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Documentation for https://venop.ccarh.org
Documentation for https://venop.ccarh.org


==The Historical Phenomenon, Then and Now==
==Venetian Opera Productions: A searchable calendar==
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.
When the first opera was given at the Teatro San Cassiano in 1637, no one anticipated that the novel species of entertainment it offered would be durable. Its predecessors were occasional works, given privately in great splendor for weddings and other rites of passage of important figures. From the start, Venetian theaters were carved out of palaces of noble families and run by impresari who leased boxes and sold tickets to a paying public. Many were long-term lessees of theater boxes. This steered the future course of the genre on a new trajectory.


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 
As a venue for such entertainment, Venice did not have a lot of competition for several decades, but new theaters accumulated within the city. Close historical analysis suggests that the enterprise as a whole never became self-funding. Yet the precarious operation of most theaters did not diminish the popularity of the genre. Opera constantly responded to challenging circumstances. This website enables users to investigate how and why this happened over the core century (1660-1760) of the <i>dramma per musica</i>.
* 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.
==Quick start guide==
1. <i>Select</i> or <i>deselect</i> desired fields.<br>
2. Modes of viewing:
* To <i>browse</i>, scroll through the entire <b>corpus</b>.
* To <i>limit</i> searches to a restricted period of <b>years</b>, use the Min. and Max. delimiters (boxes).
* To <i>reorder</i> records (e.g. to view all the works by one <b>composer</b> or <b>theater</b>), click on column header (top row). To return to original view, click <i>refresh</i> icon on browser.
3. To return to this <i>documentation view</i>, click on the "<b>?</b>" in upper left corner of <i>table view</i>.


===Essential parameters of Venetian opera===
==Experiencing opera then and now==
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.
Today most professionally-staged operas form part of a 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 likely changes may concern a manner of staging, scenery, costumes, or interpretation.


===Performance cycles===
The sheer quantity of works produced in Venice between our target years—1660 to 1760—offers a striking contrast to the few dozen works in core repertories today. Not all the differences are as great as they at first appear. After 1700 new titles could be slapped onto familiar plots. The practice of "revise and disguise" produced unpredictable results. Some possible outcomes include: 
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 Venetian theaters. 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 <i>prime donne</i> could appropriate favorite arias (and, rarely, costumes and props). "Suitcase arias" might appear over years in other works and other venues.
* <i>combination of existing arias</i> combined with new recitatives;
* <i>addition, subtraction, or modification</i> of one part of a work;
* <i>new or revised arias</i> for one cast member;
* <i>insertion of arias</i> detached from a previous work in a new work.


===Going to the opera in 1660 and 1760===
The printed text prepared in advance for an opera might not fully correspond to the work as staged. Scores were circulated only in manuscript. By tracing productions, rather than works per se, we can associate a significant amount of rarely seen commentary with perfunctory title information to better understand the constantly shifting values and mutable practices that supported performance.
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.
===Essential parameters of Venetian opera===
* See [https://wiki.ccarh.org/wiki/Dating_Venetian_Operas Dating Venetian Operas].
From 1660 until the middle of the next century Venice usually had six theaters operating, but these were paramount: San Cassiano (intermittent, from 1637), SS. Giovanni a Paolo (1639-1699; 1714-15), San Salvatore (1661-1700, intermittent from 1727), Sant'Angelo (1677-intermittent after 1748), and SS. Giovanni Grisostomo (1678-1751). The others were less regular, or switched between opera and commedia, or lasted only a few years. Productions rarely ran for more than three weeks. Performances were not necessarily given every night. With regard to opening dates [<b>Sorting Date</b>, some accommodation between theaters could occur, although opening night collisions were often avoided. Ticket prices for an opening performance might cost twice the normal amount.


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.
Some ebbing and flowing of theatrical activity was associated with wars, pestilences, and fluctuating economic conditions. Venice was engaged in a war in the Aegean—the "War in Candia"—from 1645 to 1669. After 1700, the more stable theaters could produce three works in a year with a late Easter, but this was rare until the start of spring opera in the 1720s. Public operas were permitted only in periods of time uncontested by the Church and explicitly permitted (by proclamation) by the Venetian Republic. The total number of days when opera was permitted gradually increased over the course of the century represent.


