Composed: unknown
Premiered: unknown
Duration: 8 minutes
Johann Hasse was a German musician who spent quite a lot of his life in Venice, acquiring the trends of fashionable music there. He composed some 60 operas, in addition to a lot of other vocal music. The royal court in Dresden included a fine opera company, and Hasse was employed to supply them with a steady stream of works in the Italian style to be performed there. In his time, Hasse was widely admired, but his music was quickly forgotten after his death. At least part of the reason was a decline in the taste for the stiffly formal opera seria towards the end of the 18th century. The music of Handel, which we most often hear, was composed after he stopped composing operas in this older manner. Hasse continued in the old style, and his music was heard no longer.