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in Italian and Spanish for a Festival on the Subject of Jason and the Golden Fleece with a strong possibility of a New World connection

Il vello d'oro conquistato. Composicion dramatica para representarse en el real Coliseo del Buen-Retiro festefandose el feliz dia natalicio de su magestad Catholica ey Rey nuestro Señor D. Fernando VI. Replicado por order du su Magestad misma. El Año de MDCC.XLIX (1749) / Il Vello D’Oro. Componimento drammatico da rappresentarsí nel Regio Teatro del Buon-Ritiro, festeggiandosi il felice giorno natalizio di Sua Maestà . . . Ferdinando VI. . . . (Madrid): en la Imprenta de Lorenzo Francisco Mojados, Red de San Luis, s.d. (1749). Second edition, the original was issued in 1748 with different cast listed. Sartori 24451; Palau 211070. Not in Sonneck.

Locations: OCLC: GIU (Univ. of Girona) and UKM (British Library) only. Rare!!

The composer is Giovanni Battista Mele (1701-1752) (Note 1). The text is based on the Apollonius Rhodius’ 3rd century B.C. epic Argonautica. With ideas incorporated from 16th-century writing on alchemy by Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1470-1533) (Note 2). The scenic elements were designed by Santiago Pavia of Bologna, who was Director of the Real Academy in Madrid. The opera has a possible connection to Hispanic America (Note 3).

Quarto (5 3/4 x 7 3/4"). Contemporary publisher's sheep (same binding as 1748 edition), some rubbing of gilt rules and scuffs to back cover; first few leaves with minor dampstains at top of gutter margin. Last few leaves with very minor dampstains. An extremely clean copy. 1p. woodcut armorial; Italian and Spanish text facing each other; 2pp. title Il Vello D'Oro/El Vellon De Oro; 2 leaves Argomento/Argumento with scene set in Colco; 2pp. Interlocutori/Interlocutores; 2pp. Comparse/ with designer name Pavia; 2pp. Mutazioni Di Scene/Mutaciones de Scenes; pp. 14-89 with text of play in Italian and Spanish (pp. 86-89, 92-93); 2pp. (pp. 90-91) Licenza/Licencia. Collation: []4, B-L4, M3.

Il vello d'oro conquistato/Il Vello D’Oro was a Christmas festival performance in 1748 and then again in 1749 for guests of Ferdinand VI of (1713-1759). The opera is set in Colchis on the far side of the Black Sea, where Jason has sailed from Iolcus with his Argonauts to find the “vellon de oro” (Golden Fleece). The play features chorus plus seven characters, including Medéa and Jason with their love story. The actors are named, including the beloved Venetian singer Teresa Castellini (in the role of Calciope) who sang in the 1748 performance and also when the work was performed in the theatres of Madrid.

Following the final scene, there is a magnificent spectacle at the Palace of Ethèo with games, musical, and dance where the ministers of the temple attend (84-5). This is followed by a chorus attended by Juno. Then comes a poetical, probably musical recitation Licencia addressed to the Glorioso Monarca Barbara (Ferdinand was married in 1729 to Infanta Barbara of , daughter of John V of Portugal and ). Finally, the chorus sings of a beautiful Iberian sunrise.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Jason and his search for the Golden Fleece was the subject of numerous dramas and in Europe (see Sartori 11787-11837, 14008 and Sonneck pp. 557-8, 661). Il vello d'oro conquistato reflects the development of the Spanish opera form at the Madrid court under the inspiration of “Farinelli” (Pseud. of Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi; 1705-1782) the celebrated singer who became the director of the King’s theatres. During Farinelli’s tenure at Court, Spanish theatre, especially for the nobility and upper classes, adopted several elements from the Italian opera, already popular in other parts of Europe. This “Italianization” was encouraged by the presence of Italian musicians in court and in the retinues of Spanish nobles. While the popularity of Italian opera continued in Madrid throughout this period, it was infused with elements of popular Spanish theatre such as the loa (musical introduction). Also popular were "" or interludes allied to , and the intermezzo itself (which was based on the ). These authentic Spanish elements created a form very much like the Italian by the end of the century. The technical value of many of these tonadillas were equal to that of many of the best Italian opera of the time, and they may be said to have given rise to the “Light Opera” in Spain. Ultimately, however, no great genre of Spanish opera developed from this period.

