Due fonti e qualche accertamento per Nicola Giuvo, librettista di Händel e Scarlatti

Abstract

Nicola Giuvo (or Giovo) was active in Naples as a librettist in the early decades of the eighteenth century (his most famous work is Aci, Galatea e Polifemo set to music by Georg Friedrich Händel, 1708). The article first offers verifications and corrections regarding his biography, highlighting his long period in the service of the Dukes of Laurenzano, Nicola Gaetani dell’Aquila d’Aragona and Aurora Sanseverino, his appointment as court poet by Charles of Bourbon in 1739, and his employment as librarian to the Prince of Tarsia, Ferdinando Vincenzo Spinelli. This is followed by a survey of his texts known to date (mainly serenatas and occasional cantatas, but also sacred works and drammi per musica), set to music by Francesco Araia, Nicolò Ceva, Giovanni Paolo de Dominici, Nicola Fago, Leonardo Leo, Francesco Mancini, Davide Perez, Nicola Porpora, Domenico Sarro, and Alessandro Scarlatti. Two newly found manuscript sources of his production are then presented and illustrated. The first is an anthology of poems not intended for music, held by the Fondazione Biblioteca Benedetto Croce in Naples, whose opening section contains long canzoni (some already known) written for specific events, useful for documenting the relationships and patronage that facilitated the author’s career. More interesting is the collection of sixteen librettos (all but one unpublished) preserved at the Biblioteca Casanatense in Rome. Most of them are autograph, and some have more or less complex variants that allow us to study the poet’s modus operandi. The genres represented are the same as those attested in his printed production, but with inverse ratio: just one festa teatrale (Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo, which is the only published text) and one sacred work, and eleven drammi, one of which in three versions.

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