Venetian Opera Productions: Field List

These fields are searchable at https://venop.ccarh.org.

General principles of order and organization

The table is ordered by the exact date of opening of a production. Fields can be toggled on/off using the checkbox. The timespan displayed can be limited by specifying the Max. year and Min. year.

The order in which production listings appear can be resorted according to the field of paramount interest by clicking on the field header. The Reset button restores the original order.

Core parameters

Fields that identify the work and the production are straightforward, except in the case of comic intermezzi. In cases in which a composer or librettist is not explicitly named in a libretto, the composer or librettist citation is "attributed". Spellings are regularized throughout to facilitate accurate sorting.

• Title. Full work titles are given. Intermezzo titles are exceptional in two ways: (1) The female role is placed first to provide an element of standardization; (2) alternative titles are not given.
• Theater. Venice's nominal "six" theaters was cumulatively seven or eight. For a clear picture of their frequent changes of emphasis see these decade-to-decade comparisons.
• Composer. The usual number of composers per work was one. A revised work might have two. A few collaborations involved three. A pastiche could have many more, but they may not be named.
• Librettist. The usual number of librettists was one. The rise of works revised from earlier decades created many productions involving two.
• Dramatic genre. The usual number of acts was three. For exceptions, the number of acts is indicated in parentheses, e.g. (5).

Dropdown lists on the search form give cumulative numbers for each item in each the field.

Genre nomenclature

The 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 call for modified approaches and the inclusion 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.) Many of the most important early operas had prologues with separate casts and libretti. A few had independent scenari (lists of on-stage actions).

• 1660-1744: 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.

Years

Opera production data reports historically ascertained facts. Commonly used opera references focus on works and report bibliographical data as found in physical objects, such as printed libretti. As given here, productions are calibrated to the calendar in use today.

Discrepancies between apparent (physical) dates and actual (historical) dates are very numerous in Venetian opera studies. Most operas were given in January or February—in the gap between the start of the liturgical new year (1 January) and the start of the Venetian ceremonial year (1 March).

Dates of premieres are calibrated to today's calendar. Multiple parameters are available:

• A key reference. In the format yyyy/n, where n is an ordinal indicating an opening date in relation to other operas from the same year. Coincides with ordinal positions in The New Chronology of Venetian Opera (see below).
• A date of premiere. In the format yyyy-mm-dd positions operas in order of their openings, giving an exact sequence of openings within a given year. Where dates can be resolved only to the month, mm=00. Where it is known to within a week, a tilde (~) follows the indication.
• A modern year. In the format yyyy reaffirms of the modern-year equivalent of the sorting date. Redundant for many purposes but useful when a conflict with a bibliographical date arises.

Seasons

Seasons are indicated verbally in both historical and bibliographical sources. Their number and length expanded slowly over time. The terms autumn, winter, and spring accommodate 90-95% of the listings.

• A theatrical season. Verbal. Theatrical seasons evolved, largely from liturgical dates and, by default, from proscribed periods of performance. Theatrical seasons were not directly coincident with astronomical seasons. See Dating Venetian Operas.

• A theatrical period is often a more powerful and precise parameter than a season. It shows the imprint of constraints imposed by the Church public entertainment before the start of public opera. These became embedded in various cultural traditions including, most notably, the travels of troupes en masse, which require accommodation in the early and late years of the time-span 1660-1760.

Entr'actes

The miscellany of dances, pantomimes, and choruses that were performed before or after each act were given by adjunct performers who were not identified until the middle of the eighteenth century. Each theater had different practices and preferences. Comic intermezzi were a specialty of Sant'Angelo and San Cassiano from 1706 onward. San Gio. Grisostomo shunned such frivolous fare and insisted on the dignity of balli. Many of its miscellaneous items were didactic in nature.

