<p> Paul Ayick Survey In Historical Styles MUH 6688 1/24/2007</p><p>Two Operas by Scarlatti Recovered By Gloria Rose 1972</p><p>Alessandro Scarlatti (1660-1725) was considered a leading composer of opera and cantata in Rome and Naples in his day. He is given credit for having worked at least partially on some 131 operas alone. In both styles he proved to be a master of the bel canto aria, an A-B-A form of aria widely used in Scarlatti’s time in which both lyric and key are used as elements of tonal and emotional contrast. This article while not particularly current does eloquently illustrate the difficulty in crediting composers from this time with one work or another; there are multiple reasons for this. When old scores, parts, and other specific musical clues are found it is often unmarked as to composer. Furthermore these manuscripts were often times copied by a scribe which rules out identification by any peculiarities of the actual writing or notation style. Also many of the opera librettos, parts and scores surviving from the 18th and 17th centuries, are often times found in an incomplete state. Frequently only a few parts are found, some arias, an instrumental part or two, a libretto or even only fragments of these parts. Also in this time the librettist was thought to be more important then the composer of the music and frequently the composers name was not included in found documents. Although it is nearly 35 years ago that this article was authored it does mention that nine of Scarlatti’s operas had been recovered, and were being prepared for distribution by Donald Grout. Thankfully this revitalized interest in Scarlatti’s operas has continued as this 1996 article illustrates: “Lost for centuries and finally discovered in UC Berkeley’s music library, an opera by famed composer Alessandro Scarlatti will see its first performance in 300 years at the 1996 Berkeley Festival and exhibition June 1. John Roberts, a scholar and head of the UC Berkeley music library since 1987, found the only complete score od Scarlatti’s long lost “L’Aldimiro” on the shelves of his own collection. “Scarlatti’s name has a great cachet,” said the delighted Roberts. “He’s one of the great figures in the history of Italian music.” (Scalise. 1996)</p><p>All of this, for me at least, highlights just how large and difficult a task identifying these 300-year-old masterpieces actually is. The two operas Rose discusses are Comodo Antonio and Fibalba e Oreste. The former had been identified as a genuine Scarlatti work prior to the discovery of these manuscripts this in no small part substantiated by the existence of a November 20, 1696 news article, but not so the later. In fact it presented a very difficult set of problems lacking not only any concrete evidence as to composer, librettist, or date; even the title is not to be found on any of the remaining manuscripts. In lieu of this all identification had to be surmised from established historical fact certainly no mean feat when dealing with a work of this considerable age. This article is a testament to the importance of having an accurate understanding of stylistic traits true not only to the time but also to the specific composer and even more precisely, to various periods of Scarlatti’s career. Understanding the earmarks of the tradition, the time and the composer, this being necessary in order to guarantee the accuracy of these discoveries. is thought to be the work of Scarlatti in its entirety but enough concrete evidence does not exist to permit saying so with total authority, it is almost certainly however thought to be an early work of his. All the inferences drawn from the considerable collected evidence points to it as being an early work written sometime between 1680 and 1683. Comodo Antonio on the other hand is speculated on as being a revision of another opera he wrote sometime around the same time as Fibalba e Oreste, however it was first performed in the revised state as Comodo in 1689. This article was interesting in that it illustrated for me just how understanding tradition can indeed have useful applications. Sources Cited</p><p>Gloria Rose. Two Operas by Scarlatti Recovered The Musical Quarterly Vol. 58, No. 3 (Jul., 1972), pp. 420-435</p><p>Scalise, Kathlene. 1996. Long Lost Slarlatti Operea Found At UC Berkeley To be performed in June http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/96legacy/scarlatti.html</p>