Nicola Porpora

Nicola (or Niccolò) Antonio Giacinto Porpora (17 August 16863 March 1768) was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli. Other students included composers Johann Adolph Hasse, Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn.

Biography Porpora was born in Naples, Italy. He graduated from the music conservatory Poveri di Gesù Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti. Porpora's first opera, Agrippina, was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, Berenice, was performed at Rome. In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as maestro di cappella in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, for composing operas alone did not yet make a viable career. However, his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his unequalled power of teaching singing. At the Neapolitan Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio and with the Poveri di Gesù Cristo he trained Farinelli, Caffarelli, Salimbeni, and other celebrated vocalists, during the period 1715 to 1721. In 1720 and 1721 he wrote two serenades to libretti by a gifted young poet, Metastasio, the beginning of a long, though interrupted, collaboration. In 1722 his operatic successes encouraged him to lay down his conservatory commitments.

After a rebuff from the court of Charles VI at Vienna in 1725, Porpora settled mostly in Venice, composing and teaching regularly in the schools of La Pietà and the Incurabili. In 1729 the anti-Handel clique invited him to London to set up an opera company as a rival to Handel's, without success, and in the 1733–1734 season, even the presence of his pupil, the great Farinelli, failed to save the dramatic company in Lincoln's Inn Fields (the "Opera of the Nobility") from bankruptcy. Haydn later remembered Porpora thus: "There was no lack of Asino, Coglione, Birbante [ass, cullion, rascal], and pokes in the ribs, but I put up with it all, for I profited greatly from Porpora in singing, in composition, and in the Italian language." oratorio Gedeone (1737), one mass, his Venetian Vespers, and the operas Germanico in Germania (1732) and Arianna in Nasso (1733 according to HOASM) have been recorded.

Works

Vocal music

Operas See List of operas by Nicola Porpora.

Oratorios Davide e Bersabea (P. Rolli; London 1734) Il Gedeone (text by A. Perrucci; Vienna March 28, 1737) recorded in 1999 on CPO 999 615-2 Il Verbo in carne (anon.; Dresden 1748)

Cantatas

12 cantatas for solo voice and continuo dedicated to Frederick, Prince of Wales (London, 1735) I. D'amore il primo dardo II. Nel mio sonno almen (Il sogno) III. Tirsi chiamare a nome IV. Queste che miri o Nice V. Scrivo in te l'amato nome (Il nome) VI. Già la notte s'avvicina (La pesca) VII. Veggo la selva e il monte VIII. Or che una nube ingrata IX. Destatevi destatevi o pastori X. Oh se fosse il mio core XI. Oh Dio che non è vero XII. Dal pover mio core

Instrumental music 6 Sinfonie da camera op. 2 (London 1736) 12 Sonatas for violin and bass op. 12 12 Triosonatas for 2 violins and bass (Vienna 1754) Sonatas for cello, violins, and Bass Concerto for cello, strings and bass Concerto for cello, 3 violins and bass