Metastasio

American  

[me-tah-stah-zyaw] / ˌmɛ tɑˈstɑ zyɔ /

noun

1. Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi, 1698–1782, Italian poet and dramatist.

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Metastasio British  

/ metasˈtaːzjo /

noun

1. Pietro (ˈpjɛːtro), original name Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi. 1698–1782, Italian poet and librettist; Viennese court poet (from 1730). His works include La clemenza di Tito (1732)

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Example Sentences

The young Salieri got to know Pietro Metastasio, the reigning librettist of eighteenth-century Italian opera, and Christoph Willibald Gluck, whose lucid, elegant style set the tone for the Viennese Classical period.

From The New Yorker • May 27, 2019

Antonio Vivaldi’s 1737 setting of a libretto by Metastasio.

From Washington Post • Nov. 29, 2015

The libretto Vivaldi used, by Metastasio — the go-to librettist of the era — survives in several forms from its use by other composers.

From New York Times • Aug. 5, 2015

It is a meditation on Italian baroque opera, a homage to La Scala itself, with words from the 18th-century librettist Metastasio and texts by the playwright Goldoni, his contemporary.

From New York Times • Dec. 20, 2013

It is not enough that he has learned the tongue in which Dante wrote, or Metastasio sung, he must speak Venetian and Milanese, Neapolitan and Piedmontese.

From Confessions Of Con Cregan An Irish Gil Blas by Lever, Charles James