Siroe re di Sassonia: Handel, Hasse and young Metastasio

Two leading German composers, both known in Italy as “Sassoni”, provided, in 1728 and 1733, the finest early settings of Metastasio’s second drama, Siroe, re di Persia, after Vinci’s 1726 première. Resulting from the same fascination exerted on first-class non-Italian musicians by this early Metastasian masterpiece, but departing from different versions of the drama and composed by musicians belonging to different generations, the two operas show strongly diverging solutions for the same text. Baroque and galant style are confronted in these accurate scores conceived for the biggest names of the 18th-century star-system, from Cuzzoni to Faustina, from Farinelli to Senisino, from Vittoria Tesi to Caffariello. After Händel’s death, Hasse went back to Siroe, providing a brand-new setting exactly 30 years after his first. He then did not know, but this late Siroe from 1763 proved to be Hasse’s last opera for the Polish-Saxon Court of Dresden, the final word both to the composer’s thirty-year long appointment and to the Court’s thriving musical life.