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.
===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 for a maximum of four hours from sunset. Those lacking a box could rent a folding chair or stool for the </i>parterre</i>. A small orchestra sat in front of the stage. In many cases two harpsichordists were present—one to accompany the singers, the other to support the orchestra.


==The repertory as a corpus==
[[File:HM-Draghi4.png|thumb|center|900px|<small>The Hof-Musici of Český Krumlov Theater, directed by Ondřej Macek, in the 2024 production of Antonio Draghi's 1680 <i>festa teatrale</i> called <i>I vaticini di Tiresia Tebano</i> (The Prophecies of Tiresias of Thebes). Used by permission.</small>]]
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 in clusters that are rarely acknowledged.


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.
The delimiting dates of this table (1660-1760) 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 productions in weekly news-sheets, an under-the-radar source of local news conveyed (on paper) by vast networks throughout Europe. In the accumulation of their minutiae lies the resolution of many questions that are difficult to answer using standard historical resources. Because items were published weekly, they exclude all possibility of the misinterpretation of years, which contaminates all printed catalogues and bibliographies of Venetian opera.


==Field list==
When people went to the opera in Venice, they often went in sizeable groups. Most attendees sat in a box to which they might carry drinks and other refreshments. 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. (They were also prone to fires.) The impresario was responsible for lighting adjacent outdoor spaces, the stage, and the instrumentalists' pit. Attendees and personnel were expected to arrive by gondola. (See a remnant of San Cassiano's water-gate below.) A dusk-to-dawn curfew meant that streets were deserted.


[[File:Cassiano-gate1c.png|thumb|right|225px|<small>Location of water-gate for the largely demolished Teatro San Cassiano, Venice's first public theater. Photo 2012, E. Selfridge-Field.</small>]]


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.
By 1760 the audience for opera had changed considerably. While the abundant nobility of the seventeenth century responded well to serious, sometimes tragic fare, the rising bourgeousie of the eighteenth rapidly developed a taste for comic and pastoral works as well as satirical ones ones that portrayed traits the aspirations, speech, dress, and manners. Venice had to compete with its imitators in the realm of <i>opera buffa</i>. Pastorals were common in spring and autumn productions. Carnival remained the season of serious opera and noted singers, but fewer and fewer works were entirely new. The best known singers pursued opportunities abroad, as new theaters (many linked to commercial markets) appeared rapidly in venues north of the Alps. The rise of spring and summer operas in more northerly venues drew performers away from Italy.


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.  
Despite general acknowledgement of the historical importance of Venetian opera collectively, only a handful of Baroque operas are performed today. The reasons are many: the lack of survival of musical sources, the paucity of modern editions of surviving works, the expense of staging long, elaborate works with large casts, 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.
==A top-down (corpus) view of the repertory==


The survival of music is, in contrast, erratic.
Many studies of Venetian opera focus on a single work, or perhaps a small group of works related by a common subject from antiquity (Artaxerxes, Julius Cesar) or a single composer (Pollarolo, Albinoni, Gasparini) or a single theater (e.g. San Salvatore, also known as San Luca). By considering almost 900 works from a single century together, we can trace dozens of strands of data in clusters that are rarely perceived or acknowledged.


==How to use this resource==
Almost every production included here has an exact date of opening (the <b>sorting date</b>) verified by historical sources, as opposed to bibliographies, which are based on printed texts. The exceptions, which can be confined to a week or two, are followed by a <b>tilde (~)</b>, e.g. 1696~. In the year-day-month format used, the few works that cannot be so so sequestered substitute "00" for an unknown day and month. Examples:
Although it is possible to generate plots and tables for substantial periods of time, much of the power of this assembly of data comes from its support for targeted topics--a composer, a librettist, a theater, a genre, a trail of musical sources. The difference is one of dimensions. A flat list of all the works at one theater, for example, can be immensely valuable. Yet a more nuanced view can be had by viewing, in a hypothtical case, the mutual occurrences of a specific genre, season, and incidental pieces (balli, intermezzi). It is also possible to collect several fields related to one perspective by using the tabbed choices at the top of the home screen.  


