Nicolò Minato

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Nicolò Minato (* around 1630 in Bergamo , † 1698 in Vienna ) was an Italian poet , librettist and impresario .

Life

Minato trained as a lawyer in Venice in the 1640s and became a member of the Accademia degli Imperfetti , which dealt with law , history and classical philology . Its first publication appeared in 1645, a translation of the Eruditioni per il cortigiano by an anonymous Flemish author. From 1650 he worked as a librettist ; his first libretto Orimonte was set to music by Francesco Cavalli . By 1669, at least ten other librettos had been written in Venice, mostly also for Cavalli. By 1665 at the latest, Minato gave up his main legal profession and devoted himself only to the theater, etc. a. as impresario of the Teatro San Salvador .

In 1669 Minato became court poet in Vienna , where he wrote over 170 librettos and around 40 sacred texts over the next 29 years. On average, five works were created per year, sometimes up to ten (e.g. 1678). Almost all texts were set to music by the court composer Antonio Draghi , some of them by Emperor Leopold I himself (e.g. the oratorio Il transito di San Giuseppe , 1675, or the opera Creso , 1678). Other settings often followed by other composers, including Pistocchi , Bononcini , Ziani , Albinoni , Hasse and Telemann . His admission to the Imperial Academy and the posthumous republication of his sacred works in two volumes proves that Minato was highly regarded in Vienna.

style

Most of the Minatos libretti deal with ancient historical material, with the focus on the hero's military and moral greatness and parallels with the present. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Minato divided each act into exactly the same number of scenes (20 in the Venetian libretti, usually less in the Viennese operas). Recitatives and arias are clearly delimited from one another in form and function; the number of arias is e.g. T. increased by manipulating the action. Extensive subplots and the mixture of serious and comic elements identify Minato as a typical representative of opera of the 17th century before the reforms by Zeno and Metastasio .

Works (selection)

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Minato, Nicolò
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian poet, librettist and impresario
DATE OF BIRTH around 1630
PLACE OF BIRTH Bergamo
DATE OF DEATH 1698
Place of death Vienna