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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 this novel, ambitious species of entertainment would endure. As a venue Venice had little competition for several decades. Although the opera enterprise as a whole never became self-supporting, the precarious situation of most theaters did not diminish the genre's popularity. [venop.ccarh.org Venetian Opera Productions]  enables users to investigate growth and change (and eventual decline) over the core century (1660-1760) of the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dramma_per_musica <i>dramma per musica</i>].


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 
==Quick start guide==
* arias from an earlier version might be pieced together with new recitatives
1. <i>Select</i> or <i>deselect</i> desired fields at https://venop.ccarh.org. Results appear immediately beneath the query form.<br>
* portions of the work could be cut or altered
2. Modes of viewing:
* all the arias for a specific cast member could be changed to suit a demanding singer
* To <i>browse</i>, scroll through the entire <b>corpus</b>.
* arias detached from one work could be introduced in another at performance
* 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>.


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.
==Viewing the repertory as a whole==
<b>The corpus vs single works:</b> The delimiting dates of this table (1660-1760) mark the confines of a period during which a huge increase in opera productions occurred. Venice was the undisputed leader in public opera, which dated from 1637. Quantity and frequency forced a degree of predictability on patterns of performance, with significant implications for composers and performers. While many studies of Venetian opera focus on a single work or a small repertory, this corpus of 889 operas enables us to understand the interplay between theaters, composers, librettists, and many other dimensions of the genre's development (and decline).  


===Essential parameters of Venetian opera===
<b>Composers: </b>One notable impression of the Venetian corpus is the large number of composers (171) who contributed to it. More than 25% of these operas were set to music by just eight composers—C. F. Pollarolo (60), B. Galuppi (52), T. Albinoni (45), A. Vivaldi (33), Fr. Gasparini (30), M. A. Ziani (29), C. Pallavicino (25), and G. M. Buini (20). Fragments of their works may also be found here and there in the twenty-five pastiches listed. These stalwarts apart, most composers set fewer than four dramas to music. This reflects the dilettante nature of opera in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth, the composition of opera became a professional career path.
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.
<b>Librettists:</b> The profiles of librettist as a group is similar but the number of individuals is smaller.  The most prolific dramatists were court poets or, in some cases, held a significant office in the Venetian Republic. This tells us that scripts were intended to project images supportive of existing power structures in the seventeenth century, when the most prominent librettists were Francesco Silvani (67), Matteo Noris (49), and Aurelio Aureli (36). The profile was warped in the eighteenth century by the rising fortunes of the imperial court and efforts to emulate its tastes. Its court poets [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apostolo_Zeno Apostolo Zeno] (69) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pietro_Metastasio Pietro Metastasio] (88) completely dominated Venetian stages and those of many other venues for several decades.
 
==Attending an opera then and now==
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> (today's orchestra section minus fixed seating). A small orchestra sat in front of the stage. Two harpsichordists were present—one to accompany the singers, the other to support the orchestra.
 
[[File:HM-Draghi4.png|thumb|center|800px|<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>]]
 
Today most professionally-staged operas form part of a standard repertory that young singers aspire to master. With few exceptions the score, roles, and orchestra vary little from decade to decade or place to place when adequate financial support is available. Title selections change from year to year. Entirely new works are introduced as budgets permit. Changes may involve 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, but not all the differences are as great as they may appear. After 1700 new titles were increasingly slapped onto familiar plots. The practice of "revise and disguise" produced unpredictable results. Some possible outcomes included: 
* <i>the combination of existing arias</i> 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.


===Performance cycles===
The printed text prepared in advance for an opera often did 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 enabled performance.
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.


===Going to the opera in 1660 and 1760===
In the seventeenth century those attending Venetian operas often came 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.
The cultural distance between the years around 1600 and our own times is coniderable. 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.  
[[File:Cassiano-gate1c.png|thumb|right|225px|<small>Remnant of water-gate for the largely demolished Teatro San Cassiano, Venice's first public theater. (Photo 2012, E. Selfridge-Field).</small>]]
* See [https://wiki.ccarh.org/wiki/Dating_Venetian_Operas 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.
The audience for eighteenth-century opera was in constant flux. While the abundant nobility of earlier times responded well to serious, sometimes tragic fare, the rising bourgeoisie of the eighteenth rapidly developed a taste for comic and pastoral works as well as satirical ones that portrayed traits of 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.  


==The Repertory==
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.
Apart from the publication of books, which was another thriving Venetian industry, the sheer volume of material makes an accessible data collection more valuable that a printed book. Many studies of Venetian opera concern a single work, or perhaps a small group of works likened by a common subject (Artaxerxes was a popular one) of a single composer (e.g., Legrenzi or Pollarolo) or a single theater (e.g. San Salvatore). The quantitative volume consists in printed libretti, which could change from night to night during a two- or three-week production period. The survival of music is, in contrast, erratic.  


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 acknowledgment of the historical importance of Venetian opera collectively, only a handful of Baroque operas are performed today. The reasons are many: lack of survival of musical sources, a paucity of modern editions, the costs of staging long, elaborate works with large casts, and a 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 invlude 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.
==Understanding the database==


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.
===Essential parameters===
<b>Theaters</b>: From 1660 until the middle of the next century Venice usually had six theaters operating. These were the most stable: 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 <i>commedia</i>, or lasted only a few years.  


==This resource==
<b>Productions:</b>We know from weekly news-sheets that productions rarely ran for more than three weeks. Performances were not necessarily given every night. With regard to opening dates, some accommodation between theaters could occur. Opening night conflicts were usually avoided. Ticket prices for an opening performance could cost twice the normal amount on ordinary nights at some theaters.
In contrast to printed bibliographies that are anchored to years, almost every production included here has a verified exact date of opening. From these sorting dates many details of other subjects can be calibrated chronologically.


==How to use this resource==
<b>Disruptions:</b>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 represented.
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==
===[https://wiki.ccarh.org/wiki/Venetian_Opera_Productions:_Field_List Fields and filters]===
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==
==Extended uses of the data==
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==
===Dating methods and presentations===


===Notes on Development===
The time-span 1660-1760 coincides with an abundance of minutely dated references to opera productions in news-sheets (<i>avvisi et al.</i>), a species of short-form report to which church, civic, and financial authorities could selectively subscribe. Although French predominated in diplomatic communications throughout Europe and the Americas, <i>avvisi</i> supported a vast network of weekly transmissions in Italian. <i>Avvisi</i> from Venice were dispatched by courier on Saturday evenings, a practice that removes one element of ambiguity from determining the modern year of the record. Because they were distributed weekly, <i>avvisi</i> exclude all possibility of misinterpreting years, but the dates thus retrieved often contradict the word of printed catalogues and bibliographies of Venetian opera.
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.  


===Why is dating Venetian operas a problem?===
Almost every production included here has an exact date of opening (the <b>sorting</b> or <b>premiere date</b>) verified by primary 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~.  
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 
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:
[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. 
* 1675-00-00 (1675)
* 1680-02-00 (February 1680)
* 1720-11-11 (11 November 1720)


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.
===Applications in related fields===
 
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.  
Sorting dates for titles are especially useful in reconciling Venetian opera and its vast horde of composers, performers, librettists, and patrons with activities in <i>related fields</i> (art history, dance, drama, sculpture, painting, theater and social history) chronologically. Additional details are available at [https://hcal.ccarh.org/ Historic Calendars of Europe]. For other intricacies, please see <i>Song and Season</i> (cited below).
 
