Zeno, Apostolo

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Zeno, Apostolo

Zeno, Apostolo, famous Italian opera librettist; b. Venice, Dec. 11,1668; d. there, Nov. 11,1750. In 1710 he founded the Giornale dei Letterati d’Italia, and in 1718 he was appointed court poet at Vienna; returned to Venice in 1729. The total number of librettos written by him (some in collaboration with Pietro Pariati) is 71; they were collected and ed. by Gasparo Gozzi as Poesie drammatiche di Apostolo Zeno(10 vols., Venice, 1744; reprinted in 11 vols., Orléans, 1785-86). A man of great knowledge and culture, he was also an ardent numismatist; his large collection of coins was exhibited at Vienna in 1955.

Bibliography

M. Fehr, A. Z. und seine Reform des Operntexts (diss., Univ. of Zürich, 1912); R. Freeman, Opera Without Drama: Currents of Change in Italian Opera, 1675-1725, and the Roles Played therein by Z., Caldara, and Others (diss., Princeton Univ., 1967).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire