A BECOHSmaCTIÛN OP THEATRICAL AND MUSICAL PRACTICE IN THE PRODUCTION OF ITALIAN OPERA IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State Universilgr hjr THERON READING McGLURE, B. A., A. M. The Ohio State Ihiversily 1956 Approved hgr: m d w —— Department of Speech PREFACE This stady ondertakea to unite in a single field of view all the di^arate elanents of the eighteenth-century entertainment called "the opera seria." Its writer is indebted to Profeasors Charles J. HcGaw and John H. McDowell of The Ohio State thiiveraity'a Department of Speech for their guidance in the integration of the many facets of the investigation. The writer is grateful for the suggestions of Professor Noman F. Hielps^ of the School of Music, whose understanding of the musical factors in the eighteenth-century opera was so helpful. The study could not have been undertaken and carried out were it not for the very substantial resources of The (Xiio State Thtiversity Library's Theatre Collection. 11 TABUS OF CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE SCOPE OF THE S T C D T ......... 1 II. A NBf IMPULSE IN THE A R T S ...................... 7 III. THE OPERATIC COMPANIES............................ 15 I?. THE OPERA HOUSE AND ITS AUDIENCE ................. 22 7. THE S T A G E ........................................ 1*3 71. THE SINGER AS AN A C T O R ............................ 8? V H . THE POSITION OF THE LIBRETTIST.....................95 VUI . THE POSITION OF THE COMPOSER ....................108 n . THE SINGER...................................... 120 X. THE OPERA OR C H E S T R A ............................. 136 XI. THE BALLET AND THE OPERA BU F F A ................... 12(8 XU. CONCLUSION................ 155 APPENDIX A THE STRUCTURE OF THE OPERA H O U S E..................159 APPENDIX B SCENE DIRECTIONS FROM NINE LIBRETTI OF META8TASI0 ................................ 176 APPENDIX C EXPENSES AND INCOME OF A PRODUCTION AT PADUA IN 1 7 5 1 ............................. 187 APPENDIX D PRICES AND WAGES FOR SOME OPERATIC SERVICES IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUHT......................189 BIBUOGRAPHT.............................................. 192 AUTOBIOGRAPHT.............................................198 l i l LIST OF PLATES PLATE PAGE I. The San Carlo Theatre of Milan ........ 2§ II* La Loge a 1*o pera....................... 30 III. Garden Scene . ............... $7 IT. Palace S c e n e ........................... $9 V. Scene of Royal Apartment ' ............... * 6l VI. Scene of Royal Audience H a l l ............ 63 VII. Scene of Portress Interior ........ 65 VIII. Cabinet Scene . ......... 67 IX. Scene of Coronation H a l l ................ 69 X. Scene Design with Ground P l a n ............ 72 U . Scene Machines (lower v i e w ) ........... 79 XII. Scene Machines (upper v i e w ) .............. 80 XIII, The San Carlo Theatre of Naples .......... l6l XIV. The Theatre of Turin ........... 1&3 XV. The Theatre of Turin ................... 16L Z n . Theatre Study with Acoustical Vdll .... l65 XVII. The Theatre of Milan . ......... 167 XVIII. The Teatro di Argentina of R o m e ............ 169 XIX. The Theatre of B o l o g n a • 171 XX. The Electoral Theatre of Mannheim ..... 173 X U . The Royal Theatre of Berlin............... 175 isrl CRAPTER I THE SCOPE OF THE STUDT Opera is the product of a raiJier unstable amalgamation of several arts. Singing is joined with acting, dancing united with stage-lighting and costuming, scene painting with orchestration, and poetry is placed in juxtaposition with the coitç>osition of musical forms. These uneasy alliances have perpetuated themselves for more than three hundred years. Theatres have been especially built for this hybrid form of entertain­ ment, and an audience for opera has been created, an audience idiich has continued in existence even to the present day. Throughout the life-span of the operatic art, one after another of the constituent elements contributing to its form has pressed forward and taken a dominant position over the others. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the poet made a bid for supremacy over the operatic aggregate, while in subsequent generations the scenogrspher, the singer, the theatrical audience itself, the ballet, the orchestra, the composer, and even the musical leadership, one after the other, have sought to take precedence in this alliance of the arts. It seems that the ele- mdnts making vp the opera can be united only in a rather tenuous and unstable fashion, and, in order to provide a product of unified charac­ ter, one or another of the constituent arts has to take the leadership in forming the whole. The present study deals with one of the earlier phases of the medium, the Italian public opera of the eighteenth century. The contributions of all the participating operatic elements are surveyed, and an effort is made to discover which