Domenico Sarro: un profilo critico-documentario

Domenico Sarro partially benefited from the blossoming of studies, performances and recordings devoted in recent years to Naples-trained composers. However, no comprehensive assessment of such a complex figure has yet been attempted. The article aims at bringing into focus the possibly most relevant Naples-based personality between Alessandro Scarlatti and the Leo-and-Vinci generation, highlighting the significant turns in his biography and making scholars who have been separately studying Sarro talk together. Significant documentary evidence gathered since the 1990s and several relevant studies make it now possible to better evaluate an artistic personality who stands out in an extremely lively musical milieu and retrace the multifaceted career of a musician who managed to stay on over decades as a prominent figure in Spanish, Austrian and later Bourbon Naples. The article shows Sarro as capable of comfortably operating for a very long time span in courtly, church and aristocratic environments, producing an impressive output in a variety of genres. Specific attention has been devoted to Sarro as a church-music composer, heavily underestimated due to the dramatic loss of sources, whose influence North of the Alps has only recently been brought to attention; to his crucial contribution to both opera seria and intermezzi; to his relationship with Neapolitan aristocracy and with the Roman circles. The article finally assesses the composer’s stylistic position in a quickly changing scenario.