venetian operas available, let him have a look
at the year 1695, where he will find a so-called pastorale-tragedy for music
entitled II pastor d'Anfriso, a work which gives the greatest satisfaction in
the world. So far as noble sentiments are concerned, I know of no single
French opera which in this respect outdoes the libretti which the famous
Francesco Silvani prepared and entitled II miglior d'ogni amore per il peggiore
d'ogni odio. It was performed in Venice during the year 1703 with music com-
posed by Francesco Gasparini. Whoever wishes to take these and similar
works, of which I have seen entire volumes, for rhapsodies, must certainly be
deranged. It has been true for several years both here and in England that
many libretti are disgracefully torn apart, shredded, and trimmed up with
all sorts of rags like a harlequin's costume. But the authors of the works are
not guilty on that account; the guilt lies rather on some occasions with the
whim of a lady virtuoso, on others with the lack of sense of an impresario
who thinks only that whatever is pretty ought to be equally suitable in al
places. On still other occasions the guilt lies with the taste of spectators for
whom one often cannot make things bizarre enough. Except where this hap-
pens, however, Italian poets know how to give their works coherence, conse-
quence, and most important, a nice intrigue.27
Writing no more than four years after Zeno's move to Vienna in
1718, Mattheson indicates the extent to which Zeno's already burgeoning
reputation had been furthered by the appearance of his first Viennese
works; but nothing is said of any reform. Corradi, Frigimelica-Roberti,
and Silvani, the authors of the three libretti cited by Mattheson, are a
trio of poets mentioned by no other critic in connection with recent
"improvements" in the Italian libretto. Strikingly, none of the three
seems ever to have been a member of Arcadia (none is included, at any
rate, in the previously cited list of early Arcadians).
We come finally to Scipione Maffei, the Veronese Arcadian who first
separated Apostolo Zeno from the assortment of poets already credited
with having improved the contemporary libretto-and the last writer
known to have commented in print on Zeno as librettist before 1729,
the date of the latter's retirement. In the introduction to Teatro italiano.,
an anthology of Italy's greatest tragedies, published by Maffei in 1723
as a stimulus to reawakening Italian interest in the performance of trag-
edy and as a defense against French criticisms of Italian poetry, Maffei
sketches the history of theater in Italian, attributing a large share of
the blame for its decadence during the i7th century to the popularity
of opera. Like several of the other critics discussed thus far, Maffei is
27 Johann Mattheson, Critica musica I, xo8.

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 333

willing to admit that contemporary libretti are more reaso

those he had known in his youth, but he emphatically rejects
idea that the Italian theater has any room for a dramatic type
poetry acts as music's servant.
It is true that in most recent times several poets of talent have ma
genre with much honor. Among those writers I would name on
did not fear displeasing him, who has written more than forty libre
often taken scarcely a week to write one of them, and who has kno
merit the approval of an emperor who, with marvelous penetr
mediately distinguishes the strong from the weak, an emperor who
his knowledge and wisdom than for his virtues and victories, will b
in every era. But until the present variety of music is moderated, it
be possible to construct operas so that they do not always appear lik
of art distorted for the sake of another-a situation in which the sup
ably serves the inferior, where the poet occupies the same po
violinist who plays for dancing.28

Maffei never names the author of the forty libretti to whom

in the paragraph just quoted, but his identification is so pr
there can be no doubt whatever that he is referring to Zeno.
only one emperor in Europe and only one poet in his servic
written as many as forty libretti. But the reluctance to ment
name may well have stemmed from deeper roots than Maffei
respect for Zeno's modesty.
Maffei, we have seen, credits Zeno with the composition of
libretti, but he neither specifies the nature of their excellence
to anything called a reform. It is not, in fact, from Zeno's cont
but from writers on operatic history active after Zeno's retire
the notion of Zeno as reformer develops. These writers, usual
tempting to describe the operatic milieu in which Metastasio, Z
cessor in Vienna, came to maturity, adopt a simplified picture
history in which snippets of material from writers like Cresc
Muratori, and Maffei are juxtaposed to show a progression
17th-century decadence to Metastasian perfection through th
of a reform undertaken by Zeno. It is, then, in the works of su
as Quadrio, Carli, Calsabigi, Martinelli, Rousseau, Napoli-Signor
Borde, Tiraboschi, Arteaga, and Burney29 that Zeno is cred
28 S. Maffei, Teatro italiano (Verona, 1723) I, vii-viii.
29 F. S. Quadrio, Della storia e della ragione d'ogni poesia (Milan, 174
425ff.; R. de' Calsabigi, "Dissertazione," Poesie del Signor Abate Metast
1755) I, xxiv, cxxxi-cxxxii; J. J. Rousseau, "Opera," Dictionnaire de mu
1768), p. 350; P. Napoli-Signorelli, Storia critica de' teatri antichi e mod
1777) (Naples, 1813), X I33ff.; J. B. de La Borde, Essai sur la musique a
moderne (Paris, 1780) III, 256-257; G. Tiraboschi, Storia della letterat
(Modena, 1772-81), vols. XXII-XXV in Biblioteca enciclopedica italiana (M
XXV, 568-570; S. Arteaga, Le rivoluzioni del teatro musicale italiano dalla
fino al presente, 2nd ed. (Venice, 1785) II, 69-77; C. Burney, A General
Music (London, 1776-89) IV, 63, 204, 225, 231, 424, 517. The relevant pa