Even the libretto became a distinguishing element of Spanish theatre at the Buen Retiro, according to Giulia Veneziano (361), bearing the unmistakable imprint of its Italian model. The libretto became a luxury publication with elaborate designs and delicately ornamented text. The libretto, sometimes elegantly bound, as here, was given as a gift to an explicit circle of admirers (qtd. In Stein and Leza, 133).

Notes:

(1) Giovanni Battista Mele (1701-after 1752). After a musical education in the Neapolitan conservatory Poveri di Gesß, he went to Spain. After the death of Philip V in 1746, he was retained by Ferdinand VI, where he served with Francesco Corselli and Francesco Corradini as a composer of Italian operas and conductor at Nuovo Real Teatro at Buen Retiro. He composed eleven works for the stage at Buen Retiro from 1736 to 1750. It is no stretch to include Mele among those composers who brought Italian opera to Spain.

(2) Parts of the text are based on the alchemical writings of Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1470-1533), nephew of the Italian humanist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494). Pico’s thinking is that the fleece contained elements that could assist in the creation of gold from water.

From the Renaissance onward, the Golden Fleece became very much discussed in connection with alchemy, due to a fresh interest in antiquity and more precisely in the Argonautica of Apollonius of Rhodes (3rd century B.C.). [The Argonautica] “seems to have been the starting point of a wide dissemination of the story in alchemical literature. . . . The first author to make extensive use of it in an alchemical context seems to have been Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola in his posthumously published De Auro libri tres (1586). He believed in the reality of transmutation and interpreted the Fleece as a golden parchment” (Von Martels, 251).

(3) Spanish Opera in the New World: Italian opera from Spain did take root in the New World, especially with subject matter which reelected the Spanish interests there, including the search for gold.

To summarize Stein and Leza’s essay “Opera, Genre, and Context in Spain and its American Colonies,” the musical offerings of the public theatre in Lima, then, were very similar to what could be heard in Madrid in this period. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the reception that Italian opera and its musical forms received in the Americas was conditioned and to some extent filtered by the Spanish experience because scores and singers often traveled to the American from Spain with priests, missionaries, or aristocrats in diplomatic service. A number of musicians trained in also worked on the Iberian Peninsula before being recruited by colonial administrators or impresarios. In most of the colonial cities, audiences first experienced musical forms from Italian opera.

Moreover, just as happened in Spain, the financial and political support of royal, municipal, military . . . was essential for fully sung opera’s implantation in the urban landscape. In particular, the support of the Spanish viceroys and the local aristocracy could assure at least temporary success for imported Italian opera.

2 There was an attempt to implant Italian opera in the Colonies by adding Italian to comedias For example, The Teatro d’Operas y comedias in Buenos Aires opened in 1757 thanks to the work of Domenico Saccomano, a flute player who had played in Farinelli’s orchestra at the Buen Retiro in Madrid before working in . “Saccomano became the director of the theatre in 1758. His version of Las veriedades de Proteo was performed there and probably approached the tone and action of a serious Metastasian drama.”

Because no databases exist of Spanish plays produced in 17th and 18th century Americas, we make no attempt to argue that this play in this version was actually performed in the New World. A strong hypothetical argument exists, nevertheless, that it might have been. Il vello d'oro conquistato would make a fascinating inclusion in any collection of texts on Spanish opera in the New World.

References:

Boyd, Malcolm and Juan José Carreras. Music in Spain during the Eighteenth Century (2006);

Breton, T. “Italian Opera in Spain in the Eighteenth Century.” In The Review of Reviews 38 (1908):51;

Gasta, Chad Michael. Transatlantic Arias: Early Opera in Spain and the New World (2013);

Stein, Louise K and José Leza. “Opera, Genre, and Context in Spain and its American colonies,” in The Cambridge Companion to Eighteenth-Century Opera. Eds. Anthony R. DelDonna and Pierpaolo Polzonetti (2009), 244-270;

Strohm, Reinhard. : Italian of the Eighteenth Century (1997);

Veneziano, Giulia. “MELE, Giovanni Battista.” Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani 73 (2009), http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/giovanni-battista-mele_(Dizionario-Biografico)/;

Von Martels, Z. R. W. M. Alchemy Revisited: Proceedings of the International Conference on the History of Alchemy at the University of Groningen, 17-19 April 1989 (Brill Archive, 1990).

$2,500.00

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