====Links for libretti====
Almost every work cited is survived by one or more libretti. They may not all precisely coincide in content. Printed texts often different in small details from the texts found in manuscript scores. The best start site for Italian libretti is usually Corago (corago.unibo.it). Click on the <i>libretto</i> link. Substantial collections include these:
* The [http://www.braidense.it/cataloghi/catalogo_rd.php <i>Braidense Library (Corniano-Algarotti Collection)</i>]
* The [https://libretti.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/fs1/start/static.html <i>ViFaMusik Libretto Portal</i>]
* The [https://www.loc.gov/collections/albert-schatz/about-this-collection <i>Albert Schatz Collection, Library of Congress</i>]
 
====Links for scores and score fragments====
Multiple kinds of music sometimes survive for operas listed. These include
* Scores
* Miscellaneous arias (and other fragments)
* <i>Balli</i>
* Comic intermezzi
Links to surviving (clearly identified) musical materials are given in the [https://opac.rism.info/main-menu-/kachelmenu RISM catalog] sigla for "Scores" and "Miscellaneous arias". [https://rism.info/community/sigla.html Sigla] locate materials by city and library. Links within the specific entry list manuscript sources.


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.  
Another path to music is to search the title in the RISM catalog and check the box "Available Online".


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>.  
Very few comic intermezzi are survived by music. Many <i>balli</i> may survive, but they typically remained the property of the dance companies and were not comprehensively preserved.


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.  
==Analytical views of selected corpus-level topics==
See [https://wiki.ccarh.org/wiki/Venetian_Opera_Productions:_Analytical_Views Analytical Views]


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==
<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 at Piazzola on 8 November 1680 (Venice, Ca' Goldoni, Biblioteca). Alvise Contarini served as doge from 1676 to 1684. The grandiose staging involved more than 400 supernumeraries, twenty choruses, two lions, two elephants, and sixteen horses—four for Berenice's chariot and a dozen to pull carts of prisoners. News reports relate that this entertainment, lasting for two weeks, was abruptly terminated by the collapse of a storage room for the chariots. It caused the horses underneath to panic and destroy 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/

Latest revision as of 21:41, 3 September 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 this novel, ambitious species of entertainment would endure. As a venue Venice had little competition for several decades. Although the opera enterprise as a whole never became self-supporting, the precarious situation of most theaters did not diminish the genre's popularity. [venop.ccarh.org Venetian Opera Productions] enables users to investigate growth and change (and eventual decline) over the core century (1660-1760) of the dramma per musica.

Quick start guide

1. Select or deselect desired fields at https://venop.ccarh.org. Results appear immediately beneath the query form.
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.

Viewing the repertory as a whole

The corpus vs single works: The delimiting dates of this table (1660-1760) mark the confines of a period during which a huge increase in opera productions occurred. Venice was the undisputed leader in public opera, which dated from 1637. Quantity and frequency forced a degree of predictability on patterns of performance, with significant implications for composers and performers. While many studies of Venetian opera focus on a single work or a small repertory, this corpus of 889 operas enables us to understand the interplay between theaters, composers, librettists, and many other dimensions of the genre's development (and decline).

Composers: One notable impression of the Venetian corpus is the large number of composers (171) who contributed to it. More than 25% of these operas were set to music by just eight composers—C. F. Pollarolo (60), B. Galuppi (52), T. Albinoni (45), A. Vivaldi (33), Fr. Gasparini (30), M. A. Ziani (29), C. Pallavicino (25), and G. M. Buini (20). Fragments of their works may also be found here and there in the twenty-five pastiches listed. These stalwarts apart, most composers set fewer than four dramas to music. This reflects the dilettante nature of opera in the seventeenth century. In the eighteenth, the composition of opera became a professional career path.

Librettists: The profiles of librettist as a group is similar but the number of individuals is smaller. The most prolific dramatists were court poets or, in some cases, held a significant office in the Venetian Republic. This tells us that scripts were intended to project images supportive of existing power structures in the seventeenth century, when the most prominent librettists were Francesco Silvani (67), Matteo Noris (49), and Aurelio Aureli (36). The profile was warped in the eighteenth century by the rising fortunes of the imperial court and efforts to emulate its tastes. Its court poets Apostolo Zeno (69) and Pietro Metastasio (88) completely dominated Venetian stages and those of many other venues for several decades.

Attending an opera then and now

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 (today's orchestra section minus fixed seating). A small orchestra sat in front of the stage. 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.