==Perspective views of the data==
* 1675-00-00 (1675)
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.
* 1680-02-00 (February 1680)
* 1720-11-11 (11 November 1720)


==The purpose of this resource==
Sorting dates for titles are especially useful in calibrating Venetian opera and its vast hoard of composers, performers, librettists, and patrons, against activities in related fields (dance, drama, sculpture, painting, theater history, and social history) chronologically.
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 <i>opera buffa</i> began to displace the <i>dramma per musica</i>, and the course of opera again became choppy and unpredictable. Satires of opera, caricatures of singers, and tracts against opera rose to the fore.


==How to use this resource==
==Overview of genres==
The 889 productions listed here consist largely of three-act '''<i>drammi per musica</i>'''. Details of the repertory as a whole were constantly shifting. The nature of the content in combination with precise dating information enables a wide range of approaches needed to refine many aspects of opera history. 


===Notes on Development===
The century 1660-1760 differs from adjacent segments of Venetian opera history in ways that require slightly different approaches and the absorption of additional data fields.
This resource was compiled over decades. It has many perfunctory uses. In my own work it differentiates between legacy "facts" (e.g. attributed authorship) in secondary sources and statements that are  verified in weekly news-sheets, most of them unpublished. The biggest single area of conflict in imputed year of performance.  
* 1637-1659: The 96 productions mounted between 1637 and 1659 involved fewer theaters, a few traveling troupes, a wide range of component items within works, and much greater latitude in dating. (The gap between a libretto dedication date and a premiere could be as long as six months in the 1650s, but on average it was a mere two days after 1660.)


===Why is dating Venetian operas a problem?===
The seasonal framework that emerged in the 1660s enables us to evaluate elements of stability and change in ways that are not possible with sparser material. Elaborate prologues, which could involve separate casts and scenery, dominated some works of this period. No clear system of patronage developed until the 1670s.
Venetian culture thrived on inspiration, expression, and imagination. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Venice had eight different nomenclatures for identifying years and seasons. Because there were so many operas (889 in the century annotated here), small questions about topics like the sequence of works of a composer or theater or about competing between theaters can never be definitively answered. As many as 23% of the years given in opera bibliographies are incorrect.  


The root of the problem lies in erratic information given in printed libretti, which number many multiples higher than the number of works. Opera played no direct role in the church of the church, but it was not specifically a civic product either. Libretti were caught in the draft between a church year that started on January 1 and a civic year that advanced on March 1 (the <i>mors veneto</i>). The details and intricacies of the many conflicts caused by the difference are spelled out on my <i>Song and Season: Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time in Early Modern Venice </i> (2007). This database is closely connected to three of my earlier book 
* 1745-1760 and beyond:  
[https://archivio.fondazionelevi.it/serie-item-detail?id_s=IT-LEVI-ST0002-024030 <i>Pallade Veneta: Writings on Music in Venetian Society</i>, Venice: Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi, 1985].


The monthly print <i>Pallade veneta</i> often shows the seams of weekly news reports. After 17 issues (from January 1687 through May 1688), it ceased publication. However, it continued in manuscript circulation. Most weekly issues are lost, but some surviving ones are from the year 1751.
By 1745 the status of the <i>dramma per musica</i> as a musical-literary genre was challenged by the rise of '''<i>opera buffa</i>'''. Mainly Neapolitan, <i>opera buffa</i> won fans without the elaborate apparatus or complicated staging requirements of its serious rival. More and more audience members in Venice were from imperial precincts where stale formulas in dramatic plots were quickly eclipsed by the shorter, gayer content of the new genre. The re-establishment of prose comedy, which alternated with opera at some theaters, was heavily dominated by Carlo Goldoni from from 1732 to 1762.
 
The great virtue of weekly news-sheets in historical research is that they provide incontrovertible dates for events. These can be deduced from named weekdays (as in "Last Sunday the bones of Julius Caesar were resurrected in the Theater X"). Why are dates from these humble writings incontrovertible? In each locale from which they were issued, the dispatch was consistently made on a same day of the week.  In Venice it was Saturday. The same date could not fall on Saturday in two consecutive years.
In a field such as opera history, otherwise served by multiple loose chronologies depending on carelessly edited period prints and modern interpretations, conflicts between the supposed implications derived from concentrating on years and seasons arise often.  