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334 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

such achievements as having purged the libretto of inadequately prepare

denouements and of its dependence on supernatural inventions and ma
chines, having made possible a rebirth of Aristotelian principles outline
in the Poetics, and having made his plots conform to the supposed fac
of political history.30 It is in the works of these and later writers, man
of whom read Zeno's libretti but not those of his contemporaries, that
Zeno, attaining a more dynamic role than the one he seems actually to
have played, is credited with such formal innovations as the division int
five acts, the developments of a tighter liaison des scenes, and the elim
ination of arias other than scene-ending exit arias. A comparison of th
formal aspects of Zeno's libretti with those of his contemporaries shows
in fact, not that Zeno's libretto formats were especially modern for thei
day, but that in this respect Zeno responded to the same influences af
fecting other Italian librettists of the period.
One can infer Zeno's view of his achievement as a librettist from a
letter he addressed in 1730, the year after his retirement, to a Marchese
Gravisi of Capodistria. After trying to soften the position on opera
which he and Muratori had taken twenty-five years earlier in Della
perfetta poesia italiana, Zeno continues:

There are, of course, a great many improbable things in musical dramas,

and some of these stem from the necessity of the genre, such as the frequent
changes of scenery and the necessity for so many arias. For these and for simi-
lar difficulties there is no remedy. But other problems derive from the insuf-
ficient care of the poet, who preserves neither the unity of action, nor the
conformity of the characters, nor the decorum of the tragic stage, nor the
purgation of the affetti, nor the movement of these to compassion or to ter-
ror, nor the proprieties of a dramatic development and of an untying of the
dramatic knot that is adjusted to good rules.31

Zeno's aim, it is apparent both from his correspondence and from his
libretti, was not to set about reforming the power structure of the
opera house, but to achieve both popular and literary success through
libretti which could be both staged and read. Zeno believed, as he in-
dicates in his letter to the Marchese Gravisi, that opera itself was an
inevitably unhealthy patient. But he was convinced that certain aspects

Carli and Martinelli, and from other, later settecento writers not cited here, are
summarized by Remo Giazotto in Poesia melodrammatica e pensiero critico nel
settecento (Milan, 1952).
80 A brief look at the lists of stage machines indicated in several of Zeno's
Viennese libretti, and at the denouements of even his most celebrated secular works
is sufficient to undermine the idea that Zeno was seriously concerned with the first
two of the "contributions" cited. He did refer with pride on more than one occasion
to his frequent success in dealing with the so-called Aristotelian unities, but the
listing in his libretto prefaces of historical sources seems to have been intended
as much as a defense against charges of plagiarism as in an effort to use plots which
conform in every detail to historical tradition.
31 Zeno, Lettere, no. 756.

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 335

of its illness were essentially literary, and hence susceptible to e

literary cures. These cures, he imagined, lay in more serious an
rationalistic libretti, where characters were drawn in greater dep
dramatic development was more logically motivated than it
previously.
Although Zeno was by no means the only librettist of his generation
who sought such cures for the patient, he was certainly among the most
skillful. The nature of that skill is illustrated by a comparison of two
typically contrasting treatments of the same subject: Minato's Seleuco,
printed in Venice in i666, and Zeno's Antioco, written in collaboration
with Pietro Pariati and printed in Venice in 1705.32 The casts of char-
acters which follow will introduce the reader to the bases for the dra-
matic developments outlined below.
Minato's Seleuco:
Seleuco, King of Syria
Antioco, Seleuco's son, in love with
Stratonica, Queen of Asia, Seleuco's bride-to-be, who returns Antioco's
love
Lucinda, former lover of Arbante and Antioco's bride-to-be
Arbante, a prince, in love with Lucinda
Ersistrato, a royal physician
Eurindo, a page
Rubia, an old woman
Silo, a servant
Zeno's Antioco:
Seleuco, Antioco, Stratonica--as above
Argene, Lydian princess, in love with Antioco
Tolomeo, Egyptian prince, in love with Argene
Arsace, an old friend of Antioco who has just arrived in Syria to plead
for the forgiveness of the Phoenicians, the recent rebels against
tyrannical satraps placed over them by Seleuco

