Son of Felice Trapassi, a soldier of the Papal Army and later a delicatessen owner. At the age of 12, in the shop of a goldsmith, where he had been placed to learn the craft, he was heard improvising... (from treccani.it)

The production of arias by "Metastasio" was abundant, as he wrote over 1200, since the melodramatic genre required that each scene be concluded with an aria following the recitative.

[...] If the internal struggle of each were written on their foreheads, how many would elicit pity from us, the ones who inspire envy!

"Metastasio" (a capricorn like me) is the pseudonym of Pietro Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi, born in Rome on January 3, 1698, and was buried in Vienna on April 12, 1782 and nothing... #chiaroscuro