jurist Gravina, which led to his adoption of classical antiquity as his model; while his connection with the singer Marianna Bulgarini early gave him an insight into the technical requirements of the opera. He began his career as a librettist in 1724 with "Didone" at Naples; in 1730 he went to Vienna as court poet, where he lived on the best of terms with the Imperial family,[33] and highly esteemed by the cultivated public. Following Apostolo Zeno, he sought to supply his operas with a true dramatic form, and he made it his chief aim to portray the effect of different characters and passions upon the development of the action. Metastasio had no large or powerful conceptions, nor could he grasp strong passions; his psychological vision is clear and cool, but limited, just as his sentiments are correct and good, but neither wide nor free. In his dramas, therefore, the representation of character and the plot are well-considered, suitable, and consistent, but with a certain mediocrity running through the whole; he chiefly concerns himself with the exemplification of principles and experiences, and individualises but little.[34] He makes love the animating element of his drama, and the starting point of his psychological study of motives. His characters want neither life nor passion, but softness and veiled sensuality are the characteristic features of what he endeavoured to make an imitation of actual life. The public were gratified at recognising themselves and their love affairs glorified on the stage, and were grateful to Metastasio for allowing them to enjoy themselves in their own way, and not preaching moderation and self-control. They admired his language too, which is correct, and charmingly melodious and natural in expression, not more rhetorical than the Italian language and poetry demands, and never overlaid with conceits. To these qualities of a dramatic poet, Metastasio joined that of an operatic composer; he was a musician. He had cultivated his musical talent by intercourse with singers and {OPERA SERIA.} (170) composers, and had a ready perception of what was necessary to a work written for composition. He sang "come un serafino" (as he writes jokingly to Farinelli),[35] played the clavier, and composed a little himself;[36] he found it a pleasant incitement to poetical activity to seat himself at the clavier and improvise. He said himself he had never written a song without composing it himself, according to his own conception of its musical character.[37] Metastasio confines the development of the plot as a rule to the recitative and the arie (or duet, or terzet), expressing at the close of each scene the sentiment which is the result of the previous action. This they always did so clearly and precisely that the composer had both incentive and scope for musical treatment.