Roger and Sue a Ballad to a Favourite Air by Sig.r Hasse is a comic song contained in the collection Calliope or English Harmony by the eighteenth-century German composer, singer and teacher of music, Johann Adolph Hasse (baptised 25 March 1699-16 December 1783). Although Hasse composed a considerable amount of sacred music, he was best known for his prolific operatic output. For several decades he was the most widely admired composer of opera seria in Italy and the German-speaking lands. His finest operas include a highly systematized, rational style which were well produced and performed at leading theatres. He was married to one of Handel’s leading Italian singers, mezzo-soprano Faustina Bordoni and was a great friend and favourite composer of the librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set. Although the author of the words for the ballad Roger and Sue is unknown, it is based on Gandarte’s aria ‘Apenna amor sen nasce’ in Hasse’s opera Cleofide (1731) with original text by Michelangelo Boccardi after Metastasio’s Alessandro nell’ Indie.

from notes by Bridget Cunningham © 2017