Metastasio's Artaserse
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Lucie Skeaping explores Artaserse, one of the most popular opera libretti by Metastasio, the great 18th century dramatist, featuring Artaxerxes I, King of Persia.
The libretto was originally written for and first set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1730 for Rome, and it was subsequently set by dozens of later composers. In England, Thomas Arne's 1762 Artaxerxes is set to an English libretto that is based on Metastasio's. Lucie Skeaping introduces extracts from a few of the 90 known settings of Metastasio's text.
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