Two discoveries emerged from the fact that opera openings are mentioned ubiquitously in weekly news-sheets. One was that the idea of establishing a secure chronology was entirely feasible. The other was that while there are many series of weekly news-sheets from Venice (and several dozen other cities), not one of them is complete. The pursuit of a fixed timeline thus came to depend on tracking down more and more dispatched assembled, patchwork style, in collections of <i>Notizie</i>, </i>Diari</i>, and other forerunners of modern newspapers. Full source citations are given in the <i>New Chronology</i>. In all, I consulted sixteen weekly series for any part of the century at hand I could find.
==[https://wiki.ccarh.org/wiki/Venetian_Opera_Productions:_Field_List Fields and filters]==


In assembling my [https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=3727 <i>New Chronology of Venetian Opera</i>], I gave a letter code for the source of each date, e.g. (A) for avvisi, (M) for Mercuri. Extensive archival citations are not useful: news-reports are ordered by week, and it is very easy to find the original once an exact date is in hand. (None of these series is digitized for online consultation.)  To convey and resolve all the complexities of dating at practical, cultural, and arithmetic levels, I wrote the book [https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=12218 <i>Song and Season: Science, Culture, and Theatrical Time</i>] as a companion to the <i>New Chronology</i>.  
Despite the lack of musical familiarity today's public may have with titles from earlier times, a significant number of subjects recurred throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yesterday's work was not as highly regarded as today's. Ironically, the quest for novelty may have been conducive to the growing practice of disguising revised works by supplying new titles.


I never aimed to compile such a sprawling mass of data when I started assembling a few details for the 1680s and 1690s. My hope in 1982 was to establishing the <i>sequential</i> order of performances. I supposed that the position of a few perennially undatable works would match up with random holes in this provisional sequence.  
Before the alliance of public opera (1637) with the <i>dramma per musica</i>, the most conspicuous model of what became "opera" was found in Florentine court intermedi. They in turn were considered appropriate for festive occasions, especially royal weddings. Such festivities could continue for days or weeks and often included many incidental entertainments. Aristocratic family odysseys en route to a wedding could also be dotted with an array of entertainments at each stop.


By a circuitous path I was able to explore many topics pertinent to Venetian opera, which was a cornucopia of microhistories of theaters, personnel, creators, sources and how they arrived at their current locations, and--at a general level--how much Europe and the motives for staging opera changed between 1660 and 1760. Whole genres came and went, with each change reflected in patronage patterns, choices of entr'actes, dramatic genres, and, of course, musical style.  
==About Venetian Opera Productions==
<br><b>Website design and management</b>: Craig Sapp
<br><b>Content</b>: Eleanor Selfridge-Field
<br><small><i>Background image on search page</i>: Fold-out etching by Domenico Rossetti from the libretto of <i>Berenice vendicativa</i> (music by Domenico Freschi, text by Gio. Maria Rapparini) premiered at the Villa Contarini on 8 November 1680 (Venice, Ca' Goldoni). Alvise Contarini served as doge from 1676 to 1684. The grandiose staging involved more than 400 supernumeraries plus 20 choruses, two lions, two elephants, and sixteen horses—four for Berenice's chariot and a dozen to cart prisoners. News reports relate that this entertainment, lasting for two weeks, was abruptly terminated by the collapse of a storage room for the chariots, which caused the panicked horses underneath to destroy some of the main props.</small>


Manners of production and performance changed along with them. Yet this century from 1660-1760 offers a level of corpus coherence that exceeds to be found in partly overlapping periods of a hundred years. The most conspicuous demarcations are the rise of theaters that were enjoy decades of stability from 1660 and the rapid demise of the <i>dramma per musica</i> in the 1740s to make way for <i>opera buffa</i>.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

Revision as of 23:26, 30 April 2025

Documentation for https://venop.ccarh.org

Venetian Opera Productions: A searchable calendar

When the first opera was given at the Teatro San Cassiano in 1637, no one anticipated that the novel species of entertainment it offered would be durable. Its predecessors were occasional works, given privately in great splendor for weddings and other rites of passage of important figures. From the start, Venetian theaters were carved out of palaces of noble families and run by impresari who leased boxes and sold tickets to a paying public. Many were long-term lessees of theater boxes. This steered the future course of the genre on a new trajectory.

As a venue for such entertainment, Venice did not have a lot of competition for several decades, but new theaters accumulated within the city. Close historical analysis suggests that the enterprise as a whole never became self-funding. Yet the precarious operation of most theaters did not diminish the popularity of the genre. Opera constantly responded to challenging circumstances. This website enables users to investigate how and why this happened over the core century (1660-1760) of the dramma per musica.

