L'Olimpiade is an opera in the form of a dramma per musica in three acts by the Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi. Pergolesi took the text, with a few modifications, from the libretto of the same name by Pietro Metastasio. The opera first appeared during the Carnival season of 1735 at the in Rome and "came to be probably the most admired"Kimbell, p. 257. of the more than 50 musical settings of Metastasio's drama.According to Jeffry O. Segrave, over the course of the following century the libretto was set to music more than 50 times by 47 different composers ("The special case of Pietro Metastasio's L'Olimpiade and the story of the Olympic games", in Anthony Bateman and John Bale (editors), Sporting Sounds. Relationship between Sport and Music, Abingdon-on-Thames, Routledge, 2009, p. 116, ). However, according to Claire Genewein, there were "over a hundred" renderings of Metastasio's libretto in music (On completing the score of l'Olimpiade, essay in the booklet accompanying the Dynamic DVD of L'Olimpiade by Baldassare Galuppi conducted by Andrea Marcon). Don Neville in his article on Metastasio in the New Grove Dictionary lists 55 settings, not counting different versions of the opera by the same composer (III, p. 356).
It is regarded as "one of the finest opere serie of the early eighteenth century".Donald Jay Grout and Hermine Weigel Williams, A Short History of Opera (4th edition), New York, Columbia University Press, 2003, p. 229, .
Background The new Bourbon dynasty which had taken power in Naples in May 1734The Kingdom of Naples had become a Viceroyalty belonging to the Austrian Habsburg dynasty in 1707 during the War of the Spanish Succession. In 1734, during the War of the Polish Succession, Charles of Bourbon, the younger son of King Philip V of Spain, chased the Austrians from Naples and made the city the capital of a newly independent kingdom. He was confirmed as King Charles VII of Naples by the Treaty of Vienna which ended the war in 1738 (Luca Salza, Naples entre Baroque et Lumières, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 2013, pp. 40–42). probably regarded Pergolesi with suspicion because of his links with the aristocratic circles of the previous Austrian Viceroyalty.In 1732 Pergolesi had been appointed maestro di cappella by Prince Ferdinando Colonna of Stigliano, a leading official at the court of the Austrian viceroy, and in 1734 he had assumed the same role for Duke Domenico Marzio Carafa of Maddaloni, a relative of the prince. At the time of the Bourbon conquest both households had taken refuge in Rome and had invited the musician to follow them. There, Pergolesi undertook a commission from the Carafas to compose a Mass in F Major in honour of Saint John of Nepomuk, patron saint of Bohemia and thus particularly venerated in the Habsburg Empire. It was performed to enormous acclaim in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Lucina. Although this episode showed Pergolesi in a bad light, he was nevertheless invited to return to Naples by the new Bourbon superintendent of its theatres, the Marquess of Arienzo, Lelio Carafa, who was on close terms with the new king and an uncle of the Duke of Maddaloni. Carafa became one of Pergolesi's patrons and proposed Adriano in Siria to him; it was staged at the end of October. (Toscani). Perhaps as a result of these suspicions, or simply because of the box office failure of his opera Adriano in Siria (produced the same year at the Teatro San Bartolomeo and even appreciated, it was said, by the new king Charles VII), Pergolesi was not invited to participate in the 1735 theatrical season in Naples. He consequently decided to accept a commission from the Teatro Tordinona in Rome to compose an opera to open the Carnival season with a libretto recently written by Metastasio which had already been set to music by Antonio Caldara in 1733 and Antonio Vivaldi in 1734.Dorsi, pp. 127 and 129.