The principal differences between the two versions are best exemplified
when one compares the two main plots. Minato's version of the story
begins with Antioco's reception of Stratonica at the seaside, and a dra-
matic if improbable scene in a darkened cave where, in the light of a
lantern, Antioco recognizes the mysterious beloved he has known only
in a cherished portrait. Zeno, preferring to concentrate his attention on
the development of character through conflict, opens his version some-
time after Stratonica's arrival in Syria, after her liaison with Antioco
has already been established. In Minato's version, Seleuco spends the
whole of the first two acts attempting to discover the cause of Antioco 's
obvious unhappiness, then offers Stratonica to his son almost as soon
82 Copies of the two libretti are to be found in the Rolandi Collection at the
Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, and in the Biblioteca Marciana, respectively. The
preface of the 1666 libretto indicates that that text represents a somewhat revised
version of an original first produced in Naples.

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336 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY
as Ersistrato informs him of the affair between Antioco and Stratonica-
thus making it necessary that the second half of the final act be elab-
orated from an improbable intrigue resulting from Antioco's unwitting
failure to deliver a note from Seleuco to Lucinda. Zeno's version is much
more involved, dealing with more complicated characters whose inner
conflicts and misunderstandings of each other's motives and actions
provide a "natural" basis for the variety of causative plot elaboration
that Arcadian critics required. Seleuco is torn between his genuine af-
fection for Antioco on the one hand, and his natural assertiveness and
royal responsibility for civil obedience on the other; Antioco must
choose between his sense of filial duty and his love for Stratonica. One
does not doubt the depth of Stratonica's love for Antioco, but she is
clearly perplexed in Zeno's version by the thought that she could con-
ceivably lose both Antioco and the chance to be Queen of Syria, an
ambition which once undermines even Antioco's confidence in her.
Argene loves a man she knows cannot be hers, but whose loss she find
difficult to accept. Tolomeo is enough of a realist to mistrust Argene's
offer of her love in exchange for his services as an avenger on Antioc
but enough of a dreamer to hope that he may eventually win Argen
even so; his sense of personal virtue is weak enough towards the begin
ning of the libretto for him to become convinced that the winning of
Argene justifies any means, but it is later strengthened to the point th
he begs Antioco's pardon and offers to sacrifice his own life for Antioco
Although Arsace has come to Syria in order to win Seleuco's pardon fo
the Phoenicians, he allows nothing to stand in the way of his loyalt
to Antioco. In the realm of misunderstandings, Zeno's version includes
Seleuco's misinterpretations of Antioco's friendship with Arsace (I/i3-
14, II/i3-15), Antioco's misinterpretation of Stratonica's advice that he
marry Argene (1/9-I ), Tolomeo's misinterpretation of Antioco's rel
tionships with both Arsace and Stratonica (I/i3-14, II/4, 11/14), Str
tonica's misinterpretation of Seleuco's allusions to Antioco's accomplice
(III/2), and Arsace's misinterpretation of an Antioco soliloquy (II/ii
12). The exposition, development, and solution of these interacting con
flicts and misunderstandings are the means that enable Zeno to create
a more or less continuously unfolding drama whose inevitable surren-
ders in the opera house to the requirements of singers, machinists, dancer
and the like would have been, he hoped, but minimally reflected to an
armchair litterateur.
In Minato's version the sub-plots help extend the length of the
libretto and provide the necessary opportunities for the secondary sing-
ers, but in Zeno's version they are integrated into the drama, often actin
to impel the main plot. Arsace's friendship with Antioco provides
reason for Zeno's Seleuco to mistrust Antioco (1/14, II/2, II/I3-15
before he learns of his son's affair with Stratonica (III/3). Argene's

