ABSTRACT
In 1716 Handel paid perhaps his only visit to the town of Ansbach, seat of the margraves of Brandenburg-Ansbach. There would have been an ironic appropriateness to his becoming Kapellmeister at Ansbach, since he had for some years been borrowing musical ideas from Narciso, a pastoral opera composed for that court in 1697 by then Kapellmeister Francesco Antonio Pistocchi. Zeno's simple but artfully crafted libretto tells the story of Narcissus in five short acts. A shepherd who disdains love and cares only for the hunt, Narciso is ardently pursued by the nymph Cidippe while another nymph, Eco, adores him in secret. Two other shepherds, Uranio and Lesbino, long with equal lack of fulfillment for Cidippe and Eco. Whatever the historical truth it seems fitting that Handel should have quoted prominently from Pistocchi's Narciso in a work composed to mourn the woman whose score of this opera has finally made us aware of how much he owed to it.
