Nicola Francesco Haym
Encyclopedia
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
librettist, composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, theatre manager and performer, and numismatist
Numismatics
Numismatics is the study or collection of currency, including coins, tokens, paper money, and related objects. While numismatists are often characterized as students or collectors of coins, the discipline also includes the broader study of money and other payment media used to resolve debts and the...
. He is best remembered for adapting texts into libretti for the London operas of George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...
and Giovanni Bononcini. Libretti that he provided for Handel included those for Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare
Giulio Cesare in Egitto , commonly known simply as Giulio Cesare, is an Italian opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music by George Frideric Handel in 1724...
, Ottone
Ottone
Ottone, re di Germania is an opera by George Frideric Handel, to an Italian–language libretto adapted by Nicola Francesco Haym from the libretto by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino for Antonio Lotti's opera Teofane. It was the first new opera written for the Royal Academy of Music 's fourth season...
, Flavio
Flavio
Flavio, re de' Longobardi is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Matteo Noris's Il Flavio Cuniberto. It was Handel's fourth full-length opera for the Royal Academy of Music...
, Tamerlano
Tamerlano
Tamerlano is an opera in three acts written for the Royal Academy of Music , with music by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Agostin Piovene's Tamerlano together with another libretto entitled Bajazet after Nicolas Pradon's Tamerlan, ou La Mort de...
, Rodelinda, and several others; for Bononcini, he produced two, Calfurnia and Astianatte.
Haym was born in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
. His career began as a cellist
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
in Italy, and he arrived in London in 1701: he swiftly became master of the 2nd Duke of Bedford's chamber music. He wrote the libretto for Bononcini's Camilla, a seminal work of enormous success that did much to establish Italian opera in London. Later, when operas in London came to be performed entirely in Italian, rather than in a bilingual blend of English and Italian, Haym spent much time adapting both libretti and music for the many pasticcio
Pasticcio
In music, a pasticcio or pastiche is an opera or other musical work composed of works by different composers who may or may not have been working together, or an adaptation or localization of an existing work that is loose, unauthorized, or inauthentic.-Etymology:The term is first attested in the...
s that were staged at this time. In 1720 he was employed as a continuo cellist for the new Royal Academy of Music; in 1722, however, he became the Academy's Secretary for its final six seasons: he not only wrote the libretti but also took on the role of stage manager during this time. Prior to his death in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
in 1729, he was planning to assist Handel and Heidegger construct a new Academy after the demise of the old one.
In 1719-20 Haym wrote the book Del tesoro britannico parte prima, the first work on the ancient coins in the collection of the British Museum. He was also the author of Biblioteca Italiana, o sia Notizia de' Libri Rari nella lingua Italiana, a bibliography of Italian books from the beginning of printing to about 1715. Published in London in 1726 and reprinted in Venice in 1728 and 1741, the work was originally intended to list only rare books. However, subsequent editors, beginning with Angelo Geremia, so enlarged the work that it came to be considered a general bibliography of Italian literature. It is arranged in sections, beginning with history and geography, then poetry, followed by prose writings, and a final extensive section on arts and sciences, including grammar, linguistics, history of art, philosophy, politics and political history, mathematics, and astronomy. Books' format is given, in addition to some indication of rarity and advice on the best edition. A much enlarged edition was published in Milan in 1771-72 by Federico Giandonati, and the work was the standard bibliography of Italian literature until the nineteenth century. It served as a model for Giuseppe Baretti
Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti
Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti was an Italian-born English literary critic and author of two influential language-translation dictionaries...
's The Italian Library (London, 1757); some claimed that Baretti "pillaged" Haym's work.