Giovanni Alberto Ristori, musical life at the court of August iii of Poland and the eighteenth-century serenata as a genre all deserve much greater scholarly attention than they have received so far. The serenate Ristori composed in Warsaw not only record in music a specific political situation – a function typical for serenate – but were also created to ameliorate tensions at court. These Italianate pieces, depicting the new king as a benign ruler favouring Poles, were intended to persuade Polish magnates to accept an unwanted German ruler with potentially dangerous political alliances. Besides capturing important historical moments, the serenate for August iii by Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino, Giovanni Claudio Pasquini and Ristori possess considerable poetic and musical merit: they were painstakingly designed for the refined tastes of the royal couple, accomplished performers and a discriminating audience. In this essay I set the serenate in context, explaining the methods behind their creation. Ristori’s music, after centuries of oblivion, is now being revived.

The four serenate discussed here were dedicated to three rulers: Maria Josepha, Queen of Poland (performed on 8 December 1735), August iii, King of Poland (performed on 5 March 1736 and 7 October 1746) and Anna Ivanovna, Tsarina of Russia (performed on 9 May 1736). Three of them, with libretti by Pallavicino, were part of courtly gala celebrations in 1735–6. The fourth (with words by Pasquini), was composed ten years later, after the court had undergone considerable changes, and shows that Ristori was a keen observer of current politics and artistic tastes, adapting his music adroitly.

The Composer

Giovanni Alberto Ristori (1693–1753) became connected with the Polish-Saxon court in 1716 at the age of twenty-four. He arrived as a young composer of great promise, basking in the glory of his extraordinary success in Venice, where his dramma per musica Orlando furioso had had a record run of nearly fifty performances at the Teatro S. Angelo in 1713–14.