Today most professionally-staged operas form part of a standard repertory that young singers aspire to master. With few exceptions the score, roles, and orchestra vary little from decade to decade or place to place when adequate financial support is available. Title selections change from year to year. Entirely new works are introduced as budgets permit. Changes may involve 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, but not all the differences are as great as they may appear. After 1700 new titles were increasingly slapped onto familiar plots. The practice of "revise and disguise" produced unpredictable results. Some possible outcomes included:

  • the combination of existing arias 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 often did 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 enabled performance.

In the seventeenth century those attending Venetian operas often came 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.

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

The audience for eighteenth-century opera was in constant flux. While the abundant nobility of earlier times responded well to serious, sometimes tragic fare, the rising bourgeoisie of the eighteenth rapidly developed a taste for comic and pastoral works as well as satirical ones that portrayed traits of 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 acknowledgment of the historical importance of Venetian opera collectively, only a handful of Baroque operas are performed today. The reasons are many: lack of survival of musical sources, a paucity of modern editions, the costs of staging long, elaborate works with large casts, and a lack of training in Baroque performing techniques in many potential venues.

Understanding the database

Essential parameters

Theaters: From 1660 until the middle of the next century Venice usually had six theaters operating. These were the most stable: 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:We know from weekly news-sheets that productions rarely ran for more than three weeks. Performances were not necessarily given every night. With regard to opening dates, some accommodation between theaters could occur. Opening night conflicts were usually avoided. Ticket prices for an opening performance could cost twice the normal amount on ordinary nights at some theaters.

Disruptions: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 represented.

Fields and filters

Extended uses of the data

Dating methods and presentations

The time-span 1660-1760 coincides with an abundance of minutely dated references to opera productions in news-sheets (avvisi et al.), a species of short-form report to which church, civic, and financial authorities could selectively subscribe. Although French predominated in diplomatic communications throughout Europe and the Americas, avvisi supported a vast network of weekly transmissions in Italian. Avvisi from Venice were dispatched by courier on Saturday evenings, a practice that removes one element of ambiguity from determining the modern year of the record. Because they were distributed weekly, avvisi exclude all possibility of misinterpreting years, but the dates thus retrieved often contradict the word of printed catalogues and bibliographies of Venetian opera.

Almost every production included here has an exact date of opening (the sorting or premiere date) verified by primary 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)

Applications in related fields

Sorting dates for titles are especially useful in reconciling Venetian opera and its vast horde of composers, performers, librettists, and patrons with activities in related fields (art history, dance, drama, sculpture, painting, theater and social history) chronologically. Additional details are available at Historic Calendars of Europe. For other intricacies, please see Song and Season (cited below).

Links for libretti

Almost every work cited is survived by one or more libretti. They may not all precisely coincide in content. Printed texts often different in small details from the texts found in manuscript scores. The best start site for Italian libretti is usually Corago (corago.unibo.it). Click on the libretto link. Substantial collections include these:

Links for scores and score fragments

Multiple kinds of music sometimes survive for operas listed. These include

  • Scores
  • Miscellaneous arias (and other fragments)
  • Balli
  • Comic intermezzi

Links to surviving (clearly identified) musical materials are given in the RISM catalog sigla for "Scores" and "Miscellaneous arias". Sigla locate materials by city and library. Links within the specific entry list manuscript sources.

Another path to music is to search the title in the RISM catalog and check the box "Available Online".

Very few comic intermezzi are survived by music. Many balli may survive, but they typically remained the property of the dance companies and were not comprehensively preserved.

Analytical views of selected corpus-level topics

See Analytical Views

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 at Piazzola on 8 November 1680 (Venice, Ca' Goldoni, Biblioteca). Alvise Contarini served as doge from 1676 to 1684. The grandiose staging involved more than 400 supernumeraries, twenty choruses, two lions, two elephants, and sixteen horses—four for Berenice's chariot and a dozen to pull carts of prisoners. News reports relate that this entertainment, lasting for two weeks, was abruptly terminated by the collapse of a storage room for the chariots. It caused the horses underneath to panic and destroy the main props.

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