Venetian Opera Productions

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.

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:

• The Braidense Library (Corniano-Algarotti Collection)
• The ViFaMusik Libretto Portal
• The Albert Schatz Collection, Library of Congress

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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