of the conponents have been given a dominant role, and why. &n investigation is made for the pur­ pose of finding out why the opera of the eighteenth century had such a very wide popular appeal. The Italian opera got off to a very vigorous start prior to the middle of the seventeenth century in Venice and in Rome, and then spread to many cities of Europe outside Italy without chaiging its basic charac­ ter. Opera became such a standardized product that, just as the Holly­ wood film fits the projectors and suits the audiences in theatres all over the world today, so was Italian opera able to provide operatic fare and personnel in that day for all the states of Europe save the French. This "standardized product," the opera seria, as seen through , the eyes and ears of those contemporazy persons who chose to relate the effect it had on them, will be examined. These chroniclers, of course, were not members of the operatic public for which the operaà were tailored but were, in many cases, more sensitive to the unnatural, the absurd, and the extreme in the manifestations of this form of the­ atrical art. The opera seria wais a sociological phenomenon idiich was designed for the delectation of a certain class of city-dwellers, and the journalists, travellers, artists and critics who have described it are not, in the main, of that group. The subject may be likened to the weather: there is no "normal" weather, but only extremes, and only the extremes are chronicled. The opera, or melodrama per musica, vas calculated to amaze, to intoxicate, and to overwhelm. At its best, l^e opera was a very fine expression of the spirit of the timesj but, since the Italian schools could not provide enough operatic artists to satisfy the wide demand for performers, many productions were understandably deficient in artistic merit. Unfortunately, critiques of this lower grade of operatic output are more widely read in the twentieth century; more sympathetic studies, tending to be less colorful, are not brought forward. The best known description of the eighteenth-century opera, for example, is the essay II teatro alia mode, by Benedetto Marcello, a composer of great merit in non-operatic fields. At the time his essay was written, Marcello had worked very little in the cpera and up to that time had not been too successful. II teatro alia mode, published in 1720, was a satire upon com­ posers, singing masters, and opera in general. The essay was subtitled "an easy and certain method of composing and performing Italian operas in the modem manner," Theatrical and musical historians offer this diatribe to their readers as a c^sule, but fully adequate summarization of a period in the history of the theatre. The present study undertakes to present source material of equal standing which may place in much better perspective the opera of Marcello's day. When possible, the writings of actual workers in the operatic field are cited. These au­ thors were more willing than Marcello to accept the necessarily arti­ ficial mass of conventions needed to unite disparate art forms into a single one. One realizes that even then Coleridge's "suspension of disbelief" was essential in order to enjoy the precarious synthesis of music and story that made an opera. A most vital and difficult part of the study, to be taken up first, is the search for an e^lanation of the unexpected and unusual features encountered in reading the contemporary descriptions of the opera. Nowadays, one’s neighbors expend a substantial part of their income in maintaining automobiles of a power, speed, and size far in excess of utilitarian requirements of transport. In the eighteenth century, the "neighbors" kept boxes at the theatre, attending the per­ formance of the same opera night after night, far in excess of their needs for dramatic entertainment. Both of these phenomena suggest that a hunger is being met through these activities which may be explained only in sociological terms, as the means adopted by an era for giving expression to its nature. So, first of all, an attempt is made here to describe the spirit and the movement of the times idiioh produced the curious phenomenon of the eighteenth-century opera house and its audi­ ence. The description of this operatic period will be drawn from eighteenth-century sources. As far as possible, the century will be allowed to speak for itself, and no special phase of this musical theatre will be emphasized. Several types of information are available for this study and are listed in descending order of worth: 1. Statistical data and lists culled from municipal records of the day, and from the newspapers, pro­ vided by modem Italian scholars interested in this field of study. 2. Extracts from letters and autobiogrc^hies of workers in the field of opera at the time, which delineate vividly the problems with which they were faced in bringing their productions to the stage.