Leonardo Comic

Leo was born in San Vito degli Schiavoni (current San Vito dei Normanni, province of Brindisi), then part of the Kingdom of Naples.
He became a student at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini at Naples in 1703, and was a pupil first of Francesco Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been supposed that he was a pupil of Pitoni and Alessandro Scarlatti, but he could not possibly have studied with either of these composers, although he was undoubtedly influenced by their compositions. His earliest known work was a sacred drama, L'infedelta abbattuta, performed by his fellow-students in 1712.

The Montecassino Monastery recently hosted the score of this comic opera by Leonardo Leo, one of the leading Neapolitan composers of the 18th century, who introduced new stylistic elements to the genre. Cirillo shows in a very exciting way in his direction how nothing actually happens in this opera - apart from a very subtle play of the relationships between the seven protagonists. As with Marivaux, this is about the social differences when the middle class turns to the servants and vice versa, and as in a Feydeauschen comedy, they wander on stage (and leave again) to spy, to portray themselves, or to court someone until everyone is eaten away by doubt.

The name of Leonardo Vinci, not to be confused with Leonardo da Vinci, is little known today, but he succeeded in the intensely competitive opera scene of the 1720s in Naples, at that time one of the greatest cities in the world. His comic operas were among the first to break up the Baroque style and push it toward the simplicity and lightness to come, but here the focus is on opera seria, which he wrote in abundance and for which he commanded libretti from Pietro Metastasio and other top writers of the day.

Neapolitan composer Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) was one of the forerunners of the Classical style, a composer primarily of opera. His experiments with a lighter, freer concept of melody in his comic operas spilled over into instrumental works like these cello composers of 1737 and 1738, which have a flavor all their own. They owe little to the concertos of Vivaldi, which must have been well known even as far south as Naples.

Neapolitan composer Leonardo Leo (1694-1744) was one of the forerunners of the Classical style, a composer primarily of opera. His experiments with a lighter, freer concept of melody in his comic operas spilled over into instrumental works like these cello composers of 1737 and 1738, which have a flavor all their own. They owe little to the concertos of Vivaldi, which must have been well known even as far south as Naples. They are in four (or five) movements rather than the conventional three, and their opening Andante movements, especially, show signs of the breaking-up of terraced Baroque structure that would lead eventually to the shifting motion dynamics of Classicism. Most striking is the role of the cello, which was not a common solo instrument at the time.