Johann Adolph Hasse - Dresden and Venice

Dresden and Venice

In 1730 Hasse married Faustina Bordoni, and was also appointed Kapellmeister at the Dresden court, though he did not arrive at Dresden until July 1731; earlier in the year he had been active at Vienna, supervising a performance of his oratorio Daniello at the court of the Habsburgs. Soon after the couple's arrival in Dresden Faustina performed before the court. In September Hasse's Cleofide (set to a highly adapted Metastasio text) was given its premiere; it seems possible that J. S. Bach attended the performance; certainly C. P. E. Bach claimed that Hasse and his father had become good friends around this time.

In October Hasse left Dresden to direct premieres of his next operas at Turin and Rome, and he also wrote music for the Venetian theatres at this time. Come the autumn of 1732 and Hasse was at Naples again, though he spent the winter at Venice where his Siroe was first performed in particularly lavish style. In February 1733 Augustus the Strong of Poland and Saxony, Hasse's early royal patron at Dresden, died. As the court went into a year of mourning Hasse was permitted to remain abroad. Many of his sacred works, composed for Venice's churches, date to this time.

For much of 1734 Hasse was at Dresden, but from 1735 until 1737 he was in Italy, largely at Naples. Faustina performed in the September 1735 premiere of Tito Vespasiano (another adapted Metastsio libretto) at Pesaro. Returning to the royal court in Dresden during 1737 Hasse composed 5 new operas, but when the court moved to Poland in the autumn of 1738 he and Faustina came back to Venice, where both of them were extremely popular. His next stay in Dresden was also his longest, between the first months of 1740 and January 1744. In this time he revised Artaserse, composing new arias for Faustina, and also wrote a couple original intermezzi. His general avoidance of comic opera seems to have been due to Faustina, who feared that the style of singing demanded by opera buffa would damage her voice.