Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista - Lo frate 'nnammorato

Naples, September 27, 1732. At the Teatro dei Fiorentini, a new comedy for music takes the stage, signed by two young and promising authors: Gennarantonio Federico, heir to a generation of Neapolitan theatrical poets who had forged the genre in the two preceding decades, and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, a composer poised to secure a dominant position in the city's musical landscape following the departure or distancing of some of the masters who had dominated it until then (Pietro Vinci and Johann Adolf Hasse among others).

Both had scant theatrical experiences: Federico had written several comic dramas for the spoken theater and two comedies for music, Pergolesi was attempting a comedy for the first time in his career. Yet, Lo frate 'nnammorato achieved extraordinary success, remaining on the Neapolitan theater's schedule for many weeks and earning a series of revivals over the next twenty years, the first of which – in 1734, again at the Fiorentini – was overseen by both authors.