| Johann Adolph Hasse (baptized 25 March 1699 – 16 December 1783) was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a great friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of opera seria and 18th-century music. In correspondence to Ortes (12 January 1771) Hasse wrote of wishing his most recent opera were his last, yet disclosing that the empress had requested him to write one more for the wedding in Milan of Archduke Ferdinand and Maria Beatrice d’Este later that year. This opera, both Metastasio’s and Hasse’s last, was difficult to write, as they protested in correspondence. Moreover, as Hasse told Ortes, ‘the Milanese would like a lot of spectacle and the fewest possible recitatives. Il Ruggiero is certainly a well-written libretto, but is lacking in the former and abounding in the latter’. That the opera had initially been intended for the wedding in 1770 of Archduchess Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette) and the dauphin of France (later Louis XVI) explains the medieval legend selected as plot, but not the lack of dances and choruses for which Hasse thought the Milanese had a taste, and which Mozart’s Ascanio in Alba, the companion piece in Milan, successfully displayed.  Despite G. B. Mancini claiming that Hasse was the padre della musica, and despite the composer's massive popularity as a figure at the very forefront of 18th-century serious Italian opera, after his death Hasse's reputation vastly declined and his music lay mostly unperformed (with the exception of some of his sacred works, which were revived now and again in Germany). In particular, his operas sank without trace and revival only begun as the 20th century approached its end: Gluck's reforms took opera away from Hasse's style and Metastasio's Arcadian ideals to a new direction from which it would not return.
Hasse, Johann Adolf (1699-1783) (libretto: Pietro Metastasio)
'Il Ruggiero', ovvero 'L'Eroica Gratitudine' ['Rogerus, or Heroic Gratitude'] - opera in three acts:
Robert Chafin (tenor: Carlo Magno), Silvia Bossa (sop: Bradamante), Gianluca Belfiori Doro (countertenor: Ruggiero), Alla Simonischvili (sop: Leone), Barbara Vignudelli (sop: Clotilde), Mauro Bonfanti (tenor: Ottone), Musica Rara, Arnold Bosman (conductor) [recorded in the Verdi Hall, Milan Conservatory on 16th May 2000] |
Bologna, Florence, and Rome. He settled for at least six years in Naples, where he studied composition with Alessandro Scarlatti and churned out several more operas. In 1730, Hasse was in Venice, writing his first opera (Artaserse) in collaboration with the greatest Italian dramatist of the century, Pietro Metastasio, who would later provide Mozart with several libretti. In the same momentous year, Hasse married a celebrated Italian soprano, and accepted a position as chapelmaster for Dresden. 
eponymous hero's moody, difficult mad scene---one from Alcina, and a cantata dating from 1711 that features fine writing for recorders. The lesser-known Hasse is represented by three arias from his opera Arminio and a cantata. Genaux leaps every hurdle the composers put in her way---seemingly endless runs, two-octave leaps, trills. Indeed, one is reminded more than once of Marilyn Horne, although Genaux's voice is prettier and not as grand. She can spin a long, quiet line with grace and breath to spare as well. Genaux's sound, like that of all great singers, is unique--in her case, her tone has a milky smoothness that sets her apart. This CD is for all admirers of truly great singing, and the rarities in the program give it extra value. Bernard Labadie leads the French-Canadian group Les Violons du Roy in performances that are rhythmically razor-sharp and thoroughly alive. --Robert Levine 
