Niccolò Jommelli was born in Aversa, near Naples, on 10 September 1714, and died in Naples itself on 25 August 1774. Largely forgotten now, he was one of the most successful composers of his day, composing some eighty operas between 1737 and 1774, and after his death the poet and composer Christian Schubart wrote:

Jommelli, the creator of a quite new taste, and certainly one of the foremost musical geniuses who has ever lived … opened up a path all of his own. His extremely passionate spirit looks out from all his compositions: fiery imagination, comparable inventiveness, great harmonic understanding, a wealth of melodic passages, bold, powerfully effective modulations, an inimitable instrumental accompaniment—these are the outstanding characteristics of his operas.

Having spent the early part of his career in Italy, writing operas for such important centres as Naples, Rome, Bologna and Venice (in 1749 he also spent time in Vienna, where he composed and premièred two operas), Jommelli rejected offers from the courts of Mannheim and Lisbon in 1753, and instead chose to become Kapellmeister to Duke Karl Eugen of Württemberg in Stuttgart. Fetonte was the twenty-sixth of the twenty-seven operas that Jommelli composed for the Duke, and was premièred on 11 February 1768 at the newly built court theatre in Ludwigsburg. This had been inaugurated in 1765 and was one of the largest theatres in Europe. It was specifically designed to accommodate productions of great technical virtuosity and spectacle, and the choice and adaptation of libretti was accordingly geared towards this objective: Fetonte features an earthquake, a beautiful underwater palace which serves as a backdrop for a marine ballet, a chariot flying through the realms of the sun, and a battle scene which originally featured 341 soldiers and 86 horses.

The libretto of Fetonte was written by Jommelli’s long-term collaborator Mattia Verazi (c1730-1794), and was based on Philippe Quinault’s text for Lully’s 1683 opera Phaëton; this in turn was founded on the story of Phaeton as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Phaeton is the mortal son of Phoebus, the God of the Sun. Seeking to confirm his lineage, he visits his father and ill-advisedly persuades him to let him drive the sun-chariot for a day, but he soon loses control, causing the horses to veer from their path, scorching the earth, burning the vegetation and transforming much of Africa into desert; Jupiter is forced to intervene, striking Phaeton with a thunderbolt which causes him to fall into the sea to his death.

Jommelli’s progressive score marks the height of his experimental reaction against the rules and restrictions of traditional opera seria. The music has spectacular sweep and ambition, with the choruses and frequent ensembles in particular being treated with notable freedom and complexity, and the New Grove Dictionary of Opera asserts that the finale unfolds 'with a versatility unequalled before Mozart’s late operas'.

Phaeton’s final aria in Act Two is set in the gloomy sepulchres of the subterranean royal palace, with a grand vista stretching up beyond the highest mountain peaks to the realms of Phoebus. As Phaeton strives to overcome his terror and ascend the path to the heavens, Jommelli conjures music of eerie other-worldliness, its ghostly, macabre soundscape quite unlike anything else that was being written at the time.

from notes by Ian Page © 2020