The Early Music Show - Mozart and Metastasio

As part of the "Genius of Mozart" season, Catherine Bott presents a programme focusing on the Italian poet, librettist and moralist Pietro Trapassi, aka Metastasio, through Mozart's four settings of his texts. Two of these texts, 'Il sogno di Scipione' and 'Lucio Silla' (written by Giovanni de Gamerra and adapted by Metastasio), were written in 1771 when Mozart was still only 16, in between trips to Italy. Metastasio wrote his text 'Il re Pastore' in 1751, and it had been set 14 times before Mozart chose it. The fourth of Mozart's settings turned out to be one of his final works, 'La Clemenza di Tito', written in the summer of 1791; twelve weeks after the first performance Mozart was dead. Catherine Bott reflects on the settings of these texts and plays music from each of the four works.