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Metastasio's Angelica serenata and the Light of Empire

Abstract:Pietro Metastasio's Angelica (1720), a theatrical serenata based on Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando furioso, is a crucial yet fundamentally understudied episode in the poet's oeuvre. This essay explores the brief theatrical work as an axis between Metastasio's Arcadian training and his eventual position as court poet of the Holy Roman Empire in Vienna. The Angelica, like three of his other early theatrical works, imbues pastoral landscapes with encomia of real-world figures-namely the Empress Elizabeth Christine and her noble entourage. Yet his Furioso-based serenata is problematic in its depiction of the pastoral tradition, as inherited from the Arcadian Academy. Nothing quite works in this pastoral system: nature is either conquered by or indistinguishable from artifice, and the ending of the serenata leaves the mad Orlando unresolved in his madness. Metastasio's licenza at the end of the work corrects all wrongs, but only through the light and majesty of the Empress on her birthday. Thus Metastasio, with his Angelica, employs Arcadian tropes, language, and ideology, but ultimately uses Arcadia to strive toward more tangible, more imperial shores.