Varesco
Encyclopedia
Father Varesco was a chaplain, musician, poet and (most famously) librettist to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

. His given name variously appears as Giambattista, Gianbattista, Giovanni Battista and Girolamo Giovanni Battista. He is sometimes referred to with the Italian title Abate or the French Abbé, both used for priests:
he was chaplain at the Salzburg
Salzburg
-Population development:In 1935, the population significantly increased when Salzburg absorbed adjacent municipalities. After World War II, numerous refugees found a new home in the city. New residential space was created for American soldiers of the postwar Occupation, and could be used for...

 court chapel from 1766.

Varesco's only familiar work with Mozart is the libretto to Idomeneo
Idomeneo
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...

;
the abortive L'oca del Cairo
L'oca del Cairo
L'oca del Cairo is an opera buffa in three acts, K. 422, begun by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in July 1783 but abandoned in October.The complete three act libretto by Giovanni Battista Varesco remains....

is little-known. Varesco also edited Metastasio
Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.-Early life:...

's libretto for Il re pastore
Il re pastore
Il re pastore is an opera, K. 208, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Metastasio, edited by Gianbattista Varesco. It is an opera seria...

,
one of Mozart's lesser operas.

Mozart's commission for Idomeneo
Idomeneo
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712...

came in 1780 from Karl Theodor
Karl Theodor
Karl Theodor may refer to:* Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria , Prince-Elector of Palatine and of Bavaria* Karl Theodor Anton Maria von Dalberg , Freiherr of Dalberg and Archbishop-Elector of Mainz...

, Elector of Bavaria;
his court in Munich paid Varesco 90 gulden. Leopold Mozart
Leopold Mozart
Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...


acted as a local intermediary for his son
their correspondenc

left many details on the collaboration, and showed the composer's dissatisfaction,
primarily with the excessive length of the text.
In a letter in December 1780 Mozart wrote:

Ask the Abbate Varesco if we could not break off at the chorus in the second act, Placido e il mare after Elettra's first verse, when the chorus is repeated,--at all events after the second, for it is really far too long. (V.1. - 43/46)

Varesco resented the many cuts and changes that Mozart demanded,
and insisted that his original text be published in full, which Mozart used as an excuse for cuts he made without the librettist's approval.

In a letter from Mozart to his father, who acted as a go-between for him in Salzburg,
Mozart notes Varesco's admission that he had "not the slightest knowledge or experience of the theatre."

By contrast with the extensive documentation of this uneasy collaboration, we have no written record of the collaboration between Mozart and his greatest librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte was a Venetian opera librettist and poet. He wrote the librettos for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's greatest operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte....

, whose office was a short walk from Mozart's lodgings in Vienna.
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