Quick start guide

1. Select or deselect desired fields.
2. Modes of viewing:

  • To browse, scroll through the entire corpus.
  • To limit searches to a restricted period of years, use the Min. and Max. delimiters (boxes).
  • To reorder records (e.g. to view all the works by one composer or theater), click on column header (top row). To return to original view, click refresh icon on browser.

3. To return to this documentation view, click on the "?" in upper left corner of table view.

Experiencing opera then and now

Today most professionally-staged operas form part of a 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 likely changes may concern a manner of staging, scenery, costumes, or interpretation.

The sheer quantity of works produced in Venice between our target years—1660 to 1760—offers a striking contrast to the few dozen works in core repertories today. Not all the differences are as great as they at first appear. After 1700 new titles could be slapped onto familiar plots. The practice of "revise and disguise" produced unpredictable results. Some possible outcomes include:

  • combination of existing arias combined with new recitatives;
  • addition, subtraction, or modification of one part of a work;
  • new or revised arias for one cast member;
  • insertion of arias detached from a previous work in a new work.

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

Essential parameters of Venetian opera

From 1660 until the middle of the next century Venice usually had six theaters operating, but these were paramount: San Cassiano (intermittent, from 1637), SS. Giovanni a Paolo (1639-1699; 1714-15), San Salvatore (1661-1700, intermittent from 1727), Sant'Angelo (1677-intermittent after 1748), and SS. Giovanni Grisostomo (1678-1751). The others were less regular, or switched between opera and commedia, or lasted only a few years. Productions rarely ran for more than three weeks. Performances were not necessarily given every night. With regard to opening dates [Sorting Date, some accommodation between theaters could occur, although opening night collisions were often avoided. Ticket prices for an opening performance might cost twice the normal amount.

Some ebbing and flowing of theatrical activity was associated with wars, pestilences, and fluctuating economic conditions. Venice was engaged in a war in the Aegean—the "War in Candia"—from 1645 to 1669. After 1700, the more stable theaters could produce three works in a year with a late Easter, but this was rare until the start of spring opera in the 1720s. Public operas were permitted only in periods of time uncontested by the Church and explicitly permitted (by proclamation) by the Venetian Republic. The total number of days when opera was permitted gradually increased over the course of the century represent.

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 for a maximum of four hours from sunset. Those lacking a box could rent a folding chair or stool for the parterre. A small orchestra sat in front of the stage. In many cases two harpsichordists were present—one to accompany the singers, the other to support the orchestra.

The Hof-Musici of Český Krumlov Theater, directed by Ondřej Macek, in the 2024 production of Antonio Draghi's 1680 festa teatrale called I vaticini di Tiresia Tebano (The Prophecies of Tiresias of Thebes). Used by permission.

The delimiting dates of this table (1660-1760) 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 productions in weekly news-sheets, an under-the-radar source of local news conveyed (on paper) by vast networks throughout Europe. In the accumulation of their minutiae lies the resolution of many questions that are difficult to answer using standard historical resources. Because items were published weekly, they exclude all possibility of the misinterpretation of years, which contaminates all printed catalogues and bibliographies of Venetian opera.

When people went to the opera in Venice, they often went in sizeable groups. Most attendees sat in a box to which they might carry drinks and other refreshments. 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. (They were also prone to fires.) The impresario was responsible for lighting adjacent outdoor spaces, the stage, and the instrumentalists' pit. Attendees and personnel were expected to arrive by gondola. (See a remnant of San Cassiano's water-gate below.) A dusk-to-dawn curfew meant that streets were deserted.

Location of water-gate for the largely demolished Teatro San Cassiano, Venice's first public theater. Photo 2012, E. Selfridge-Field.

By 1760 the audience for opera had changed considerably. While the abundant nobility of the seventeenth century responded well to serious, sometimes tragic fare, the rising bourgeousie of the eighteenth rapidly developed a taste for comic and pastoral works as well as satirical ones ones that portrayed traits the aspirations, speech, dress, and manners. Venice had to compete with its imitators in the realm of opera buffa. Pastorals were common in spring and autumn productions. Carnival remained the season of serious opera and noted singers, but fewer and fewer works were entirely new. The best known singers pursued opportunities abroad, as new theaters (many linked to commercial markets) appeared rapidly in venues north of the Alps. The rise of spring and summer operas in more northerly venues drew performers away from Italy.

