Johann Adolph Hasse
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Join Britannica's Publishing Partner Program and our community of experts to gain a global audience for your work!Johann Adolph Hasse, byname Il Sassone, (born March 25, 1699, Bergedorf, near Hamburg—died Dec. 16, 1783, Venice), outstanding composer of operas in the Italian style that dominated late Baroque opera.
Hasse began his career as a singer and made his debut as a composer in 1721 with the opera Antioco. He went to Italy, where he studied with Nicola Porpora and with Alessandro Scarlatti and where his opera seria Sesostrate (1726) established his reputation; in Italy he became known as “il Sassone” (“the Saxon”). After spending several years in Venice, where he married the celebrated mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni (c. 1700–81), he became music director of the Dresden Opera (1731). He resided in Dresden from 1739 to 1763, when he retired and went to Vienna. His last work for the stage was Ruggiero (1771), written for the wedding of the archduke Ferdinand at Milan.
Hasse’s compositions include more than 60 operas, many of them to librettos by Pietro Metastasio, and nearly a dozen intermezzos, as well as oratorios, masses, and instrumental works. His music was enormously popular during his lifetime; its chief characteristics were melodic beauty and formal balance. His operatic overtures had considerable influence on the development of the symphony, especially in northern Germany.
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opera: Early opera in Germany and Austria…almost wholly Italianate by disposition, Johann Adolph Hasse spent most of his career working for the Saxon court at Dresden, although he became one of the most successful and popular composers in Europe around the middle of the 18th century. He promoted the traditions of opera seria in some 80…
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cantataJohann Hasse, a German pupil of Scarlatti, took the chamber cantata to Dresden; and George Frideric Handel, among others, wrote cantatas in the Italian manner. The early 18th century saw a similar trend in French music, notably in the works of Louis Clérambault, Jean-Baptiste Morin, and…
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