The Teatro Tordinona was a long-established theatre with its roots in the 17th century, which had recently been rebuilt and was the property of the Apostolic Camera: the precarious financial conditions in which it operated certainly made it no rival for the Neapolitan theatres with which Pergolesi had worked until that point.Mellace Metastasio was annoyed that the chorus had to be cut completely because the theatre could not afford one, while its company of singers enjoyed no great reputation.Hucke and Monson, p. 953. The papal prohibition on women participating on stage in Rome determined the proliferation of castrati, who also performed the female roles; five members of the cast belonged to this category, the remaining two parts being given to tenors. Two of the castrati had sung in the premiere of Vivaldi's L'Olimpiade in Venice: Marianino Nicolini was promoted from the minor character Aminta to the "prima donna" role of Aristea,In spite of his considerable height (according to Charles de Brosses, 6 French feet, i.e. about 1.95 metres), Nicolini was regularly employed in Rome up to the Carnival of 1740 in female roles (Dennis Lybby, Nicolini, Mariano [Marianino], in Sadie, III, p. 599). He also sang the part of Licida in the premiere of Leonardo Leo's L'Olimpiade at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1737, as well as that of Megacle in the version by Gaetano Latilla at the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice in 1752. while Francesco Bilancioni (or Bilanzoni) exchanged the role of Megacle for Licida. For the leading man the theatre turned to an outstanding singer from the Sistine Chapel, Domenico Ricci, who had permission to take part in theatrical performances in Rome.Sergio Durante, Ricci [Rizzi, Riccio], Domenico ["Menicuccio"], in Sadie, III, p. 1309. The principal tenor role was handed to the experienced baritenor Giovanni Battista Pinacci, who had enjoyed a career lasting twenty years and had recently returned from London where he had performed in Handel operas;Winton Dean, Pinacci, Giovanni Battista, in Sadie, III, p. 1014. the second lady was sung by the young castrato Giovanni Tedeschi, later to become famous in the 1760s as the impresario of the Teatro San Carlo.Dennis Libby (with John Rosselli), Tedeschi [Amadori], Giovanni, in Sadie, IV, p. 674. The rest of the cast was made up of two obscure comprimario singers, Nicola Licchesi (Lucchesi?), a tenor, and Carlo Brunetti, a contralto (the only singer with this vocal register among the group of high voices), who were nevertheless gratified by the extra attention Pergolesi paid their roles in his score. If the chorus was absent and the singers were of no great reputation, the orchestra was "more sizeable than the Neapolitan orchestras of the time, as demonstrated by the use of two trumpets and two hunting horns, sometimes simultaneously."Dorsi, p. 129
Performance history
The opera made its debut in January 1735According to Monson, probably on 2 January. as the first opera of the season, and had a rather troubled time because official mourning for the death of Princess Maria Clementina Sobieska, wife of the pretender to the British throne James Stuart, led to theatrical performances being suspended between the 17th and 23 January while the subsequent closure of the theatres for Candlemas prevented extra performances before the second opera of the season, Francesco Ciampi's Demofoonte, took the stage.Toscani No reviews of the premiere exist. The only account we have comes from what the composer Egidio Duni, Pergolesi's rival, told his colleague André GrétryAndré Grétry, Mémoires ou Essai sur la Musique, Paris/Liège, Prault/Desoer, 1789, p. 508 (accessible for free online at Google Books). According to Grétry's account, Duni – then a novice composer – went to visit Pergolesi shortly after the failure, calling him "maestro" and consoling him by saying that the opera he himself was soon to stage (Il Nerone, premiered on 21 May) was not worth a single aria from Pergolesi's work which had been so badly received by the public. decades later, namely that the performance was a total fiasco, so much so that during the disputes it provoked Pergolesi was hit on the head by an orange thrown by an angry member of the audience.Mellace Nevertheless, the opera rapidly won international fame and "over the next ten years Pergolesi's music all but monopolized L'Olimpiade pasticcios throughout Europe." Productions based on Pergolesi's setting were performed in various cities: in Perugia and Cortona in 1738, in Siena in 1741, perhaps in Florence in 1737, certainly in London in 1742,Monson. According to Monson, on the contrary, the pasticcio staged at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice in 1737, albeit widely attributed to Pergolesi (and maybe containing some of his music), was mainly based on Vivaldi's 1734 setting. where the pasticcio presented at the King's Theatre under the title of Meraspe was largely based on Pergolesi's score (with the addition of four or five arias by Giuseppe Scarlatti, Leonardo Leo and Giovanni Battista Lampugnani), and left a lasting impression in the years to come.Charles Burney, A General History Of Music: From The Earliest Ages to the Present Period, Volume the 4th, London, Printed for the Author, 1789, p. 448 (accessible for free online at Google Books). The aria "Immagini dolenti", erroneously attributed by Burney to Domenico Scarlatti, is actually drawn from Arminio in Germania by Giuseppe Scarlatti.
The widespread diffusion of Pergolesi's L'Olimpiade is attested by the unusual number of manuscripts (more than twenty) of the score which have survived: this opera, along with La serva padrona and the Stabat Mater, provided the basis for Pergolesi's lasting fame across Europe. A performance of his version of the aria "Se cerca, se dice" had – according to Charles Burney – made an impression "seldom" equalled on the English public. In the second half of the 18th century the aria became "a touchstone for all subsequent composers [...] The success of the aria was such that it was still being parodied decades later, even in slightly vulgar ways", as for example in I due supposti conti by Cimarosa in 1784, where a character who has just swallowed a powerful laxative leaves the stage singing "Se cerca, se dice:/'Il conte dov'è?'/rispondi che il conte/correndo partì" ("If she comes looking, if she comes saying/'Where's the count?'/Answer that the count/Has had to make a quick exit").Dorsi, p. 131. In the same year (1784) Cimarosa also staged his own version of L'Olimpiade. As late as the 1810s Stendhal dedicated an impassioned analysis to it in his letters on Metastasio, remarking: "the whole of Italy knows [this] aria by heart, and this is probably why L'Olimpiade is not revived. No director would dare run the risk of staging an opera whose main aria was already lodged deep in the memory of every member of the audience."Stendhal, pp. 286–287.