Scarlatti, Giuseppe (EN)

Scarlatti, Scarlata, Giuseppe, *ca. 1718 Naples, †17 August 1777 Vienna, Italian composer. Little is known about his life or his relationship to the Scarlatti family. In 1739, the oratorio La Santissima Vergine Annunziata was performed in Rome, and in 1740 the opera Merope. Between 1741 and 1759, Giuseppe Scarlatti’s operas were staged in, amongst other places, Florence, Lucca – where, around 1747, he married the singer Barbara Stabile (†presumably after 1753) – Naples, Milan and Venice (1752–54, 1756–59). In 1752, the opera buffa L’impostore was performed in Barcelona, and between 1757 and 1767, Giuseppe Scarlatti’s operas were staged alongside those of F.G. Bertoni and B. Galuppi in various Spanish cities (except Madrid), in a translation and adaptation by the eminent Spanish playwright and librettist Ramón de la Cruz, a proponent of Italian stage music. It is likely that Giuseppe Scarlatti travelled to Spain at that time and visited his uncle Domenico Scarlatti in Madrid. Around 1757, he settled in Vienna, where he worked as a composer and harpsichordist, and later as a Kapellmeister and private music tutor at the court of Prince von Schwarzenberg. Giuseppe Scarlatti’s operas were staged at the Burgtheater and at the theatre in Schönbrunn Palace. In the early 1760s, he found patrons in Count G. Durazzo, the general director of the imperial theatres, and C.W. Gluck; thanks to them, between 1762 and 1764 he signed a contract with the management of the Kärntnertortheater to provide ballet music.

Giuseppe Scarlatti’s operatic output comprised over 30 operas (only a dozen or so have survived), the majority of which were opere serie; however, the composer’s musical and dramatic talent found its fullest expression in the comedy genre. Giuseppe Scarlatti’s work has not yet been thoroughly researched; nevertheless, it is known that his operas, although staged in numerous well-known theatres, usually aroused lively but short-lived interest and were rarely revived. They were standard stage productions by composers of the Neapolitan opera school, maintained at a good artistic level. Examples of Giuseppe Scarlatti’s skill in creating musical equivalents of verbal buffoonery can be found in the dramma giocoso per musica L’isola disabitata (particularly the scene in Act II featuring the ruse of the Chinese masquerade), which offers a neat fusion of the literary -dramatic simplicity and naturalness of Goldoni’s libretto with the unpretentious charm characteristic of the galant style, and a musically transparent setting in which the orchestral part serves mainly as accompaniment. Despite its artistic merits (particularly its rich melodic inventiveness), Giuseppe Scarlatti’s work remained outside the mainstream of the significant changes taking place in the works of representatives of the younger generation of the Neapolitan opera school (including N. Piccinni and G. Paisiello). In the 1770s, Giuseppe Scarlatti’s operas disappeared from the repertoire of opera houses (the last recorded performance took place in Vienna in 1772–73).