• Balli. A significant percentage of all opera included two balli. In most cases they ended the first and second acts of a dramma per musica
• Comic intermezzi. Comic intermezzi featured two performers—a man and a woman. One was rich, the other poor. The juxtapositions were unpredictable. Yet some cliches−−a poor serving maid and a rich widower or a rich widow and a young bachelor−−were quite common. In contrast to the opera itself, which often depicted heroes or heroines from antiquity, comic intermezzi portrayed the fabric of contemporary society.
• Choruses. Numbers called cori were prevalent in the early decades of opera, but in the seventeenth century they always involved several individuals and were not necessarily sung. Some cori were dances or pantomimes. Choruses in the modern sense were few, with sporadic appearances in the second quarter of the eighteenth century.
• Prologues. Elaborate prologues for as many as ten performers preceded some operas in the mid-seventeenth century. Prologues featured gods who ruled over the earth and tangled the affairs of the mortals who dominated the principal work. They were in use long before public opera existed. Their details require separate treatment.

Musical sources and fragments

Musical sources, whether full or partial, are hyperlinked to RISM sigla. This allows the user to find the holding library. For detailed elements of a work, such as individual arias in an opera, please consult the RISM catalog. RISM is a global online catalogue of musical manuscripts and early printed music.

• Scores. Users should be aware that a date in parentheses following a specific musical source may refer to a later production, possibly one given in a venue other than Venice.
• Arias, other fragments. Arias that were circulated selectively were usually commissioned by someone (often a noblewoman) who could not attend the staging. Sinfonias were increasingly detached from operas and other large-scale works as the demand for instrumental music grew in the eighteenth century.

Patronage

Most libretti had a dedicatee who was a highly-placed person. Although such a person is named in the singular, he or she was until the middle of the eighteenth century often accompanied by a large crowd of family members or other associates. While such groups were primarily aristocratic in the seventeenth century, they were increasingly bourgeouis in the eighteenth. According to travelers' accounts, women predominated in audiences.

Up to 1690, dedicatees were usually persons of high rank. In coming decades a dedicatee's identity might be obscure, but the opera plot could portray a delicate situation of the present disguised as a similar situation from the past. Operas that introduced make-believe characters or disguised heirs sometimes alluded to common anxieties of the nobility—a lack of heirs, pending redistribution of land, or newly inherited titles that were effectively worthless. The symbiosis between these themes and the satirical froth of the comic intermezzi interleaved with the acts of the opera was starkly apparent.

• Dedicatee. Format: Surname, baptismal name. Usually one person, but sometimes husband and wife or parent and child. By the 1730s many works lacked dedicatees or hid identities under collective designations, e.g. the Ladies of Venice (Le Dame di Venezia).

• Dedicatee jurisdiction. Opera dedicatees could be diplomats, negotiators, or other parties interested in the outcome of a formal dispute. The aim here is to indicate what political jurisdiction they represented. See examples below.
  

• Dedicatee residence. Some dedicatees moved between two or more places. The aim here is to give the current location. Some indications are ineffitably provisional. Diplomats who regularly took new assignments and spouses who came from a different jurisdiction are difficult to allocate to one place of residence. (Local nobles were asked to avoid familiar relationships with "foreigners".)

Examples:

• Dedicatee: Brunswick-Lüneburg, Johann Friedrich (duke)
  
• Jurisdiction: Brunswick-Lüneburg (duchy)
  
• Residence: Hanover (today the capitol of Lower Saxony)
  

This combination of items sometimes discloses several unexpected relationships underlying the existence of an opera. For example, all three pertain to Sartorio's La prosperità d'Elio Seiano, which was given at San Salvatore in 1667. Sartorio was raised at the Hanover court. His music was kindly regarded by the duke. His brother Girolamo became the respected architect and engineer of the Herrenhausen Gardens and other venues.

Further information

The data presented here was developed for use in E. Selfridge-Field, The New Chronology of Venetian Opera and related genres (1660-1760) (Stanford University Press, 2007).

The subtleties of seasons and dating systems are discussed in separately in the companion book (also E. Selfridge-Field) Song and Season: Science, culture, and theatrical time in early modern Venice (Stanford University Press, 2007).