Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino

Stefano Benedetto Pallavicino (Padua, 1672 – Dresden, 1742) was an Italian librettist and poet, the son of the librettist Carlo Pallavicino. His significance lies in the fact that, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, he was among the leading reformers of the opera libretto, at a time when texts for the stage were beginning to change in form.

He was educated at the college run by the Somascan fathers in Salò. In 1687 he accompanied his father to Dresden and, at barely sixteen, entered the court's service as a poet in 1688. Between 1695 and 1716 he worked as court poet and private secretary to the Elector Palatine, Johann Wilhelm, in Düsseldorf. After the Elector's death he returned to Dresden, stopping first in Kassel, and was reintegrated into the Saxon electoral court, where he remained until his death. From 1701 he was a member of the Arcadian Academy.

He wrote numerous texts for operas, oratorios and cantatas, and his translation of Horace met with notable acclaim. His libretti were set to music by several composers, among them Lotti, Steffani and Wilderer, and above all Hasse, who set three oratorios to texts by him. His final work of this kind, I pellegrini al sepolcro di Nostro Redentore (1742), was regarded by Johann Georg Sulzer as the ideal oratorio. Two years after his death, an edition of his works in four volumes was published in Venice.