Weigl's Venere e Adone and the End of Opera at Eszterháza

2020

Nationalmuseum, an der Nationalbibliothek (zahlreiche Kirchenmusikkataloge) und an vielen wissenschaftlichen Bibliotheken und Archiven im Lande das kirchenmusikalische Erbe vor dem totalen Verfall gerettet hat. Bisher sind in der Nationalbibliothek in einem Zentralkatalog an die 1.100.000 Titel registriert. Ein Ende ist nicht abzusehen. Soeben ist ein Katalog der Musikhandschriften des Prämonstratenserklosters Seelau herausgekommen. In Kürze wird ein Sammelband "Sacred music in the 'long' 18th Century" (hrsg. von Michaela Freemanová-Kopecká) erscheinen. Ganz aktuell erreicht uns die Anzeige eines im Internet abrufbaren Katalogs: Rokycanská hudební sbírka. Katalog franko-nizozemských duchovních skladeb, dochovaných v nejstarší vrstv! repertoáru-The Rokycany Music Collection. A Catalogue of Franco-Netherlandish Sacred Works, preserved in the

Musicologica Brunensia, 49, 1, 2014

2020

This edition consists of twenty-nine songs and arias from the early nineteenth-century solo vocal music repertoire to which Giovanni Battista (Giambattista) Velluti (1780–1861) composed (and frequently, though not always, published) ornamentation. The last great operatic castrato, Velluti, over the course of his career, became increasingly well known not only for his singing, but also for his creative, adventuresome ornaments. His publications of ornamented songs and arias were frequent throughout the last decade of his career, when his singing style became less purely virtuosic and more concerned with affect. The edition includes only ornamented solo songs and arias with a secure attribution to Velluti. Those with doubtful or spurious attribution are excluded, as are Velluti’s ornamented duets and trios, as well as arias in full orchestral score.

Opera as Institution: Networks and Professions (1730-1917), 2019

Cristina Scuderi, Ingeborg Zechner (Eds.); LIT Verlag, ISBN 978-3-643-91149-0 pp. 37-53 The Viennese Kärntnertortheater, led by the tenor Francesco Borosini and the ballet dancer Joseph Carl Selliers, originally obtained a court privilege to perform comedies (1728–1748). Yet from 1730 on, its managers looked further and engaged Italian singers in order to stage Italian operas; among them Maria Camati (La Farinella).

Notes, 2010

Eighteenth Century Music

The works of Italian composers of the Viennese Hofkapelle in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries-Antonio Draghi, Francesco Bartolomeo Conti and Antonio Caldara, among othersstill have a hard time being considered for recordings. Austrian conductors and ensembles (and also scholars), in so far as they have engaged with the Viennese Hofkapelle at all, have tended to limit themselves to the music of Johann Joseph Fux and Johann Heinrich Schmelzer, and Italians, understandably, are more eager to get to know the music slumbering in the archives of the Apennine Peninsula. Fortunately, Italian conductor Roberto Zarpellon and his Ensemble Lorenzo da Ponte prove an exception to the rule in their recording of La profezia d'Eliseo nell'assedio di Samaria (The Prophecy of Elisha during the Siege of Samaria; the score and libretto are in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna (A-Wn) Mus.Hs.16295 (score); 406747-B.Adl.28 (libretto)). This Viennese oratorio was penned by Attilio Ariosti (1666-1729), one of those Italian composers who, like Giovanni Bononcini, is much more famous for his proximity to George Frideric Handel in London than for his service to the emperors in Vienna. Ariosti, a Bologna-born clergyman of the Servite Order, came to Vienna in 1703 after having served as maître de musique to the Electress of Brandenburg, Sophie Charlotte, in Berlin. During his seven-year stay in the Habsburg capital he wrote one opera, five serenatas, a variety of cantatas and three oratorios for the Emperors Leopold I (1658-1705) and Joseph I (1705-1711). La profezia d'Eliseo was first performed in Lent of 1705 at the imperial chapel. The libretto by Giovanni Battista Neri had already been set to music in 1686 in Modena by Giovanni Paolo Colonna. One might assume that it was Ariosti's idea to use the twenty-year-old text, since he had previously worked together with Neri, on the opera L'Erifile (1697). Similarities regarding Ariosti's and Colonna's settings, for example the fanfare-like gestures of the opening sinfonia, furthermore suggest that Ariosti knew not only Neri's libretto but also Colonna's score. The libretto of La profezia d'Eliseo narrates a rather drastic episode from the Old Testament's Book of Kings (II, 6.24-7.20), in which the Assyrian army besieges the city of Samaria. This subject was presumably the reason why the text was chosen for a Viennese performance. During the first decade of the eighteenth century, which was overshadowed by the War of the Spanish Succession, the Viennese court displayed a penchant for librettos (especially those for serenatas) centring on sieges; these alluded to ongoing military conflicts over cities like Barcelona, Madrid, Turin, Lille or the fortress city of Landau. A typical example is Silvio Stampiglia's triptych Napoli ritornata a Romani (1707; set by Carlo Agostino Badia), La presa di Tebe (1708; by Antonio Bononcini) and Il campidoglio ricuperato (1709; by Marc'Antonio Ziani).

Music in Art: International Journal of Music Iconography 34, 2009

A comprehensive source study and analysis of the theatre building for the festive opera Costanza e Fortezza performed during the stay of the imperial court in Prague 1723.

The study of all surviving librettos and scores of the more than 50 operas staged in Rome and its outskirts during the years between the death of Pope Clemente IX Rospigliosi (1669) and Queen Christine of Sweden (1689) enables us to divide the Roman opera experience into four distinct types: the comic opera (slightly similar to the antecedent «dramma civile rusticale» from Florence), pastoral musical drama, musical comedy in accordance with Iberian style, and, above all, Venetian-influenced musical drama (imported or not). Comparing the resultant features by the textual, dramaturgical, musical analysis of each title and some tendencies emerging (in term of modification, addition or subtraction) as in the adaptations of operas from abroad as in Roman drama productions from outside the city (with special focus on the import/export ‘opera traffic’ between Rome and Venice), this paper shows the most important methods of literary and musical adaptation to alter every opera in accordance with the requests and expectations of Roman audiences during the second half of 17th century.