Content area
Full text
TOM MOORE
Nicola Porpora (born in Naples, 1686; died in Naples, 1768), although a composer of notable success is his own day, is hardly known in our own. Since I joined the Fanfare crew more than a decade ago, his name has appeared in the index only once, for a cantata reviewed by Robert Maxham in 18:3, so perhaps some background is in order. As was the case for most Italian composers of his age, and indeed of the later 18th century, for Porpora the composition of instrumental music was a decidedly secondary art to creation of dramatic works for the voice, a set of priorities that has contributed to their neglect today, when by far the greatest part of the audience for classical music in general, and Baroque and Classical music in particular, knows no Italian and has little interest in music for which he or she must pay attention to the words or the plot.
Porpora was a student in the Neapolitan conservatory of the Poveri di Gesu Cristo from the age of 10, and stayed on for 10 years. Agrippina , the first of approximately 50 operas from his pen arrived, in 1708, and it was produced at the royal palace in Naples. Porpora's subsequent career was successful, but peripatetic, so much so that it would be tiresome to rehearse all his moves here. The composer worked with and taught some of the most eminent names in opera, including the great Pietro Metastasio, at the beginning of the latter's career, the renowned castrato Farinelli, and the eminent composer Johann Adolph Hasse. Porpora received commissions from the Imperial court in Vienna as early as 1714. Later he worked in Rome and Milan, and moved to Venice in 1726. After Venice...