Beethoven’s last composition under the tutelage of Salieri was the duet “Nei giorni tuoi felici” for soprano and tenor with orchestral accompaniment based on a text from Pietro Metastasio’s 1733 libretto “L’Olimpiade.”
Metastasio’s libretto “L’Olimpiade.” was the basis for more than 50 operas besides Beethoven’s duet, including settings by Antonio Vivaldi (1734), Pergolesi (1735), Thomas Arne (1765), Josef Mysliveček, (1778), Cherubini (1783), and Donizetti (1817, incomplete).
Beethoven’s duet “Nei giorni tuoi felici” is from the end of the 1st Act of “L’Olimpiade.” Megacles is participating in the Olympic games in Ancient Greece but under an assumed name, and if he wins, he might will have to forfeit the love of Aristaea (soprano).
In Beethoven’s duet “Nei giorni tuoi felici,” the tenor sings “In your days of happiness, remember me,” but the soprano, not knowing what is wrong, responds “Why do you speak thus, my dearest soul, why? … I see the man I love suffering and know not why he suffers.”
#Beethoven250 Day 165
“Nei giorni tuoi felici” for Soprano, Tenor, and Orchestra (WoO 93), 1802
No live performance could be found. This is a studio recording.
Since Beethoven had moved to Vienna, he had studied composition with Haydn, counterpoint with Albrechtsberger, and dramatic music with Salieri. > “I knew them all well,” wrote Beethoven’s friend Ferdinand Ries,
all three thought highly of Beethoven, but they all were of one mind regarding his learning. Each one of them said that Beethoven was always so stubborn and self-willed that he had to learn from his own bitter experience what he had never been willing to accept in the course of his lessons. Particularly Albrechtsberger and Salieri were of this opinion: the dry rules of the former and the insignificant ones of the latter in dramatic composition (following the old Italian school) meant nothing to Beethoven.