Giambattista Varesco

Who was Giambattista Varesco?

Father Varesco was a chaplain, musician, poet and librettist to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. His given name variously appears as Giambattista, Gianbattista, Giovanni Battista and Girolamo Giovanni Battista. He is sometimes referred to with the Italian title Abate or the French Abbé, both used for priests: he was chaplain at the Salzburg court chapel from 1766.

Varesco's only familiar work with Mozart is the libretto to Idomeneo; the abortive L'oca del Cairo is little-known. Varesco also edited Metastasio's libretto for Il re pastore, one of Mozart's lesser operas. Mozart's commission for Idomeneo came in 1780 from Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria; his court in Munich paid Varesco 90 gulden. Leopold Mozart acted as a local intermediary for his son, and their correspondence left many details on the collaboration, and showed the composer's dissatisfaction, primarily with the excessive length of the text. In a letter in December 1780 Mozart wrote:

Ask the Abbate Varesco if we could not break off at the chorus in the second act, Placido e il mare after Elettra's first verse, when the chorus is repeated,--at all events after the second, for it is really far too long.