Due tragedie: La Merope e la Demodice - Maffei, Scipione 1675-1755; Recanati, Giovanni Battista 1687-c. 1735; Haym, Nicola Francesco 1678-1729 (London Tonson, 1721)
Giovanni Battista Recanati (1687-1734 or 1735) was a Venetian writer, poet and playwright, also known by the pseudonym of Teleste Ciparissiano. He was a collaborator of the «Giornale dei Letterati d'Italia», member of the Academy of Arcadia and of that of Crusca from 1727. Besides promoting literary initiatives, he was a bibliophile and book collector.
Francesco Scipione Maffei (1675-1755) was a Venetian writer and art critic, author of many articles and plays. Maffei was of the illustrious family that originated in Bologna. He studied for five years in Parma, at the Jesuit College, and afterwards, from 1698, at Rome, where he became a member of the Accademia degli Arcadi. He then founded an "Arcadian Academy" in his hometown Verona. In 1709, he went to Padua, where he briefly collaborated with Apostolo Zeno and Antonio Valisnieri in editing the ambitious literary periodical the Giornale de' Letterati d'Italia, which had but a short career. Subsequently, an acquaintance with the actor Riccoboni led him to exert himself for the improvement of dramatic art in Italy and a revitalized Italian theatre.
Scipione Maffei premiered his tragedy Merope in Verona on June 12, 1713; it quickly became popular throughout Italy and beyond. By agreement with Maffei, Voltaire went on to adapt the play, which was eventually staged in 1743 as Mérope.
Merope was a Queen of Messenia in Greek mythology, daughter of King Cypselus of Arcadia and wife of Cresphontes, the Heraclid king of Messenia. After the murder of her husband and her two older children by Polyphontes (another Heraclid), Merope was forced to marry the murderer, but she managed to save her youngest son Aepytus, whom she sent secretly to Aetolia. Several years later, when Aepytus grew up, he killed Polyphontes with the collaboration of Merope, and he took revenge for the murder of his relatives and the insult to his mother.
Ex libris Livraria Castro 'Olisipo; se queres vencer des perta e luta' (plate of a rare book store in Lisbon)Ex libris L. d'Almd. d'Albuquerque (ms. on frontispiece)
Keywords: 18th Century (1701-1800); Play (theater); Mythology; Italy