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 337

feelings for Antioco provide a reason for Stratonica's helpless jealous

concerning Antioco (1/7); and Tolomeo's feelings for Argene prov
a means for keeping Seleuco disposed against Antioco (1/13, II/
thereby delaying until Zeno's final act the increased tension which r
sults when Seleuco learns of the Antioco-Stratonica relationship. In wh
Zeno himself considered his best libretti,33 every scene, exposing
propriately varying characteristics of the several figures in the dra
had a dramatic justification of its own beyond the contribution of y
another scene-ending exit aria. Although there was nothing Zeno cou
do in his libretti about the embarrassing presence of aria texts, in h
best works he was able to avoid reminding the reader-as one certain
is reminded in Antioco I/i5-18, where Antioco sends Arsace to
Stratonica what Antioco himself will tell her immediately afterward
that the poetry in question is not a legitimate tragedy but a text fo
music. This is especially striking in the Viennese works that Zeno co
sidered his best efforts; here, because Emperor Charles was fond of p
centering on questions of politics and royal ethics, Zeno was able furt
to reduce the tell-tale role of love,34 concentrating instead on dram
motives worthy of Scipione Maffei or Antonio Conti.
"Zeno's reform" involved, then, an attempt to create-while makin
money from the only marketable variety of contemporary Italian po
-a new literary genre. This is an end served by giving more care to
construction of a coherent scenario and by increasing the share of t
recitative in the printed text, thereby asserting the libretto's claim
consideration as a species of respectable literary value.35 There were
be sure, important musical and musical-dramatic implications in suc
view of the libretto, but the early Arcadians were not equipped by
terest or background to deal with either.36 So long as the interests

33 Zeno admitted that earlier works normally tend to be forgotten in the

of later successes (Lettere, no. 749). But he seems, nonetheless, to have been
of particular works: Merope (1712), Ifigenia in Aulide (0718), Nitocri (1722), C
Fabbricio (1729); for his comments on these, see the Lettere, nos. 3o10, 435, 588,
In a letter dated 30 December 174o and addressed to the Modenese impresar
Domenico Vandelli, Zeno recalls that it was with Lucio Vero (1700) that he
made his reputation in Italy; but he adds that his Viennese works represent his
achievement in the genre. While in Vienna, Zeno called Antioco ". .. not a b
work, but not one of my best" (Lettere, no. 642).
34For a plot summary of an Arcadian libretto from 1699, wherein a "logic
motivated scenario involves characters impelled wholly by conflicting amorou
terests, see my article on a text by Stampiglia, "The Travels of Partenope," St
in Music History; Essays for Oliver Strunk (Princeton, 1968), pp. 359-365.
S Certainly a large measure of the success with which Zeno and others w
credited by Crescimbeni, Martello, and Maffei-all writers who had given u
writing libretti rather than acquiesce to the importance in opera of non-lite
elements-derived from Arcadian semi-approval of the "improved" libretti as
erature.

860On Zeno's self-confessed lack of musical background, see the L

207, 434, 505, 118o.

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338 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

singers, machinists, and ballet masters were not affected, so long as Italian
impresarios had recourse to the virgolette to cut those sections of a
libretto felt to be unnecessary in the opera house, the generally increased
length of the recitative was meaningful only for those who read their
libretti at home. In the Vienna of Charles VI, however, where great
length of performance time seems to have been regarded as a virtue, the
implications for musical drama were very real-not only in what are
probably history's longest stretches of secco recitative, but in the dichot-
omy between the dramatic and musical functions of recitative and aria,
and in the resulting composition of arias lacking appropriate musical-dra-
matic impact. A representative aria from the first act of the work which
Zeno considered his masterpiece, Ifigenia in Aulide, the first work he
completed after his 1718 arrival in Vienna, makes this point quite clearly.
In the recitative which opens Act I, Scene 4, Elisena, the second soprano,
learns that her beloved Achilles is about to marry Ifigenia, then decides
to commit suicide. The musical setting is by Antonio Caldara, the
Venetian composer responsible for all but two of the 25 original set-
tings of operatic texts completed in Vienna by Zeno and Metastasio be-
tween I718 and Caldara's death in 1736.7 The opening of Caldara's da
capo aria is given in Ex. I (its very pedestrian quality is maintained
through to the end).
It is only in a very special sense that Zeno can be said to have under-
taken a reform of the libretto. The toxic effects of the literary medicine
he helped to administer, especially evident in scores such as Caldara's
setting for Ifigenia in Aulide, were to keep the musical-dramatic aspect
of serious Italian opera in a lethargic condition for decades.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

s That Metastasio at least was not a special admirer of Caldara's operatic art
may be inferred from that librettist's reply to Eximeno's proposal in 1776 to bring
out a complete edition of the original musical settings of all Metastasio's libretti:
"... How would it be possible for me to inform you of the best music that has been
set to my libretti, having scarcely heard any except for those works performed in
the theater of the Imperial Court? And of these the great preponderance were set
by the celebrated Caldara, an eminent master of counterpoint but a composer ex-
ceedingly deficient in expression and in his attention to what pleases." Pietro
Metastasio, Tutte le Opere, ed. B. Brunelli (Milan, 1943-54), V, 402.

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 339
Ex. i

Caldara, "A vista del crudele," Ifigenia in Aulide. Vienna, Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde,
Caldara autograph no. 40.
Unisolli tutti Violilli

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340 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

vi - sta del cru - de- le, del cru - de- le ma a -

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le, fe

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 APOSTOLO ZENO'S REFORM OF THE LIBRETTO 341

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