Despite general acknowledgement of the historical importance of Venetian opera collectively, only a handful of Baroque operas are performed today. The reasons are many: the lack of survival of musical sources, the paucity of modern editions of surviving works, the expense of staging long, elaborate works with large casts, and the lack of training in Baroque performing techniques in many potential venues.

A top-down (corpus) view of the repertory

Many studies of Venetian opera focus on a single work, or perhaps a small group of works related by a common subject from antiquity (Artaxerxes, Julius Cesar) or a single composer (Pollarolo, Albinoni, Gasparini) or a single theater (e.g. San Salvatore, also known as San Luca). By considering almost 900 works from a single century together, we can trace dozens of strands of data in clusters that are rarely perceived or acknowledged.

Almost every production included here has an exact date of opening (the sorting date) verified by historical sources, as opposed to bibliographies, which are based on printed texts. The exceptions, which can be confined to a week or two, are followed by a tilde (~), e.g. 1696~. In the year-day-month format used, the few works that cannot be so so sequestered substitute "00" for an unknown day and month. Examples:

  • 1675-00-00 (1675)
  • 1680-02-00 (February 1680)
  • 1720-11-11 (11 November 1720)

Sorting dates for titles are especially useful in calibrating Venetian opera and its vast hoard of composers, performers, librettists, and patrons, against activities in related fields (dance, drama, sculpture, painting, theater history, and social history) chronologically.

Overview of genres

The 889 productions listed here consist largely of three-act drammi per musica. Details of the repertory as a whole were constantly shifting. The nature of the content in combination with precise dating information enables a wide range of approaches needed to refine many aspects of opera history.

The century 1660-1760 differs from adjacent segments of Venetian opera history in ways that require slightly different approaches and the absorption of additional data fields.

  • 1637-1659: The 96 productions mounted between 1637 and 1659 involved fewer theaters, a few traveling troupes, a wide range of component items within works, and much greater latitude in dating. (The gap between a libretto dedication date and a premiere could be as long as six months in the 1650s, but on average it was a mere two days after 1660.)

The seasonal framework that emerged in the 1660s enables us to evaluate elements of stability and change in ways that are not possible with sparser material. Elaborate prologues, which could involve separate casts and scenery, dominated some works of this period. No clear system of patronage developed until the 1670s.

  • 1745-1760 and beyond:

By 1745 the status of the dramma per musica as a musical-literary genre was challenged by the rise of opera buffa. Mainly Neapolitan, opera buffa won fans without the elaborate apparatus or complicated staging requirements of its serious rival. More and more audience members in Venice were from imperial precincts where stale formulas in dramatic plots were quickly eclipsed by the shorter, gayer content of the new genre. The re-establishment of prose comedy, which alternated with opera at some theaters, was heavily dominated by Carlo Goldoni from from 1732 to 1762.

Fields and filters

Despite the lack of musical familiarity today's public may have with titles from earlier times, a significant number of subjects recurred throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yesterday's work was not as highly regarded as today's. Ironically, the quest for novelty may have been conducive to the growing practice of disguising revised works by supplying new titles.

Before the alliance of public opera (1637) with the dramma per musica, the most conspicuous model of what became "opera" was found in Florentine court intermedi. They in turn were considered appropriate for festive occasions, especially royal weddings. Such festivities could continue for days or weeks and often included many incidental entertainments. Aristocratic family odysseys en route to a wedding could also be dotted with an array of entertainments at each stop.

About Venetian Opera Productions


Website design and management: Craig Sapp
Content: Eleanor Selfridge-Field
Background image on search page: Fold-out etching by Domenico Rossetti from the libretto of Berenice vendicativa (music by Domenico Freschi, text by Gio. Maria Rapparini) premiered at the Villa Contarini on 8 November 1680 (Venice, Ca' Goldoni). Alvise Contarini served as doge from 1676 to 1684. The grandiose staging involved more than 400 supernumeraries plus 20 choruses, two lions, two elephants, and sixteen horses—four for Berenice's chariot and a dozen to cart prisoners. News reports relate that this entertainment, lasting for two weeks, was abruptly terminated by the collapse of a storage room for the chariots, which caused the panicked horses underneath to destroy some of the main props.

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