Post Description

Biography

by Robert Cummings

Nicola Porpora is a mostly forgotten figure in composition today; however, he exerted considerable influence as a teacher in his day, and much of his own compositional output is of exceptional quality. He made his chief contribution in the vocal realm, having written many worthwhile secular and sacred operas, oratorios, serenatas, and cantatas. Porpora helped to enrich the melodic qualties of vocal music by drawing on greater technical resources -- which he understood as well as any contemporary. His embellishing of the vocal melodic line, while not strictly his own development, helped shape the course of vocal music in opera and various other forms in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Among his important works are his operas Arianna e Teseo and Faramondo, and his serenata Gli orti esperidi. Porpora may be better known as a teacher of Franz Joseph Haydn, and of the singers Uberti, Farinelli, and Caffarelli, as well as of the poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio.