Artaserse premiered at the
Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice on 11 February 1730, just 6 days after the libretto's
first setting by
Leonardo Vinci premiered in Rome. Hasse wrote three settings of this libretto. The original one dates from 1730, just before he became Kapellmeister in
Dresden. A second setting was made for the Court Theatre in Dresden in 1740. Finally, he composed a third one in 1760, when he was nearing the end of his career as Kapellmeister in Dresden. His style, as well as musical taste, underwent considerable change during those 30 odd years, so much so that not a lot of the 1760 version (
Teatro di San Carlo, Naples) sounds like the music of the 1730 and the 1740 versions. For instance, at the end of the first act of the 1760 version, Mandane's accompanied recitative and aria in which she calls upon the ghost of her father, King Xerxes, has been removed. Although this differs from the previous versions, this change actually makes the drama closer to the original by Metastasio. To those three versions solely by Hasse, one must also add a myriad of pasticcios which use Hasse's setting as a basis, including for instance the notable Autumn 1734 London production put together by
Nicola Porpora, starring
Farinelli in arias written by
Riccardo Broschi, but also, earlier that same year, a production for the Venice Carnival including additional music by
Galuppi, starring both Farinelli and
Caffarelli. Hasse's
Artaserse, in full or at least in part, was produced in: • 1730:
Venice,
Lucca,
Milan • 1731:
Brno,
Ferrara,
Kroměříž • 1733:
Verona • 1734: Venice and
London • 1735: London • 1736: London • 1737:
Bergamo • 1738: Bergamo and
Graz • 1739:
Modena • 1740:
Ljubljana and
Dresden • 1745: Ferrara • 1754: London • 1760:
Warsaw and
Naples • 1762: Naples • 1765: Ferrara • 1766: London • 1772: London • 1773: London • 1774: London • 1779: London • 1785: London == Synopsis ==