From: Notes | Date: December 1, 1997| Author: | COPYRIGHT 1997 Music Library Association, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group.Copyright information

Niccolo Piccinni was one of the most important composers working in the second half of the eighteenth century. His career in Italy and Paris spanned forty years and several style changes. The libretto for Catone in Utica was an early and controversial work (Rome, 1728) by the century's dominant librettist, Pietro Metastasio. Early audiences objected to the humiliating spectacle of the dying Catone in the tragic final scenes. Metastasio himself revised it, bringing it into line with prevailing taste, though he registered his preference for the original version by publishing it in the ...