ABSTRACT
To his London audiences George Frideric Handel's setting of 'Son confusa pastorella' would have probably seemed simple, direct and 'single-layered' in its response to the dramatic situation. The source libretto of Pora was Pietro Metastasio's Alessandro nell'Indie, the fourth of five librettos that he wrote for the Teatro delle Dame, in Rome, between 1726 and 1730. As a point of reference and later, comparison, it will be helpful at this stage to examine the first setting of the text 'Son confusa pastorella', namely that by Leonardo Vinci. If judged against Handel's later setting for London, Leonardo Vinci's could be said to be musically bland, neutral, or even superficial. Instead, his 'Son confusa pastorella', when viewed from a modern critical stance, appears to be multi-layered. Handel's first reference seems to be to the French fetes galantes, a related activity to Italian pastoralism that was popular in French aristocratic circles in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.
