Venetian Opera Productions

Documentation for https://venop.ccarh.org

The Historical Phenomenon, Then and Now

In our time most professionally-staged operas form part of the "standard repertory" that younger singers aspire to master. With few exceptions, the score, the roles, and the orchestra vary little from decade to decade if financial support is adequate. Title selections change from year to year and entirely new works are introduced as budgets permit, but most choices are drawn from a pool of well known works. More frequent changes may concern a manner of staging, scenery, costumes, and interpretations.

The sheer quantity of works produced in Venice between our target years--1660 to 1760--offers a striking contrast with the few dozen works "in repertory" today and the nearly 900 presented here. Not all the differences are as great as they at first appear. After 1700 new titles could be slapped onto familiar plots. This practice affected the music in unpredictable ways, including

• arias from an earlier version might be pieced together with new recitatives
• portions of the work could be cut or altered
• all the arias for a specific cast member could be changed to suit a demanding singer
• arias detached from one work could be introduced in another at performance

The printed text prepared in advance for an opera might not fully correspond to the work as staged. By tracing productions, rather than works per se, we can associate a significant amount of rarely seen commentary with perforunctory title information to better understand the constantly shifting values and practices that supported performance.

Essential parameters of Venetian opera

From 1660 until the middle of the next century Venice usually had six theaters operating. (In prior decades the number fluctuated. Some theaters operated for only a few years.) Performances of a specific work were given on selected nights for two or three weeks. With regard to specific opening dates (see Sorting Date), some accommodation between theaters could occur, such as three works might open on consecutive days in an interleaved schedule. Ticket prices for an opening performance might be twice the normal amount. On a more general view, some ebbing and flowing of theatrical activity was associated with wars, pestilences, and economic conditions. (Venice was engaged in the a war in the Aegean--the "War in Candia"--from 1645 to 1667.) The more stable theaters might produce three works in a year in which Easter (and consequently that start of Lent) fell late, but two productions per theater per year was more likely. Operas were permitted only in periods of time uncontested by the Church and explicitly permitted by proclamation by the Republic.) The total number of days when opera was permitted was gradually expanded in the eighteenth century.

Performance cycles

Today we would expect all performances of the same work in the same season to match one another in script, score, cast, and scenery. This attachment to fixity contrasts sharply with the dynamics of actual productions. While composer, librettist, singer, and other staff were hired to a full (autumn-winter) seasonal cycle, details of the content could change from night to night. Temperamental prime donne could appropriate favorite arias (and, rarely, costumes and props). "Suitcase arias" might appear over years in other works and other venues.

Going to the opera in 1660 and 1760

The cultural distance between the years around 1600 and our own times is considerable. In early Venetian theaters, important public figures rented or subleased a box for a season (or a lifetime) and bought a libretto at the door to follow the action onstage. Performances were permitted a maximum of four hours. The times of year when they were permitted was strictly regulated. Those lacking a box could rent a folding chair or stool by the evening. A small orchestra sat in front of the stage. In many cases two harpsichordists were present--one to accompany the singers, the other to accompany the orchestra.

The limiting dates of this table mark the confines of a period during which a huge increase in productions forced a degree of predictability on patterns of performance, with significant implications for composers and performers. The same time-span also coincides with an abundance of minutely dated references to opera proudctions in weekly news-sheets, an under-the-radar source of local news organized into vast networks throughout Europe. In their vast accumulation lies the resolution of many questions that are difficult to resolve using standard historical resources.

• See Dating Venetian Operas.

In modern life, periods considered appropriate for specific social activities are typically governed by commercial considerations and tacit agreements between potential competitors. In Venice, periods of opera production were governed by both civic and ecclesiastical dictates.

When people went to opera in Venice, they went in sizeable groups. Most attendees sat in a box to which they might carry drinks and refreshment. One member of the group would buy a libretto at the door. A candle would be necessary to see the libretto: theaters were dark inside. The opera impresario was responsible for lighting the outdoor space, the stage, and the instrumentalists' pit. No larger indoor space was heated. Attendees and personnel were expected to arrive by gondola. A dusk-to-dawn curfew meant that streets were dark.

The repertory as a corpus

Many studies of Venetian opera focus on a single work, or perhaps a small group of works related by a common subject (Artaxerxes was a popular one) or a single composer (e.g., Legrenzi or Pollarolo) or a single theater (e.g. San Salvatore). By considering almost 900 works from a single century together, we can trace dozens of rich strands of data and detect many rarely noted constellations of features that bring clarity and sublety to a rich history.

Almost every production included here has a verified exact date of opening (a sorting date). Sorting dates for titles are especially useful in calibrating other fields chronologically.

Venetian opera before 1660

Before 1660 the bulk of productions was limited, as were sources for dating them. What happened on stages under the rubric was the dramma per musica could involve many more component parts than works staged later. Early opera showed its origins in the realm of court spectacle. Elaborate prologues, which could involve separate casts and scenery, dominated some works. Owing to thinner documentation, dates are less certain. Works given by traveling groups were geographically neutral. No system of patronage has yet developed.

Venetian opera after 1760

In the 1750s the status of the dramma per musica as a musical-literary genre was compromised. The opera buffa from Naples won immediate fans without the elaborate apparatus or complicated patronage systems of its serious rival. More and more audience members in Venice were from the imperial precincts where stale formulas in dramatic plots were eclipsed by the shorter, gayer content of these newer works. This shift in reception paralleled a rise in prose comedy. Its presentation was heavily dominated by Carlo Goldoni, who moved to Paris in 1762. His detractors launched a "pamphlet war" to challenge the notion of opera in broad terms.

Field list

Despite the lack of musical familiarity today's public may have with titles here, a significant number of titles from the eighteenth century were to become familiar in later times.

While the historic value of Venetian opera collectively is acknowledged, only a handful of Baroque operas are in the repertory today. The reasons are many: the lack of survival of the music, the paucity of modern editions for works that survive, the expense of staging long, elaborate works of earlier times, and the lack of training in Baroque performing techniques in many potential venues.

Before public opera (1637) dramas with music and such antecedents as Florentine court intermedi were considered appropriate for festive occasions, such as royal weddings. Yet only extravagant court weddings gave occasion to these elaborate presentations, which could continue for days or weeks and included many incidental entertainments, often including music. Aristocratic family odysseys to a wedding venue could consume weeks. An array of entertainments might be provided at the destination.

The survival of music is, in contrast, erratic.

Perspective views of the data

The most revealing insights may come from viewing a few fields at a time. To facilitate some popular motives for search, we have selected clusters of fields related to musical elements of an opera, literary aspects of a work, patronage, and the complex variables that determined when any specific work was permitted to open. These complement the cluster of core fields.

The purpose of this resource

The original purpose of this resource was to establish a clear, incontrovertible chronology of Venetian operas, which were first given in public theaters in 1637. The genre was unstable and the early venues ephemeral: no one anticipated the durability of opera as a genre. The component parts of the genre and manners of performance changed often. The main elements became more stable as the number of theaters increased (1660, 1677-78). When in the 1740s the theaters were beset by sundry problems, the opera buffa began to displace the dramma per musica, and the course of opera again became choppy and unpredictable. Satires of opera, caricatures of singers, and tracts against opera rose to the fore.